Little changed in the decades that followed. Communities of colour continue to experience more interactions with police due to current drug policies. « Drug possession arrests have been used to intimidate, target and even injure people of color, » Sutton says. He cites Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police in a drug-related raid, and George Floyd, whose drug use was used to justify her murder by police. « The association with drugs or something similar has served as a kind of excuse for law enforcement for their actions, » he says. Given the above points, it doesn`t matter whether drug use – in itself and regardless of how drugs are bought – is good or bad: people take drugs and the war on drugs is an expensive, ineffective and extremely harmful policy to stop them. Therefore, the question is: how can we reform drug policy since the failure of the war on drugs? Is legalization a risk worth taking? The arguments on both sides are compelling. What should we do if we cannot clearly accept or reject the legalization of drugs? One approach proposed as meaningful is to suspend the verdict, recognize that legalization advocates are partially right (that the war on drugs has proven ineffective in reducing drug abuse and drug-related crime), and recognize that it is time to explore new approaches. Opponents of more permissive regimes doubt that black market activity and associated problems will disappear or even diminish sharply. However, to answer this question, the details of the regulatory system, especially the delivery conditions, must be known as before. When drugs are sold openly on a commercial basis and prices are close to production and distribution costs, the chances of illegal undercutting seem rather slim. Under a more restrictive regime, such as state-controlled outlets or medical prescription systems, illegal sources of care would be more likely to persist or expand to meet legally unmet demand. In short, the desire to control access to basic consumption must be weighed against the resulting black market opportunities.

Systems that risk a persistent black market require more questions – about how the black market works again over time, whether it is likely to be cheaper than existing markets and, more generally, whether the trade-off with other benefits is still worth it. But perhaps the best reason to legalize hard drugs is that people who want to use them have the same freedom to determine their own well-being as those who use alcohol or marijuana or anything else. In a free society, the assumption must always be that individuals, not the government, can decide what is in their own interest. The war on drugs has cost society more than drug abuse itself. The cost includes the $16 billion the federal government spent on drugs in 1998 alone. Of that $16 billion, $10.5 billion will go to measures to reduce the supply of drugs. Most of these measures involve law enforcement efforts to ban or intercept drug shipments at borders. The costs also include corruption, damage to poor and minority neighborhoods, a global black market in illicit drugs, the enrichment of criminal organizations through their involvement in the drug trade, and an increase in thefts such as thefts and burglaries committed by drug addicts committed by drug addicts.

There is a better option: a regulated market, similar to what we have for alcohol and tobacco, with controls on who can buy what, when, where and how. It provides the flexibility to treat different drugs differently, minimizing the harms of drug use and ending the harms associated with illicit drug trafficking. Drugs could be classified into each category, based on the principle that substances that could cause more harm should be more restricted. Heroin, for example, would likely be intended for supervised use only, while cannabis could be distributed in licensed premises and sales. Data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show the gap between the use of legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana) and illegal drugs. Among Americans 12 years of age and older, about 51 percent have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, while about 21 percent have used tobacco. The percentage who used marijuana is nearly 12%, much higher than those who use opioids (1%) or cocaine (0.7%). Many arguments seem to make legalization a convincing alternative to today`s prohibitionist policies. In addition to undermining black market incentives to produce and sell drugs, legalization could eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the very problems that cause the greatest public concern: the crime, corruption and violence that accompany the functioning of illicit drug markets.

It can also be assumed that it would reduce the damage caused by the lack of quality controls on illicit drugs and slow the spread of infectious diseases due to needle parts and other unsanitary practices. In addition, governments could abandon costly and largely futile efforts to suppress the supply of illegal drugs and prison offenders and spend the money saved to educate people not to take drugs and to treat those who become addicted. Drug possession is, surprisingly, the most arrested crime in the United States. « Every 23 minutes, someone`s life can be turned upside down [due to an arrest for drug possession], » Sutton says. « They are disproportionate people of color. » If such interactions with the police don`t kill you – as they did in the case of Breonna Taylor and so many others – they certainly don`t improve your situation or in any way your life. « Sending someone to jail or jail or putting them on probation won`t help them get care, » Sutton says. « We wouldn`t treat any other health issue like this. Drug use should never have been considered criminal.

None of this should deter further analysis of drug legalization. In particular, a rigorous assessment of a set of hypothetical regulatory systems using a common set of variables would clarify their potential costs, benefits and trade-offs. In addition to the rigour required in any further discussion of the alternative of legalization, such an analysis could foster the same level of review of current drug control programs and policies. As the situation appears to be deteriorating in the United States and abroad, there is no better time to fundamentally reassess whether our existing responses to this problem are sufficient to meet the likely challenges that lie ahead. But if the goal is to minimize the harm — to people at home and abroad — the right policy is to legalize all drugs, not just marijuana.