I should have also mentioned the caller to 3AW was also advocating the death penalty for drug dealers.

I think Belly that you hold a mainstream view on this issue, but you just don't understand all the factors here.

Firstly people don't distribute drugs in order to kill the end user. In fact the reverse is the case.
The last thing a drug dealer would want is that his customer should expire.
Thankfully and for the most part the criminal networks do a serviceable job of quality control. If they didn't there would be many many more deaths.

Police have recently released the results of a study showing that most recreational drugs are distributed in lounge rooms (their words) and not on street corners. Most drugs are bought from friends by friends in a social networking environment.

Modern day retail marketing has adopted concepts used by drug dealers.
For example buy 2 and pay less. A practice I think unethical incidentally.

Also we have no discomfort when pharmaceutical companies peddle drugs.
Releasing harmful chemicals onto the market and inventing conditions that they
claim their chemical cures. A few heart attacks later they withdraw their crap.

If your looking for a drug dealer whose entire motivation is profit, then look to the Pharmaceutical Companies,
whom have now stopped developing new anti-biotics
in favour of fat reducing drugs because it is more profitable.

Their entire product ranges now consists of petro-chemicals does anyone know this.

Illicit recreational drugs are supplied to meet demand in the social structure.
Baddies are attracted to this because of the huge profit opportunities. Bad they may be
but not stupid enough to wish their customers dead.
(unless of course their intention is murder).

The other factor in recreational drug supply is of course that the dealer himself, is also a user.

And because of the way we manage this situation with law,
the dealer/user is motivated by his own large cost of supplying himself.

It is all self perpetuating and the way think about this, just increases the risk for everyone.
And the massive profits continue to go to those we would wish to deter.

I must stress at this point that I am not advocate for drug use,
in fact having a greater understanding of what it is that is going on here,
would go a long way to reducing drug use,
and the crims would have to go back to robbing banks.

Thinker, again, you keep simplifying the issue as what WE should do to combat DRUGS, not what WE should do if an Australian criminal got busted doing something in another country that THEY consider a crime.

THAT is the issue- whether Australia should stick out their necks for people committing crimes elsewhere (relative to what THESE countries feel is a crime), and sabotage the other country practicing its own legitimate legal protocol, all at our own expense and to the sole benefit of the offender, or not.

I think I may be far more aware of the problem than some think.
First if a Bali citizen was caught here with a 5 tonne truck load of cocaine he/she would not be sentenced to die.
The market for drugs exists, it is big business, some use to escape a life they do not like, some want to be part of it for social reasons.
They are the victims and the family's and Friends they steal from miss use and inflict pain on.
In most places we meet in drugs can and are bought and sold, workers use drugs every day, not all but too many.
I think greed and cash keeps drugs so freely available.
Death sentences will change nothing very long terms in prison, laws to capture, take all personal property may.

Well it seems the Death Penalty DOES dissuade crime- it's just that poverty ensures people are more willing to risk it.

I keep telling you, demanding the offender pay off his own sentence afterward will just encourage him to resume crime if he cannot afford it. If he were to work it off during his time in prison it would be a different story.

And if an Indonesian person were caught importing drugs he would be charged under Australian laws;
If it's unfair, insist our own laws change, or try to demand he be charged under Indonesian law if they have a charge.

KH quote I keep on telling you.
My concern is are you aware we do not tell each other here?
We swap thoughts ideas opinions but it is not our task to tell.
It is my view we need more not less law enforcement in drugs.
Not how ever death sentences.
You speak of re offending after release, what after 30 years?
If we imposed and policed such terms, that would reduce importation and use.
If we took, and looked under every rock all suspected drug money no matter what name it was in that would reduce trafficking death will not.
An opinion not a lecture in my post.