[meowface]

It definitely would not magically get rid of cartels overnight, but it'd cut off a huge source of money for them. If they start multiplying the number of violence-related revenue streams (kidnapping, protection rackets/extortion, murder-for-hire, arms snuggling), their image among people who were neutral towards them may decline, and maybe they'll start to be seen as much closer to nothing but pure terrorist/paramilitary organizations.

I don't know if that would start the process of gradual downsizing and elimination by security forces or if it'd instead first lead to a huge uptick in violence and perhaps civil war, but I feel like in the long-term it'd be much harder for most of them to hold onto as much money and power as they used to.

I'm absolutely not an expert in this area and could be horribly wrong, but I think this idea should at least be considered more seriously.

[ev1]

I'm curious about one thing: I keep hearing weird stories about small police forces and ultra-militarised police forces in the US for example, like tiny towns having surplus tanks and assault rifles.

Why/how are the cartels not just "put down" immediately with some assistance? Is there something deeper, like people being born into it or politicians much rather having drug money than a living population? I don't understand why there even needs to be any form of civil war, unless the cartels have embedded themselves deep enough to be similar to guerilla warfare-esque with innocent actors.

[phobosanomaly]

There are a lot of desperately poor young men in Mexico, and there are billions of dollars being thrown around in the drug industry. It's cheap to hire an army, and if you can get kids young enough you can turn them into psychopaths.

Take a cop in rural Mexico making like $15k/year, and he'd be absolutely insane to flush his and his family's life down the toilet to go up against these guys.

Cop in the US in one of those militarized police forces is making upwards of $70k, and isn't up against organized groups of psychopaths with armored vehicles and automatic weapons. Those cops are going after guys growing pot in the closet, and the occasional small, low-level drug org that isn't too dangerous.