I've met my fare share. Not by my choice. But obviously our current system is failling if we still have crackhead problems so why not try a different technique?

 I was about two write this and than both of you beat me to it giving me little to add.

Even though it is completely legal for someone to smoke cigarettes, there is a massive black market associated with tobacco that is run by organized crime because "Legalize and Tax-it" never works out in reality like it does in theory. I'm not saying that all drugs should remain illegal, but you can't eliminate all problems associated with drugs simply by legalizing them. The same is true of prostitution as legalization is a benefit to the prostitutes that become licensed, and further marginalizes the prostitutes that can not legally operate in the system (because they're underage, an illegal immigrant, or have a STD).

The first step to solving this problem is for the United States and Mexico to really co-operate to close the boarder and "starve" the cartels. This will never happen because a large portion of politicians in the USA foolishly believe having a porous border is some how compassionate to the illegal immigrants who are soon exploited, and the Mexican government doesn't want this to happen because if their least educated and poorest citizens could no longer flood into the United States they would have to address the problems with how their country works

japan has low drug use rates and some of the toughest laws. 

Let's see:

Mexico... Never been there, but i hear it can be nice.
Drug... i had a spacecake once, not bad.
War... I can't say i like it.

The technique is failing because there is a "War on Drugs" that is being fought at the street level to get 10% of the drugs out of the system at 10 times the cost of trying to prevent these drugs from comming into the country in the first place.

It certainly seems reasonable for our country to actually attempt to enforce immigration laws across the Mexican border, but unless it was put on full military lock down many people would still sneak past the system. Do you want a military presence like the one that exists in South Korea with a continous gigantic wall surrounded by explosive devices and military officers watching from towers along the whole border? This is the only way I see it stopping illegal traffic. This would hardly show acts of friendliness towards our neighbors and create a lot of animosity. I think it is in our best interest to not creat such large barriers with our southern ally. Not to mention the cost of succuring such a large border would only add to our outragous deficit. Not saying this is how you would do it, but I don't see how else one could stop the flow of firearms and drugs effectively under your idea.

And the Netherlands have a lower drug use than Americans and it has way more relax laws.  Your point can't stand up as toughest laws = lowest drug use.  We have increased our drug laws as tougher and tougher yet the drug use in USA has gone up.  Prescription drug use rising at astronomical rates is just as bad as people using illegal drugs.   To have marijuana in  schedule 1 drug as no medical use while plenty of states have passed medical marijuana just shows how out of touch the DEA, politicians, etc are on the topic of drugs.  Does it make sense to have marijuana as schedule 1 and cocaine, methadone, morphine, etc as schedule 2.  Living in the USA and the mindset of people on certain topics just pisses me off.  I feel like I am living in a land of idiots.

that wasnt my point at all.  just removing the laws wont fix the problems becuase tough laws are not the cause of it. 

Realistically, you don't need a 100% success rate though ...

As you become more and more successful at preventing people, drugs and guns from crossing the border you increase the costs and decrease the revenue of this illegal trade; and this discourages people from trying which further reduces the quantity of people, drugs and guns that cross the border. Hypothetically speaking, if your border was 50% "Closed" (meaning half of all attempted crossings were stopped) you would probably see the number of attempted crossings fall in half and a total of 75% fewer guns, drugs and people would cross the border.

Of course, at least iniitially this would (probably) require the military being that any effort to close the border now would result in a massive increase in violence along the border.