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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ElwoodBlues · M

tRump's "drug war" is mostly misdirection. Venezuela isn't a major drug source. The most dangerous drug entering the US is fentanyl. And fentanyl is so compact it doesn't need big shiploads. And the ultimate source of fentanyl is China, but tRump conveniently ignores that fact.

According to the conservative Cato Institute, fentanyl Is smuggled for U.S. citizens By U.S. citizens, across legal border crossings.

❖ Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.

❖ In 2022, U.S. citizens were 89 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—12 times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.

❖ In 2023, 93 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.

❖ The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are at least 96 percent less likely to be stopped than people crossing illegally between them.

❖ At most, just 0.009 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.

❖ The government exacerbated the problem by banning most legal cross-border traffic in 2020 and 2021, accelerating a switch to fentanyl (the easiest-to-conceal drug).

❖ During the travel restrictions, fentanyl seizures at ports quadrupled from fiscal year 2019 to 2021. Fentanyl went from a third of combined heroin and fentanyl seizures to over 90 percent.

❖ Annual deaths from fentanyl nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021 after the government banned most travel (and asylum).

From the conservative Cato Institute.
https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers
https://www.cato.org/blog/us-citizens-were-89-convicted-fentanyl-traffickers-2022