The United States, has waged a futile "war on drugs" since the Nixon administration, of which, the upshot of all this, is in essence, a whole lot of incarceration for those at the lowest echelons of society, in which, somehow, despite this, the eradication or really even the slowing down of illegal drugs so being sold and consumed thereof still has yet to occur. The bottom line is that a significant portion of Americans, desire illicit drugs, and those that deal in those drugs, from the streets to the nightclubs are to a very large extent, providing a service for those that so wish to indulge.
Additionally, and of immense relevancy, society in America, has in virtually any city of some size, areas of impoverishment, neglect, ill-educated people, bad housing, poverty, discrimination, and harassment -- all of this with no real job opportunity, and no real future for those that are stuck there. Those that live within those communities do live and breathe, just like everyone else, and with 24 hours in every day, with seven days in every week, and not a lot of money in their pocket, people are going to have to consider all sorts of things in order to bring in some sort of income, or to have some semblance of hope in a situation that gives every appearance of being hopeless. So then, drug dealers, are the entrepreneurs of the street, doing what they can to make the best of a situation that entraps them into very limited choices, and the seemingly best of that bad lot, entails real risk.
Of course, there are plenty of people that don't buy into any of this, but most of those people, have not taken the trouble to actually look at the reality of the unfair construct in which billion dollar corporations are permitted to ply their licit drugs over the airwaves and through commercial advertising of all types, so as to push their pharmaceutical drugs onto people that often don't really have the knowledge to understand the inherent dangers that typically go with prescribed drugs, including unintentional addiction, dependency, and the alteration of a given person's mind and body. Yet, these legal drug dealers, make billions upon billions of dollars in profits, and seldom are ever held accountable for the bad consequences and abuse that so incurs.
Instead, the overwhelming amount of pressure and incarceration falls upon those that have little resources, and a whole lot of vulnerability to being hurt on the streets where they do their deals, or locked up, or both. Drug dealers are vilified by most people, when the truth of the matter is that they are providing a service to all those that so wish to indulge in these mind altering drugs. The dangers, thereof, are absolutely real, because unlike licit drug dealers that earn that easy money and typically make a respectful career and are well remunerated for it; the street drug dealers take all of the risks, to gain the smallest of footholds, of what they hope is at least a portion of the American dream so desired; but instead get nothing much more than the hypocrisy of the police, justice, and those law and order types, that use these drug dealers as the scapegoat for all that is wrong, even though they that make the rules and therefore should know better, in truth, do not faithfully represent what is right.