Thought I'd chime in with a more personal note. Cartel violence is horrendous, and it hits close to home for me. I'm from El Paso, Texas which on the border with Juarez,ground zero for the new cartel wars. A few years ago, people would go back and forth across the border all the time. Now, few dare. Rumor has it that the owners of some of the clubs and bars right across the border--the clubs and bars where many El Paso teenagers used to go to drink--were murdered for not paying protection money, their heads placed on pikes outside their establishments.

The violence is also spilling over into the US. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/12/mexican-drug-cartels-make-phoenix-2-in-world-for-kidnappings/

Anyway, perhaps as the spillover violence increases (and it will), people will be shaken from the notion that the current legal scheme is "moral." But, probably not. More likely, it'll make people more conservative, favoring a crackdown on drug vendors and purchasers. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it certainly doesn't seem to crack down on cartels. In fact, the substantial increase in violence in the past few years was precipitated by a crackdown on the cartels by the Mexican Gov.

-- ConradCoutinho - 04 Apr 2010