It also goes the other way, though.
For instance, lots of Americans refused to sign up for the draft, which was illegal but prevented them from killing innocent people in Vietnam.
Or they helped slaves escape the South, illegal but stopped violence being used against them.
As for drug dealing, I'm not sure simple drug dealing is even considered a mala in se crime, absent some sort of fraud or dealing to incapacitated people. It used to be illegal to sell hemp, now you can legally buy it on the internet both federally and in the vast majority of states -- yesterday they were a "drug dealer" and today they're just a "farmer."
Drug dealing is one of the most horrendous crimes imaginable. The amount of society wide suffering it causes, the amount of families it tears apart, the amount of destruction it does to health make it far, far worse than most other crimes. It is obviously something where a death penalty is more than justified, especially since no other methods works in stopping drug dealers.
>hemp
What a ridiculous argument. We both know that this is not the drug we are talking about.
Does this include the Sackler family?