If you are a regular television viewer and it is the source of information on just about everything, here's how the drug business works.
There is a never ending stream of drugs coming into the United States due to the tremendous demand for those drugs by the people of America. Since drugs are illegal, many of the crimes committed in American are drug related. As with everything else in the United States, it's not about drugs, it's about money.
In the 1930's the United States made alcohol illegal even though a majority of Americans were against it. Prohibition gave rise to the
most powerful crime organizations that are still in power today. Seemingly unable to learn from past mistakes, the United States drug policy has created the largest criminal organization in the history of Western civilization. So powerful, they command the most powerful nation on earth.
Drugs like heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, crystal meth, etc. are mostly manufactured outside the United States. The delivery of most of these drugs is through Mexico and across the southern border of the United States. Because of the large amounts of cash involved, this process of transporting and smuggling drugs into the United States is handled by Mexican drug cartels who have government officials and police on the payroll.
If you believe American government officials and police, when the Mexican drug cartels deliver the drugs across the border and into America, these dedicated public servants throw their bodies in front of trucks full of drugs, risking life and limb to stop the flow of dangerous drugs. Either that, or that millions of dollars worth of drugs are transported across America by illegal aliens in a twenty year old Honda with a broken tail light. Of course, that's not the case at all. The United States/Mexico border is merely a business opportunity. Mexican cartels, with their corrupt government officials onboard, run the drug trafficking on the Mexican side. American cartel(s), with corrupt government and police on the payroll, run the drug trafficking in America. The "cartel drug submarines", border "drug catapults" and all the other grade B movie drug smuggling stunts? Merely well publicized fringe events to distract from the fact that the overwhelming majority of drugs smuggled into the United States are on commercial vehicles, like semi trucks, through commercial ports of entry on the United States border. Corruption is the main tool of drug smugglers.
In America, just like any other commodity, the newly arrived drugs travel to a city with a major transport hub. The drugs are divided up, loaded on to domestic commercial vehicles and, under the protection of organized crime and corrupt police, make their way to every city and town in the United States, where local police decide who gets to sell drugs in the community and who does not. The police investigate and arrest their drug trafficking competition while protecting the drug dealers on their team. It's called "playing both sides of the field". Any investigations into corrupt police are conducted by more corrupt police.
As such, any and all problems caused by drug use in the United States will continue because there is really no effort to stop them. Even if the United States should fail as a country and society, the drug use and sales will continue unabated and probably increase. The collapse of the American government would just cut their overhead because they wouldn't have to pay all the corrupt politicians. They already own and operate the black market in America, they would be in total control.