As long as the demand exists in the market, the niche will be filled. There's simply too much money to be made.
As a related example:
Mexico has a cartel problem not because their government is weak, but because the scale of the American drug market means every cartel has an annual income that dwarfs any conceivable taxation revenue. Which means they're better armed, better staffed, better equipped, and overall a more formidable threat than can be dealt with.
Even fully legalizing drugs in the US might not undercut the cartels at this point because their operations have extended so far into legitimate forms of income at this point. Cartels are an agricultural powerhouse, and are responsibility for the vast majority of avocado production for example.
The United States went so hard on being anti-communist that we became anti community.