[ufmace]

The fight against the cartels seems to be more like a war than conventional police work. One of the main themes of any war is logistics. Anything you can do to disrupt the enemy's logistics is pretty much always good, even if it isn't a perfect solution. You rarely get to completely destroy the enemy at a stroke, but instead you have to keep chopping off bits until they are defeated and discredited.

Yeah, legalizing drugs won't make them vanish overnight, but it will remove a hugely profitable revenue source from their arsenal, and that's always worth doing.