Myrtle Beach, SC, Orlando, FL October 16, 2015

Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent-Would you allow your child to take condoms to school? Wouldn’t you be subtly telling little Johnny that “it’s OK to have sex, even when under aged?” Similarly, legalizing drugs would be like providing ammunition for a man to kill his neighbor, or engage him in outright combat. It is then safe to say, “legalizing drugs will never stop crime associated with drug trade and drug cartels.” The Government would only be providing these criminals with a safe passage to influence our kids and turn our society into a pack of goons!

To prevent this heinous activity from getting worse, the Government, however, needs to search out these rascals and organizations to the ends of this earth, and completely terminate their activities. How will this happen? Attack them when least expected. The military needs to pull the bull by its horns and wage war on these drug cartels. That is the only way our society will be stripped of these top dogs. If needs be, highly trained army officers should covertly seek out Intel that will lead them to the sources. In the strictest sense, drug laws should be passed to cripple the activities of drug cartels, instead of loosening them up. I hereby demand a military war, not a reformation of laws. Our country should not be left to roam wild or to the dogs! It’s time the military make ridding the country of drug trade and cartels a priority.

Gastonia, NC Correspondent-I think it’s long past time for us to realize that we are never in any of our lifetimes going to put an end to the issue of illegal drugs. However hard we try, however high the penalties, however much we pump into enforcement and education efforts, there is always going to be a sizable portion of the populace who are hell-bent on finding (as George Carlin said) anything they can drop, shoot, snort, smoke or rub into their belly buttons.

Enforcement hasn’t worked. It’s like trying to hit Jell-O with a hammer. All you do is make smaller and smaller globs and spread the problem out further and further. Houston, Texas, is a great example. In the 1980s, enforcement was intense on the southwest side of the city. I lived in an area called the Gulfton Ghetto, and in 1988 the feds and locals teamed up to clean it out.

It worked, to a certain extent, but the problem didn’t go away…it just moved out to the suburbs, out to the east side, into neighboring cities…you get the idea.

Legalizing drugs won’t completely stop the violence associated with the drug trade any more than the legalization of gambling in many places has led to the death of backroom poker games and sports bookies. There will always be someone trying to find a way to make an illegal buck off a legal activity. What it will do, however, is remove a giant part of the impetus for the cartels, gangs and street-level dealers to engage in their current life choices.

Drug cartels are incredibly expensive to operate. There are planes, boats, bribes, security, more bribes, tunnels dug under prisons, etc. to pay for.

Yes, of course there will be societal consequences. Fewer kids will get shot in the middle of drug turf wars. Fewer cops will get shot raiding meth labs and crack houses.Less tax dollars will be pumped into enforcement efforts that, in the end, are notable only for their futility.

Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent-Legalizing drugs would most probably not end the violence associated with the drug trade and the drug cartels for a number of reasons. To begin with, the drug cartels are not going to stop illegal activities just because the United States decides to legalize dangerous substances such as marijuana (which it has in some areas), cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other opiate and chemically derived substances.

Mexican and other Latin American cartels simply will not relinquish the money sources that come through drugs and other black market materials that are associated with drugs, along with enterprises that include firearms trade, oil and petroleum product theft, pirated cd’s/dvd’s, branded product takeovers and other scams and rackets. Extortion, kidnappings for ransom, murders for hire, smuggling, human trafficking and other related crimes are also side ventures for drug cartel profit.

Little will deter the economic status of the cartels, including legalization of drugs, as the cartels will continue to make profits from other venues and newly concocted rackets. Even if the drug trade was moved into a free market scenario and prices were driven down, any decrease in income would be offset by monies from the other illegal drug cartel activities previously mentioned. “An expert on organized crime in Latin America, Edgardo Buscaglia, has stated that the cartels earn just half of their income from drugs and the remainder of their profits comes from other illegal activities.” From this observation, it is easy to assess that the drug cartels won’t allow a little thing like possible full legalization to stop their long-term income goals and their hold on an entire region’s economy.

As the sheer number of illegal business lines has developed in the Latin American region, the drug cartels and their diversification tactics have allowed them to become entities unto themselves. Their continued adaptation to worldwide market changes has proved them unstoppable, and their deadly tactics almost impossible to contain. Such criminal enterprises, unless hindered by positive forces, will continue to strangle legitimate economic endeavors and hold countries hostage to tyrannical operations and heinous criminality. The cartels will never be toppled with their rooted and engrainedmode of operation and their ongoing need to replenish their greedy coffers, as well as fulfill their lavish and lustful lifestyles, at the expense of a whole country and its population.

Perhaps it is time to have a real war on drugs with military intervention, but it would take a task force comprised of dedicated, highly trained, intelligence-minded, and loyal individuals from both sides of the border that are determined to take down and eliminate each phase of a cartel’s operation, piece by piece and bit by bit. Individual operations would take strategic planning and secret operatives to infiltrate and eradicate every aspect of a cartel’s operation, and that would require time, money, equipment, and sheer willpower to accomplish.

Drug legalization, along with a lack of criminalization for less serious offenses, would certainly help eliminate the number of people incarcerated for drug crimes and would free up the prisons for more violent and dangerous perpetrators, but it seems that legalization would not at all disable or dissuade the cartels from their fully operative rampages across the hemisphere and around the world. An all out confrontation coupled with the will and cooperation of officials from either side of the border appears to be one of the few choices, if any, to stop the madness of the drug conglomerates.