Who are today's drug dealers?

The Washington Post reported, "President Trump on Saturday again called for enacting the death penalty for drug dealers during a rally meant to bolster a struggling GOP candidate for a U.S. House seat here." [Source]

This got me thinking. For the past 40 years, the prison population has increased sixfold. Whether the increase is due solely, principally, or only somewhat due to the War on Drugs is debatable, but one thing's for sure. We're not only catching drug-law offenders, we're also catching a lot of other types of offenders. The prison business is booming.[Source]

We've got the highest per capita prison population on the planet. So, clearly, we're doing something right, aren't we?

Nevertheless, the president still thinks we need harsher sentences for drug offenders, and "his call for executing drug dealers got some of the most enthusiastic cheers of the night." [the Washington Post source]

Yet for some reason, all the people we've put in jail haven't stopped the opioid problem from developing. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, the drug problem can't be solved by harsher sentences. If anything, we'd just be spending more money on prisons, locking up more people that could be productive, and possibly executing more innocent people.

In a different story, CNN reported that "the more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make." [Source] And not just linearly more -- exponentially more.
The drug companies' greatest advocates make money from the drugs they prescribe.

The solution to the drug problem doesn't lie with harsher sentences. We need to address the economics of drug prescriptions.