Not really. Just as killing a person doesn't kill an ideology, killing a person also doesn't kill the profit motives for cartels.

If anything it makes the problem worse. Because you've suddenly freed up territory in a very lucrative black market.

The solution to the drug problem is to instead kill the motivations people have for doing the drugs in the first place:

https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-teach-us-about-addiction

This means fixing the housing crisis, guaranteeing people jobs, food, water, shelter, and medical support. It means embracing harm reduction policy. It means ending the war on drugs.

Drug use is a symptom of an unhealthy society. Fix the health of society and the symptoms will disappear, and with it the cartels as well.

There's too much money in the drug trade. Violence is a cost of doing business. Thier children grow up safe in the United States, living in luxury from the poison we buy from them. They literally have lobbyists working against drug legalization because it would destroy their captive market.

Marijuana is still illegal federally and way past Hearst's hemp boycot to save his newspaper business, hint: it's the cartels working against legalization via lobbying.

https://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/8/headlines/hilary_clinton_says_us_cant_legalize_drugs_because_there_is_too_much_money_in_it

It’s easier to fight a gang than an ideology.

When Bush first went into Iraq, he described it as a Crusade. For some crazy reason, people in the Arab world weren't thrilled with this language.