All that would end up doing is increasing the price of drugs further.
We continue in this morass and watch the Constitution and national sovereignty go up in flames.
We make narcotics trafficking a life offense, no probation, parole, no appeals, no chit. [...]
Or we legalize it all and defund the cartels and street gangs that have effectively occupied the US, in numbers well over a million.
All that would end up doing is increasing the price of drugs further.
Which would end up doing that? Basic economics says that lowering barriers to entry in a market, such as by legalizing, lowers prices (as the history of Prohibition bears out.)
Let the drug cartels take US cities?