Mexico's president says he won't fight drug cartels on U.S. orders; calls it a 'Mexico First' policy

Corruption is his game, don't be shocked if he has some kind of kickback from the cartels. Soon the Mexican government will not exist and Drug Cartels will become warlords fighting for control and territory. Global trade for legitimate business opportunities will flee the country and along with that goes your tourism and everything else.

Careful buddy... you don't want to encourage the US crossing the border to fix the problems for both nations. Considering the claim that some US military equipment has been put in the hands of some cartels, the US sure would like to get that back out of their hands and find out how they got it.

Allowing paramilitary criminal gangs to control parts of your country and influence government policy makes you the puppet leader of a failed state.

Remarkably short-sighted and dumb. Don’t think the cartels won’t turn their attention to Mexico. Oh wait, they’re doing that now!

Double-stupid.

And turning off officials on both sides of the aisle in the US.

So Triple-stupid.

So basically let your own country burn down to spite the US. Checks out.

Over 500 politicians were killed in Mexico during mid-term elections in 2021. So far in 2024, the number is 33. These are Mayors, council members, all the way up to national offices.

Haiti is becoming a criminal state now. Likely that will be a problem for the rest of my life. Hamas and Hezbollah have already impacted many middle east countries negatively.

Rule of law and actually having fair laws is the only way out.

We could always just legalize drugs to take that revenue stream from the cartels and put it to some better use.

Or, we can allow them to continue to collect a monopolist's profit. I rather starve them.

Illegal Alcohol trade in my country killed a lot of people that it doesn't today. People still drank just as much if not more. We got rid of Prohibition because it was bad policy.

We could always just legalize drugs to take that revenue stream from the cartels and put it to some better use.

I used to believe that. Adults should be responsible for themselves. Tax the less desirable drugs to pay for any required govt programs - like needle swaps and methadone to help people kick the harder drugs. But many people have become alcoholics in places where it is easy to access. For drugs that are even more addictive, many more people will destroy their lives.

The cartels won't become "legal businesses" if the 5 typical illegal drugs are legalized today. They will have underground, less cost, more profit distribution just like the current illegal tobacco trade does.

OTOH, we know that making it all illegal isn't working, so doing SOMETHING different can't be worse, until the first 10M Americans die.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68621012 is a story about what decriminalized hard drugs is doing in B.C. Canada.

The death rate increased 5%. In 2023, that was over 2500 people dead. In the US, over 115,000 people die from drug abuse every year. If it increased 5%, that would be 120,750 people, dead. That's over 3x the number of deaths from car accidents annually in the US. It is 6x more than are killed with firearms.

Things seem like an easy choice, until the real numbers come in.