A government can make it harder, increase the risk, or lower the profitability.

For example, if you register heroin addicts and supply them with clean heroin on a regular basis, you destroy the market for heroin.

If you legalize and regulate cocaine like tobacco, you can destroy billions of dollars worth of criminal activity.

The for-profit prison industry, who use incarcerated people as labor for pennies an hour, has enough political sway in this country that I have reluctantly accepted that these reforms are essentially never going to happen in my lifetime.

In places like Alabama prisoners aren't always paid. Slavery still exists as a punishment in this country.