But at what cost? Sure, the dealers may have left, but the sourcing (China), is still right there, producing precursors by the tanker full. We killed a lot of people, most of which were addicts and not dealers. We militarized the police against the populace, degraded civil liberty, orphaned children. And although the level of users might be down, one thing occurs to me.
What happens during the next drug epidemic? He won't be in office forever. Will all those people have died in vain? Because this won't be repeated in a modern country, this is literally genocide, even if it's unintentional.
At least we can hope that these deaths will not go in vain. A few thousand deaths now will hopefully prevent an even greater number of deaths in the future. I won't call it a genocide, since they are not targeting any particular ethnic group or religious community.
That why I gave it the unintentional qualifier; it may not target a particular ethnicity of culture, but if it effects one group disproportionately, then genocide it is. I equate it with the inadvertent aparthied going on in Israel/Palestine. Not the aim, but the effects are chilling.