What to do about the US, Mexico border war?

[insomniac17]

HappySqurriel said:

insomniac17 said:

Pretty much this... If drugs were legalized in the US, the cartels would lose their flow of cash, and they would either be forced to stop fighting the Mexican government, or turn to legitimate business which would eliminate the need for violence. Then, people would be less likely to cross the border to the US illegally, because they aren't being butchered by the cartels.

Tobacco is a legal product and has a thriving black market that funds organized crime ...

Where? In the US, I thought that was because some places have higher taxes on it, so there's a lot of profit to be made smuggling it between states. And what I meant was that as far as I can tell, the drugs being illegal is making the problem as bad as it is, and legalizing them would greatly reduce the problem. By at least providing a legitimate source for people to get these drugs from, you would be cutting off a huge part of the money the drug cartels make.

That would hurt their ability to wage war, and if they aren't out in the streets killing everyone, people would be less likely to flee the country. They would probably turn to some other illegal activity, but I haven't heard of any black market tobacco operations causing this many problems here in the US. (I also don't know much about them at all, so I could very well be wrong).

My point wasn't to say that everything would be solved and we'd all be happy, but that I think the largest contributing factor to the problems with the US/Mexico border is the war on drugs. I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, but I don't see another reason why it is so bad.