“It’s more than fifty years on from our declaration of a war on narcotics, and people are getting higher on more destructive shit than ever.”
The war on drugs has been a spectacular policy failure. By any measure: the lives ruined, the amount spent, the size and number of drug cartels, or most simply, the amount of drug use in society. We fought a war on drugs and the drugs won.
That line of thinking has become more and more accepted wisdom. The challenge is, what comes next?
For ‘softer’ drugs like marijuana, legalisation is an obvious answer. The growing body of evidence from the United States and Canada is testament to that fact. But legalisation isn’t an answer for all drugs. The United States’ experience with opiates over the past 15 years has shown us what widespread availability of these drugs can look like. So the question is: as we shift from a criminalisation focus to a harm-minimisation approach, what does our post-war on drugs policy look like?
This article looks at the American state of Oregon as one possible solution. It has followed Portugal’s lead in treating drug abuse as a behavioral-health disorder, not a crime. Oregon legalised recreational marijuana in 2015. Then, in 2020, it followed up by decrimininalising possession of all drugs and directing most of the tax proceeds from legal marijuana sales to treatment for more-serious substance abuse. It has effectively tried to take drug addiction out of the realm of criminal justice and into public health.
And if it doesn’t work? “We can always go back to what wasn’t working before,” Larry said.
Since the law was implemented, almost $300 million in tax revenue has gone to drug treatment groups across Oregon. At the same time an Oregon State Government report has found the state has also saved $37 million by not locking up drug users on possession charges. But it has created its own raft of costly problems.
Property crimes like burglary and vandalism have skyrocketed and police have been forced to break up open air drug markets. To say it has been controversial is an understatement. Or, as this article neatly sums up, “there’s no sense beating around it: Downtown Portland is a shit show”.
Oregon is a case study in the challenges of wrapping up the war on drugs. At this stage, there is no good solution to replace it. And until we see a workable post-war on drugs policy, the lack of an alternative will likely perpetuate the war on drugs for years to come.
This is an excerpt from our Thought Starters email. Once a week we send you 5 interesting articles that have caught our attention, to get you thinking. No spam, we guarantee.