Seems like its worth a shot - what we're doing now doesn't work.

Public policy isn't about eliminating problems, its about choosing which problems you want to live with.

What people don't understand is that the war on drug is about systemic racism and financial incentive. Local law enforcement has been given financial incentives to enforce this "war" and to punish as many people as possible, especially non-white people (because let's face it, more white people do drugs, it's basic math of the population, but more black and other non-white populations are in prison on drug charges).

Decriminalization will never happen until this country dismantles and destroys systemic racism and stops pouring money into the hands of those it wants to keep that system in place.

The idea of decriminalizing drugs comes at a time when opioid addiction and deaths are now devastating the lives of white people. This is no coincidence. And ultimately this country will choose to keep the war in place to punish black people and maintain systemic racism, despite any loss of white life (which will ultimately be spun to make it about class, because the country does not care about poor white people either, but poor white people don't want to believe that because being better than black people is all they have).

There are literally tomes written on the matter.

https://www.aclu.org/other/drug-war-new-jim-crow

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/29/6075527/how-the-war-on-drugs-led-to-institutional-racism

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/catosletterv9n1.pdf

https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Changing-Racial-Dynamics-of-the-War-on-Drugs.pdf

https://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/Mass%20Incarceration%20as%20a%20Form%20of%20Racialized%20Social%20Control.pdf

https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/06/19/race-drugs-and-law-enforcement-united-states

Yep, treatment sucks and AA/NA works 50% of the time and it’s the best we got. Too bad the GOP stance for social problems is “You can’t throw money at it” which is strange because their solution to every other problem is “throw money at it”. Maybe if Halliburton opened a 3 month inpatient treatment program the GOP would change its mind.

@9 As a firefighter/paramedic maybe I should stop trying to resuscitate people who go into cardiac arrest from poor diets their whole lives, or who go into respiratory arrest because they smoke. Or, I hate Republicans, maybe I should let someone's house burn down if there is a Trump sign in their yard. Do you really want first responders inserting their ideologies into their work?

@11 I would rather save someone in the throes of addiction 100 times than someone who doesnt have empathy for or understand addiction one time.

@6 The 'crimes being committed in Mexico' are a direct consequence of the war on drugs.

@17 Good grief where do I even begin......

Talk about being part of the problem. But your simplistic thought processes wouldn't be up to any explanation of the scope, scale, and magnitude of what has been done to black people, so why should I even bother. People such as you actually cause me embarrassment to be a white American, your thinking is so thoroughly obtuse and disingenuous beyond comprehension.

Paranoid and delusional alcohol users love to wage war on drug users. I say lets legalize drugs and starve a terrorist, cripple the cartels, eliminate the gangs and the street corner vendors, save lives, futures and save nations. Why do we insist that criminals worldwide make an easy $500 Billion dollars a year? Seems past ludicrous to me. What is the benefit of drug war, what makes it moral, worth continuing forever and ever?