You are missing my key point: Pull the troops out of the middle east. Pull the assets back home. Put them to use in Mexico.
If the Mexicans cannot take care of the problem, we should do the job ourselves. At the same time, use the “police state” BS that the government seems to want to use on the trafficking.
Honestly, going after the end user is a stupid ploy. That is akin to going after every German Soldier without the strategic bombing to cut the logistics.
Cut the supply. Drive the prices up. Wreck the quality.
Save us BILLIONS in days. The end user problem will take care of itself.
I think the troops would be better deployed along our Mexican border than in the Middle East/Afghanistan; the problem is that we really can’t afford either (and there are Constitutional issues with deploying them here). As far as deploying them in Latin America itself, that is an unwinnable war; if we had partners (as we had in Colombia more recently with the Uribe government, or with the military rulers during the Cold War) then it might work. Unfortunately, many of the Latin American governments today are leftists like our own.