After trillions of dollars spent, the "war on drugs" clearly is not doing anything but ruining lives. Are there other options? Ayup.
Let's be real: Legal or not, people do drugs.
1 in 3 adults have taken an illegal drug.
1 in 5 young people have admitted taking drugs in the last year.
So how can we safely regulate them, since keeping everything illegal hasn't really accomplished much except imprisoning a lot of people for very little or no reason?
The global drugs trade is worth $435,000,000,000 per year. And over the last few decades, all governments combined have spent several trillion dollars on the international war on drugs, which has led to public health crises, massive incarcerations, and black-market violence. Yeah, that kinda classifies as losing the war.
But there are some bright spots.
Portugal decriminalized small amounts of drugs for personal use.
The result? Less deaths and drug crime.
In the United States, 20 states decriminalized cannabis.
Those states and the states that have fully legalized it have not only seen crime fall, but regulating and taxing cannabis has become a multimillion dollar industry.
Switzerland in the 1990s had one of the highest rates of HIV infection in Europe when it started giving out heroin prescriptions in community-based treatment.
Heroin use actually declined, and new HIV infections dropped by 87%. Yes, 87%.
A lot of countries have been scared of trying new approaches; back then, the United Nations wrongly accused Switzerland of encouraging criminals.
We should hold up the countries that are doing it right (or are starting to ... right, USA?) as shining examples of how to deal with drug use by citizens.
The video clip is by Bite News.
