I'll tell you what, the next time a fence robs my house, I won't call the cops. Drug suppliers market and sell the drugs to smaller 'distributors'. Get rid of suppliers, the smaller sellers won't have a product to sell. I never said to ignore the small sellers, you inferred it. I said, the way we were going about it isn't working and we need an effective and permanent different approach or we'll just continue pouring millions of dollars down a black hole. The current practice of arresting small dealers is not detering the sale of street drugs.
You continue to make the mistake of assuming that going after the street end is the only thing we are doing. Of course the cops are ALSO trying to catch the distributors and suppliers. That does not preclude them from stopping the street dealers as well. Had you considered, for example, that maybe the way to catch the distributors was to arrest the street dealers and find out who their distributors are? Then use the distributors to get to the suppliers? Then call in Shaft to get Mr. Big.