The war on drugs continues to be a catastrophic failure and hasn’t done jack shit for us. It has cost us over $1 trillion since 1971. Nixon’s advisor even admitted the war on drugs was racially motivated -

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the (Vietnam) war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing them both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”

Yet, as the book says, when Baltimore mayor was like hey guys this ain’t working - let’s maybe try something else? Like decriminalizing, people were FLOORED. He was ridiculed.

Here’s why “tough on crime” doesn’t work. Incarceration doesn’t deter drug use or reduce recidivism. In fact it makes it worse bc you’re putting people in a violent place where they have to defend themselves and then setting them out in the world with criminal records that block them from employment, housing, education etc. The actual HEALTH ISSUE goes untreated. Prison is expensive for taxpayers, ineffective, and inhumane.

But, you know who has tried decriminalizing drugs? Portugal.

By 2000, they were the “heroin capital of Europe” with one of the highest HIV rates among drug users in the EU. In 2001, they decriminalized possession of all drugs for personal use and shifted to treating addiction as a public health issue. OMG radical idea 🤯

Drugs are still illegal, but if police catch you with small amounts, they confiscate them and refer you to health panels rather than courts. Portugal invested heavily in addiction treatment, methadone programs, needle exchanges, supervised and safe consumption sites, mobile health teams, and housing support. Oh yeah and they have universal healthcare.

As a result of this very radical idea (🙄🙄🙄), drug deaths dropped 80%, HIV infections from drug use fell 90%, and people in Portugal are now 45 times less likely to die from overdose than Americans.

Their prison population for drug offenses plummeted from over 40% to below the European average.

All this cost less than $10 per citizen per year, with total societal savings of 12-18%.

It works because removing the fear of arrest allows people to seek help, and comprehensive health services address why people use drugs(trauma, poverty, mental illness) rather than just punishing the symptom. When you treat addiction as a medical problem instead of locking them up and shaming them, you get real, medical outcomes instead of ineffective, criminal ones.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

So why aren’t we doing this? follow the money.