The US loves the cartels. They get us all the drugs we consume and give us a lucrative market to sell our surplus small arms.

Shipping powders back and forth
Singin’ black goes south and white comes north

- John Perry Barlow

SciShow did a piece (partially) about this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXEFQH5UXHQ

And Veritasium did a deeper dive a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA

The whole situation is thoroughly fucked up, but hey, as long as people are making money amirite? 😑

Well, there was certainly not much of a growth spurt in the years between BotW and TotK. I don’t know if that interval has a defined time span, but you figure he’s gonna be about 20 in the sequel. And he’s still a wee lad.