Oct 17, 2020
Why The War on Drugs Is a Total Failure
More than 40 years prior US President announces drug misuse is a public adversary number one.
Over 40 years ago US President declare drug abuse is public enemy number one. Starting an unpleasant public campaign the war on drugs. The war on drugs was a huge failure with devastating and unintended consequences. The core strategy of the war on drugs is No drugs = No problems. So almost all of the effort in the last decade has been a focus on eradicating the supply of drugs. But this is not the fundamental of market forces’ supply and demand. If you reduce the supply availability without reducing the demand fast then its price goes up. This might lower sales for many products but not for drugs. The drug market is not price-sensitive. Drugs will be consumed, no matter what may be the cost will.
So the effect will encourage the production of drugs and the recruitment of more traffickers, which increases the availability. This is also known as the balloon effect. Even if drug production or major supply root is destroyed, the supply of end-user is not reduced. US government tries to stop this production by strictly regulating the sale of chemical use in the manufacture of drugs, this force big-mass producers out of the business but the unintended consequences with thousands of small-scale operations started all over the country mostly in small-town and rural communities. In response to this, some U.S. states wanted to reduce the supply of homegrown methods, by regulated more chemicals that reduce making in production drastically but the supply of drugs remains the same.
Mexican drug cartels immediately took over and open a big production organization. Their method was even better than it was before and they have lots of experience in smuggling. So all this effort made drug production more professional, and drugs more important and supplies were not reduced at all.
You can’t win this War on the supply side. But it doesn’t stop here, prohibition may prevent a certain amount of people from taking drugs, but in the process, it causes huge damage to society as a whole. Prohibition of drugs leads to more violence over the world. Gangs and cartels have no access to the legal system to settle their dispute so they use the violence this leads to an ever-increasing spiral of brutality. For example the United States one of the driving forces in the War on drugs has 5% of the world's total population has 25% of the world prison population. Largely due to the harsh punishment.
Swiss authorities starting with the strategy of harm reduction, they open a free heroin maintenance center, where it will be treated and stabilize, here the peoples were given free heroin of high quality, they’ll get clean needles and access to have to save injection room, bed, and medical supervision. Social workers help them find housing and deals with other problems in their life. Results were a sharp drop in drug-related crime. And two-thirds of the people in the center get a regular job because now they can focus on getting better instead of financing their addiction. Today over 70% of heroin addicts in Switzerland receive treatment, HIV infection has dropped drastically, death from Heroin Overdose has dropped by 50% and drug-related crime has been reduced enormously. So there is a method not only cheaper but it also actually work instead of creating more problem, Drug prohibition System bulldozers human rights, cost vast sums of money and leads a lot of human misery.
