Drug prohibition has failed. What's next?

What comes in the wake of a failed war on drugs that is too expensive, unjust, counterproductive and deadly depends upon the lessons we learn from that failure and the policy experiments in legalization that have already taken place.Show more

This video essay from Zach Weissmueller draws on a 2-hour live conversation with Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, and Reason's Nick Gillespie, which is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3RyKDH-4Hk

Referenced sources:

Gallup: Americans’ views on legalizing marijuana https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-inches-new-high.aspx
Washington Post: How Obama’s Spending Plan Would Change the Drug War https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/10/the-radical-way-the-presidents-spending-plan-would-change-the-drug-war/
White House: Federal Drug Control Funding Priorities https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FY-2023-Budget-Highlights.pdf
CDC: Drug-involved overdose deaths 1999-2021 https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
NIH: Opioid Addiction Numbers - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448203/#:~:text=Three%20million%20US%20citizens%20and,States%20are%20dependent%20on%20heroin
National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics: 30-day drug use in the U.S. - https://drugabusestatistics.org/
Yale: What the needles said. https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/what-the-needles-said/
Excerpt from Yale study: reduced HIV infections by 1/3
Does the evidence support supervised injection sites? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5685449/
Excerpt from above study: Decrease in deaths, hospital calls, HIV
CBC: Supervised consumption sites “A System of Chaos” - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ucp-supervised-consumption-site-review-committee-announcement-findings-1.5486579
Alberta government study on supervised injection sites: https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/dfd35cf7-9955-4d6b-a9c6-60d353ea87c3/resource/11815009-5243-4fe4-8884-11ffa1123631/download/health-socio-economic-review-supervised-consumption-sites.pdf
Harm Reduction Journal: Scrutinizing the Alberta study on supervised consumption sites - https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-020-00456-2
Excerpt from above study: didn’t adequately measure police activity
Oregon Live: Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization Sends Fewer than 1% to Treatment - https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2022/09/oregons-drug-decriminalization-effort-sends-less-than-1-of-people-to-treatment.html
Excerpt from report: ODs increased, addiction programs underfunded
Drug deaths in Portugal and EU: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
Prisoners sentenced
HIV rates
Pierre Anderson for the Swedish Drug Policy Centre: Decriminalization of Drugs. What Can We Learn from Portugal? (2020) https://narkotikapolitisktcenter.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NPC_Portugal_Decrim_Eng.pdf
From portugal report: use and possession are prohibited
Portugal report: consequence for being caught
Harper’s: Legalize it All by Dan Baum - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) Modernizing Opioid Treament Access Act - https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sens-markey-paul-and-reps-norcross-bacon-introduce-modernizing-opioid-treatment-access-act-to-reach-more-americans-suffering-from-opioid-use-disorder-as-annual-overdoses-surpass-100000-across-us