The Great Extradition - all show, no substance

Talk about your exercise in futility. Mexico made a big show of extraditing 15 prisoners to the US, including some major drug kingpins. "Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said the decision to send the traffickers to the United States was 'a monumental moment.'" Right. A momumental moment of political theater. This statement is beyond absurd.

Drug kingpins held in Mexican prisons are often able to keep their cartels running from behind bars, making extradition to the United States a key tool in limiting their power.

It's true they run the cartels from prison but extraditing them here isn't going to change that a bit. The cartels will keep running no matter where the kingpins are jailed. They all have underlings capable of keeping the operation going and even if it were true and they managed to quash a cartel or two, all this will do is open up the market for new cartels. That won't stop the violence in Mexico. It will only make it worse.

I mean, the reason the violence has escalated in the first place is the Mexican government made this big show of cracking down on the existing cartels in the first place in order to please the White House and its resident prohibitionists. Mexico would have done better to have stuck to its guns when it was considering legalization. There would be a lot less carnage on that side of the border by now if they had gone through with it.