Let's throw some truth out on the table, shall we...
My mom always said, "If you're going to do something, do it right."
If the war on some drugs is in fact a good idea, as weighed by the norms & values of the people in that society, through their policy-makers, then having such draconian punishment WILL in fact help to reduce the level of offenders, and potentially drug use rates themselves, overall; so I cannot say that it's a bad idea (other than the standard reservations with the death penalty that some people have, myself included, like putting innocents to death).
However, that still doesn't make the war on some drugs a *good idea* in our society or even necessarily in their society, since (a) it doesn't work in its current form in our society (doesn't reduce drug use), (b) even it it did work (and remember, it doesn't), the cost would too high in lost civil liberties, under the way the "war" is currently being prosecuted.
Now, as for the argument "well it would work if we got serious and instituted harsh punishments like this", I really don't have a good counter to that; that *may* be correct!! If we were to impose harsh penalties like the death penalty for drug running, but yet at the same time did NOT erode civil liberties to do it (the draconian punishments
ipso facto do not run afoul of civil liberty protections, you see), then I might even support it, provided we RESTORE the prior state of the case law on search & seizure to before this war on some drugs - go back to the 1970s or so.
Again, let's fish or cut bait. Do it right or not do it at all. There's another one...something about getting off the pot. Anyway, increasing the criminal penalties *IS* the appropriate response to make the war on some drugs work to produce the desired results of less drug use (assuming that as a society this is the result we want).
Conversely, these things are NOT the appropriate response:
1. Civil forfeitures of property withOUT a conviction necessary to take your stuff (i.e. legal theft)
2. Recuced 4A, 5A, 6A, and 2A protections, particularly 4A search & seizure.
3. Etc.
P.S. These defendants probably ought to be given a medal if they were making real "X" - my (limited) understanding is that people usually croak by eating something closer to rat poison in chemical structure, sold in a bait & switch off the street, when they think they are getting real "X", which is essentially harmless. That's my understanding, but I could be way off on that. But if I'm not, they were probably saving lives by making the real thing.
The chief executive of the UK Medical Research Council stated MDMA was "on the bottom of the scale of harm", and the Science & Technology Committee rated it of
lower concern than for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, believing it should be changed to less harmful category B, while at the same time found methamphetamine should be scheduled up to the most harmful category A
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/31_07_06_drugsreport.pdf
Make a moderately powerful seratonin reuptake inhibitor, and you make billions upon billions of dollars (prozac, paxil, zoloft, etc.); But make a REALLY good SRI, and the government executes you - talk amongst yourselves.....