It's a pity - Mexico is so rich in culture but is just absolutely crushed by the US's demand for drugs.
I'm not blaming the US. Like most problems in the world, it's a result of circumstance, not because there's a bad guy. It's not like there's a magical solution to market forces applying to drugs.
My point is more that the geopolitical reasons for the cartel's existence means that Mexico has much less agency in solving it than they would like.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-new-border-plan-sen...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/10/gop-bomb-mexico-fen...
[3] https://thehill.com/latino/4170236-gop-talk-of-military-acti...
As far as I know, lithium is pretty much everywhere in abundance, it's rather its refinement that's the problem.
It would kill at _least_ hundreds of thousands and negatively affect the lives of an order of magnitude more.
It would almost certainly fail by any reasonable metric. Look at how occupying Iraq and Afganistan went, or how the US has done in South America over the last century.
And that's just for starters.
2) Could the US significantly damage the cartel(s) on their own turf?
3) What are the cartels? Are they the literal president-level politicians who are affiliated? Should the US "take them out" too?
I could go on but really the short answer is that the US would end up causing a mess, ruining the lives of normal people, and damaging its relationship with a major world economy and major trade ally.
It's an impossible situation, but I don't think it's difficult to understand why Mexicans would not want the US military to invade based on its track record.
Also I think the US military is not the best at fighting an insurgency.
We also did not have a lot of modern technology in the time frame of the Mexican Revolution (Nov 20, 1910 – Feb 5, 1917)
...which goes along with the assumption that "The future will not look 100% like the past."
- "The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by the Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927"
- "Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927."
People have all sorts of reasons for wanting legalization beyond disempowering drug cartels.
Like keeping people out of prison for nonviolent crimes, building a culture of rehab over penalization, and creating legitimate drug markets instead of dangerous black markets, off the top of my head, that have nothing to do with whether cartels having other lucrative enterprises beyond drugs.
Huh? Did you read @lp0_on_fire's comment? The one I replied to?
Eventually, these would become two separate businesses as enforcement would focus on the connection between the businesses and levy sanctions. History is full of such stories where bootleggers became respected business owners.
The cartel won't disappear, but it will shrink as its big sources of income would become irrelevant. That would mean law enforcement can be more focused and follow a smaller target. Violence will decrease and everybody wins. Additional taxes from these industry fund more policing of the remainder of the cartels.
Combine this with the fact that the drug market in the US is ~$150B, it's hardly surprising that the cartel pops up to service the demand while joining hands with the corrupt central government. Neither group cares about the people.
To begin to tackle it as you suggest, I think Mexico needs a full blown revolution which somehow manages to resist the billions of dollars the cartels are sitting on. It's not like Mexican's aren't trying either - it's just that if they try too hard, they get publicly executed.
Note that that herculean effort only addresses the supply problem. The demand will still be there until the US controls it's drug epidemic, which I don't think anyone knows how to do.
As I mentioned above, I'm not assigning any blame. I think both countries are in some kind of extremely shitty local maxima where the problems are so difficult to solve that a minority of people are able to profit and perpetuate the status quo.
Mexico can't dig itself out but the United States could quite easily crush the cartels and letting them continue is an active policy choice. (Consider the organized retail theft and carjacking in San Francisco and Chicago... these are not individual criminals, nor would the racket be profitable without an organized network carefully managing and allocating resources).
Mexico doesn't produce cocaine either, but is on the way to the US from the south.