Brazil's deadliest ever police operation - 120 dead after Rio de Janeiro drug raid

I have posted this because I am interested in how do governments stop the deadly trade in drugs?
Nothing seems to work. Remove a few to prison, no dent in the supply lines.
Remember the Philippine war on Drugs instigated by President Rodrigo Duterte?
By 2022, the number of drug suspects killed since 2016 was officially tallied by the government as totaling 6,252.
Taken from the International Drug Policy Consortium;
The current punitive, prohibitionist drug policies implemented in ASEAN countries have not achieved their ‘drug-free’ goals nor achieved any substantial progress in reducing supply and preventing drug-related harms

President Trump has begun his own war on drugs when the military started missle strikes on Venezuela boats purported to be carrying drugs to the US
The assaults bring the total number of airstrikes on boats to 13 ‒ and total deaths to at least 57.

So how can the drug trade be stopped?

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

So how can the drug trade be stopped?

I don't have any complete answers, only more questions.

Once a product exists and is cheap to produce the only way to stop a trade in it is to remove the demand. So governments need to discover why the demand exists and remove that reason. Perhaps by comparing the backgrounds of those who do and do not take drugs. Unfortunately this is much more difficult to do than simply shooting a few low level drug runners.

For instance Norway has more than double the prevalence of opiate use of Sweden and Denmark has double the prevalence of Norway, yet in many ways they are very similar countries. All three are stable, modern, social democratic states with good social security and health systems and relatively few people living in absolute rather than relative poverty. Norway and Sweden also have broadly similar climates and population density, etc. So why the difference, and of course is the difference actually meaningful?

Of course ease of access does have an effect as can be seen by the fact that Afghanistan is both the biggest supplier of opiates and the biggest consumer, at least by the definitions of this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalence_of_opiates_use

I think it is also valuable to examine the premise: How can the trade be stopped? Is it actually necessary to stop it, is it ultimately possible? Perhaps the emphasis should instead be on improving, or perhaps merely changing, the lives of the people so that they do not feel the need for drugs.