I read a HN comment here from a resident of Portugal the decriminalization has been significantly mischaracterized. The main reason it worked at all was due to a huge rise in heroin use, which the criminal system was having trouble handling. And the areas where people used drugs rapidly went downhill. I am not sure it can be declared a unilateral success.
I'm not doubting, but is there evidence for the negative effects in some regions? From what I remember years ago it seemed like a significant success based on a number of metrics
The writer claims the decriminalization was forced by a heroin epidemic, and it coincided with an economic downturn. So, my statement that it caused areas with drug use to decline is most likely false, as the decline is better attributed to the economic downturn.
Criminal prohibition of drugs just drives sales underground where there’s no regulation or testing of substances for potentially lethal contaminants. It also creates a huge economic opportunity for violent cartels/criminal organizations which can destabilize entire regions. Furthermore it does almost nothing to reduce the supply or availability of illegal drugs - we’ve been fighting a war on cocaine for 50 years and cocaine has never been more readily available or cheaper. The only thing criminal prohibition of drugs has accomplished is an explosion of the prison population making America the country with the highest level of incarceration in the world.
The war on drugs causes more death and damage than drugs. The only way out is for the government to legalize, regulate and tax drugs just like alcohol and cannabis. If heroin were sold at a pharmacy there would be laws against selling to minors... dealers today will sell to anyone.
> The only thing criminal prohibition of drugs has accomplished is an explosion of the prison population making America the country with the highest level of incarceration in the world.
Some would argue this is actually by design, and I'm inclined to believe them. The prison pipeline is horrifying
Yes it does drive sales underground, but it does not just drive sales underground: it likely also reduces drug consumption.
When you make a resource harder to get you decrease the supply, when you decrease the supply, prices tend to go up and access goes down. Despite all the other negative externalities of the drug war (and there are many), I believe there is still a good case to be made that it also makes it harder to obtain dangerous and highly addictive drugs.
Now we may be able to partially legalize these drugs in a way that still makes them hard to get, but then you still have the black market.
"when you decrease the supply, prices tend to go up and access goes down."
Basics of economics: inelastic markets, where demand does not respond to price. Oil and food are examples: the price moves, but goods must be moved, and people need food to survive. So price could double and demand would go down like 2%
Seond issue with your post: there is no shortage of supply, all drugs i can thing of are readilly avaliable. The police / etc. Have failed to restrict supply. The only thing they can do is drive up the price as cartels / criminals have to employ more elavorate methods.
You know what else drives us the price? Taxes. You could set insane rate of tax on any substance so that it's legal version costs as much as the black market one, or even more. Legal one still nakes more senxe to buy, because you'd know its pure and does not come with baking powder, horse shit or rat poison mixed in. Its a well known fact that drugs on the street are of very low purity.
In fact it is very common for a drug user to die because they suddenly get a dose of 'clean' drug and what used to be a normal dose of 10% drug just became a 10x dose of 100% drug.
"partially legalize"
- I would say currently legalized drugs are "partially" legalized (aka regulated with reasonable restrictions like minimum age of purchase and not selling to intoxicated persons)
Referencing alcohol prohibition, that led to a large black market which gradually shrank until it almost completely disappeared about a decade after prohibition ended. About 10 years after prohibition was enacted, alcohol consumption was at ~70% of pre-prohibition levels. Making alcohol illegal decreased consumption by 30%. I would guess alcohol consumption levels would have continued to rise if prohibition had continued. I don't think anyone today still thinks a small reduction in consumption was worth all the violence and corruption created by prohibition. Today the "black market" for alcohol pretty much consists of asking your older sibling/friend to buy you a case of beer.
> When you make a resource harder to get you decrease the supply, when you decrease the supply, prices tend to go up and access goes down.
I argue it's extremely easy to get illegal drugs in the US. I don't currently use any but I have complete confidence I could acquire some within ~1-3 days by tapping my social network if I wanted. Another very convenient alternative for acquiring drugs for those so inclined is the dark web (assuming you know how to use cryptocurrency and tor - something I'm sure the vast majority of young people in the US can do)
We're going to eventually get to a place where drug decriminalization is widespread. If we're not going to punish people for using drugs, lets just take control of the drug market away from criminals, regulate it, tax it and use that tax revenue for something good.
