While coke is very much an exception to my personal drug use, (seen it ruin too many people, don't wanna derail the thread giving example. S--- f---s with your mind the way other drugs don't, easy gateway to thinking you're on top of the world and power tripping), Cotton's proposal would only exacerbate the problem. The Drug War is one of if not the largest public policy failures of the last 50 years, and it's time we set a new course.
I'm wondering how many people in this thread have seen local communities destroyed by hard drugs. As someone who has seen some of Nebraska's small towns ruined by meth, I'd be fine with every single meth dealer getting thrown behind bars for long sentences. So long as they haven't turned to a life of violent crime, the addicts need to be sent to treatment facilities, but the dealers I have no sympathy for and I want them off the streets.
I live in North Philly. Ground zero for the opiate epidemic and home to the largest drug market on the East Coast. As much as I would love to yeet every last drug dealer and junkie off the Walt Whitman bridge, another will replace them because it controls the local economy.
Harsher sentences don't deter someone who's cornered. If you think trapping's the only way to feed yourself or your family then you're gonna do it by any means necessary.
You want people to stop slinging? Ask why they start in the first place. Think about the type of environment that often leads to dealing. You can even watch the very show my display name is based on. If you don't know anyone who's getting money legally, your family's broken due to either the very same incarceration policies Cotton's pushing or the cutting of government funding at all levels for social services, and the only people who you know are getting money are those flipping, why wouldn't you start dealing?
