Why the war on drugs is such a spectacular failure.

Addiction is one of the most commonly misunderstood phenomenons that humans deal with in a regular basis.

We used to believe that addiction was simply a problem with willpower. That if people just tried hard enough, the cycle would eventually break itself. That people have choices and they just need to be strong and resist the urge. Today we know there’s much more to it than that and depending on the drug, as little as 4% of addicts are able to quit via willpower alone. And who do still deal with significant problems which are the same ones that lead them to addiction in the first place. many pick up an equally destructive addiction in it’s place.

As time progresses, an equally inaccurate picture of addiction emerged. The notion blames the substances themselves. This is the picture that’s most prevalent in our society today. The notion is that the substances themselves are the problem. Once a person tries the drug, they’re hooked for life. The answer is simple, we warn people to never take the drug and enact harsher penalties for the monsters who are selling these horrible, addictive substances.

In 1971, to combat a growing drug problem President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” It sounds simple enough, just get rid of the drugs, and that will get rid of the problem right? Well the problem is, there’s no data to indicate this approach had any effect. Drug addiction rates have not decreases since these programs were implemented, and the program is considered one of the greatest public policy failures in United States history.

The problem with this approach is that it violates the economic rules of Supply and Demand, and years of economic theory which predicts that disallowing any mutually agreed upon exchange of goods is doomed to failure. Over 500 economists including Nobel prize winning economists like Milton Friedman (who was the head economic advisor to Ronald Reagan) agree that reducing the supply of drugs without reducing the demand simply cause the price of drugs to go up. The enormous increase in profits further incentivizes people to deal drugs due to supply and demand. If those dealers go to jail, supply goes down, driving price which up further incentivizing other people to deal drugs.

According to Mark Thornton, Professor of Economics at Auburn University if alcohol prohibition laws had not been repealed in 1933, alcohol consumption would have actually surpassed it’s pre-prohibition levels.

So if drug prohibition isn’t the answer, what is?

We have an answer for you there too. In the early 200s, Portugal had one of the worst heroin epidemics in the world. At it’s height a jaw dropping 1% of the entire population was addicted to heroin. Overdoses were uncontrollable, and other drug-related deaths were the highest in all of Europe.

The Portuguese government took a similar approach to the United States “War on Drugs.” Harsher penalties for users, longer sentences for drug dealers, stigmatizing drug users, anti-drug commercials. Despite all these efforts, every year the problem got worse and worse. In 2000

In 2000 at the height of this epidemic and suffering from one of the worst public health crisis the world has ever seen, the Portuguese government realized they had to do something about this. They were seeing zero results from the conventional war on drugs, so out of desperation the Portuguese government decided to take a new approach. Government officials got a team of the top doctors and scientists in the field to have an honest discussion and formulate a plan that genuinely would solve the problem. So after months of deliberation what was the plan they came up with? Their shocking suggestion to fix this epidemic was to decriminalize all drugs, and take all the money that was allotted to drug enforcement and put it into treatment programs. So the Portuguese government proceeded to decriminalize every drug from marijuana to crack-cocaine to methamphetamine to heroin and pour all the money they used to spend on enforcement and prison into treatment programs. So did did this insane plan in 2001 actually work? Well the results are in:

Portugal has one of the lowest drug addiction rates in all of Europe.

Now let’s compare that to the Untied States.

The United States is witnessing the worst heroin epidemic in it’s history. Suggestions are being thrown around for stricter laws including bizarre suggestions like enacting the death penalty for drug dealers, but again, reducing supply without reducing demand is an impossible and astronomically expensive feat. According to a report prepared for the United States Army, Office of National Drug Control Policy treatment is 23 times more effective and less expensive than supply side “war on drugs” approach. In other words, cutting demand, not supply.

So it may be time to listen to the scientists, doctors and economists that have studied this their entire lives rather than listening to the bizarre (hopefully jokes) of a few politicians.

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