Does incarcerating drug dealers do any good?

There is a proposed bill in the Maine Legislature to for up to a 30 year prison sentence for a drug dealer if one of their customers dies of an overdose. This seems to me like a terribly expensive feel-good measure that will accomplish nothing. It won’t bring back the victim, and does almost nothing to prevent future drug overdoses.
For every drug dealer that gets arrested, someone will always take their place. The war on drugs has been raging for forty years, and we have locked up a lot of dealers. It did nothing to stop drug addiction.
Keeping a person in prison costs about $50k/year. That money would be much better spent on education and rehab.
The root of the drug problem is not dealers, it is addiction. If there are addicts willing to pay top dollar, there will be drug dealers.

If the purpose of the bill is to provide jobs for LEO, judges and prison workers, it sounds like it might “do some good”.

I see no reason to assume that the language of this bill has to do with the purpose of this bill, btw.

I wholeheartedly support long prison sentences for any drug dealer who forces their product upon individuals who do not wish to use said product.

other than that, no.

In my experience, drug dealers kill other drug dealers more regularly than the police arrest them. If the threat of being shot and killed doesn’t stop them from taking up the trade, how the fuck would a longer prison sentence make even the slightest bit of difference?

Don’t forget about the owners of private prisons.

You should need to show a certain degree of negligence or intent, like if a dealer was knowingly selling a type of opium that was many more times more likely than to lead to overdose. In the case most overdose instances, no I don’t think this is a good idea any more than it would to hold a liquor retailer accountable when someone drinks themselves to death.

As long as gun violence and the risk of it goes hand in hand with the narcotics trade, lower level (retail) dealers will be incarcerated. Sure it’s far from ideal; if I lived in a community with a lot of this kind of violence I’d at least want the more reckless and dangerous ones to be apprehended and for society to attempt to reform them.

It’s another example of the misguided logic that led California and other states to pass the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” laws in the 90s.

One of the main goals of a state’s punishment code is to deter future examples of the same crime. This can be specific deterrence (keep the same person from doing it again) or general deterrence (keep others from doing it by providing an example of what will happen if they do).

As for specific deterrence, yes, if you pass a law that keeps someone in jail for up to 30 years, you have up to 30 years during which that person won’t do the bad thing again. The trouble is that we don’t keep them there for 30 years. We parole them after a much shorter period of time. Then, they probably go back to doing it again, unless you’ve included in your penal system a serious attempt to re-habilitate the convicted criminal. Best guesses as to how much emphasis is put on re-habilitation by Gov. LePage. :wink:

As for general deterrence, the likelihood that someone doesn’t become a drug dealer for fear of spending 30 years in prison after the death of one of their “clients” is pretty low. Evidence is all over the map when it comes to the value of general deterrence, but given that dealing drugs in the US has some pretty harsh potential consequences already, and that doesn’t seem to dent the business, one questions the value of any general deterrence here.

Mostly, it’s a feel-good sentence. Someone died, so we have to exact revenge for that. And, in truth, if they had simply shot the person, they’d be getting a pretty heavy sentence. So if you consider death by overdose to be an example of negligent homicide, it’s not too out there to expect a significantly tough sentence. Not that I’m advocating it, mind you.

As far as resulting in lots and lots of extra prisoners, well, that’s unlikely. Despite the epidemic of overdose deaths, the likelihood that massive numbers of drug dealers are going to be able to be convicted of causing specific overdose deaths is small.

Many dealers are young enough their brains are still developing, many have a lot of potential to make different decisions (esp. if incarceration is less punitive).
I’ve had lots of coworkers who had drug convictions in their teens or twenties who became law abiding people.

This is mostly incorrect. According to the United States Sentencing Commission, the average age of the 22,215 people referred to them who were convicted of trafficking drugs in 2013 was actually 35. This matches up with my decade of personal experience of being in the business myself.

I know of two men who were sent to prison for this who were about 60 years old at the time. :eek: One was basically a kingpin who will die in prison; the other will be serving quite a long time because he was doing interstate trafficking and the cops found over $100,000 cash in his house when it was swept.

If they’re being referred to the US Sentencing Commission, then they’re not street-level dealers. The USSC deals with federal inmates, and to get a federal drug trafficking charge, you pretty much have to be in at least interstate activities, involved with the cartels, or something of some magnitude. The guy selling retail on the street corner is likely to face only state charges.

Not necessarily. Most prisons are awash in drugs–the drug dealer sent away for thirty years may well start dealing on the inside too. (And inmate death by overdose is not necessarily common, but it’s not unknown either.)

I have purchased weed from the same dealer (aka friend) for the last 20 years. He’s 63 and has shown no signs of retiring from the business. He has a stable clientele that he trusts. Everyone is happy.

Of course, the folks I purchased coke from in the 80s are all long gone.

I’ve always felt that our national schizophrenia over drug policy is because every parent simultaneously wants laws that will treat their child as leniently as possible if they’re caught with drugs and will punish as harshly as possible everyone else who has drugs in order to keep them away from their child.

When you say pusher, you mean PUSHER.

People like this cause relatively little trouble, legal-wise. However, the $100,000 man was indeed trafficking in pot, and moving BALES of the stuff. That’s where law enforcement needs to be. I know this man personally, and didn’t know he was doing anything like this until after he was sent to prison. The kingpin is the ex-husband of an acquaintance; they divorced after he was arrested and IDK how much she knew. He was dealing in harder drugs, and that town’s pipeline dried up considerably when he was busted.

Replace national with global and I agree with this.

Most likely not at all as someone will instantly step into the void.
Just don’t ask this question of Jeff Sessions and his soon-to-be best friend Philippine President Duterte after they’ve been sitting around drinking and watching their favorite documentary, Reefer Madness.

The Trump administration wants to increase drug charges:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-issues-sweeping-new-criminal-charging-policy/2017/05/11/4752bd42-3697-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html

Of course it’s going to do good…for politicians looking to secure a certain segment of voters, and for the private prison industry.

It has no effect on drug use and trade. It costs us all money. It increases the derivative crime associated with the drug trade. So no, it does no good at all unless you’re a politician taking advantage of the ignorami.