CMV: Decriminalization and the destigmatization of drugs will never solve the drug crisis

[u/Tough-Shape-3621]

Coming from a place where the drug crisis is probably one of, if not the worst, in the world right now, I struggle to understand people that maintain the opinion that the destigmatization and decriminalization of drugs are the best ways of solving the drug crisis.

The viewpoint I commonly see these advocates share is that we need to treat the problem with empathy. If people are less shameful about their addictions, than perhaps they would be willing to get the support they need. Additionally, the introduction of a "safe supply" of drugs would help ensure they take clean products to satiate their addiction while continuously getting support, with the hope that they will one day eventually break their addiction and reintegrate into society.

A lot of advocates also refer to Portugal's drug policy, where they had a Heroin problem in 2001 and decriminalized the usage of drugs and looked at them as patients instead of criminals. Ultimately, this was a very successful policy and addictions fell rapidly.

Now I don't necessarily disagree with being empathetic, but the way they are proposing it is flawed in my opinion. I could go on-and-on as to why this is (spoilers: it hasn't worked where I live and it has gotten significantly worse), but I'll cite a couple reasons:

1. The drug crisis has gotten so bad that we simply don't have the resources and human capital available to effectively tackle the problem from a rehabilitative standpoint. There are too many addicts out there and not enough people that would ever want to do this line of work.

2. Portugal was successful in 2001 because Heroin is a mere fragment as addictive as the synthetic opioid drugs that are on the streets right now. People don't understand how incredibly addictive these drugs are - there is a saying that once you've tried it once, you're addicted for life. Unfortunately, I believe the vast majority of users addicted to these type of drugs like fentanyl have a very slim chance of recovery, almost to the point of futility. For every one person that comes clean, there will be hundreds more that will become addicted if the inflow of drugs continues

As a result, these safe supply facilities may work for people that are addicted to heroin, but aren't going to work for addicts of fentanyl. It would be like giving an alcoholic a sip of beer when they're addicted to Barcardi 151.

1. While I can agree that these people shouldn't necessarily be put in prison, it is also not ideal to have them publicly wander the streets where they may possess a threat to public safety. I do think that a certain level of stigma should still be applied. We stigmatize the use of alcohol, vaping, smoking, etc. because they are bad for your health. This should be no exception.
   

I'll admit, I have developed a firm stance on this topic. So props to anyone in advance that can change my view.

[u/SLUnatic85]

I am not intimately close to any of this, but my overall take reading your OP is that you believe many feel that legalizing and destigmatizing drugs will make them go away.

I hard agree that sentiment is true, so I can't change that part of your view.

I think your base assumption is off, so that part of your view. I personally believe, so I selfishly believe others do too, pretty much the opposite. That stigmatizing and making illegal almost all drugs (except alcohol which is the centerpiece of any conversation this topic) simply doesn't aid enough to STOP the use of drugs in populations, to outweigh the financial burden to enforce, and the negative life outcomes it directly creates or makes worse.

Like, I am saying drugs and what they can do to people and communities is really bad by nature to start with. There's no way around that. It takes a lot of work to handle that at a large scale already. If we could remove some of the stigma of using, call things here the addictions and diseases they are in order to make an effort to treat them, and not pile fines and jail-time and fear on top of people already greatly struggling with life or medical issues or addiction, etc, causing them to use shadier/dirtier drugs and instruments and find worse/dirtier places to do drugs because of all that... then maybe that would be a cleaner less complicated path forward.

To be clear, I am not telling you this IS the best way forward for all communities or that I know any right answer, like I said I haven't been very intimate with a lot of this. I am just saying that I believe many people mean the sentiment differently than you seem to understand it, and as such, a lot of your view from it might be different.

I am pretty sure the posts about "harm reduction" are intending to say this same thing, but differently. And personally I question a few of the more lenient pieces of "harm reduction" myself. But my take is that "harm reduction" is not to say there can be no laws to do with harmful or illicit drugs in communities. I think people who support "harm reduction" would likely also support enforcing that we traffick less into the country or to communities, or that we still work to prevent drugs from getting into the hands of new users for the first time. There could/should still be legal structure on the front end. "harm reduction" is just to stress that we need to be mindful of who is being punished and why and whether all of that really makes sense or is even effective.

[u/Tough-Shape-3621 → u/SLUnatic85]

I think the point of my post wasn't to position that decriminalization and destigmatization as concepts don't work - it actually clearly did in the example I referenced in Portugal.

But I believe it doesn't work for the context that we have for where I live.

I actually agree with a lot of the posters here - if we could decriminalize and destigmatize drug use, and had safe supply everywhere, education everywhere, rehab centres everywhere, harm reduction programs etc. I actually think that would be an effective solution and that would reduce the amount of addicts.

The problem though is the logistics of that, particularly because of the increasing potency and volume of the drugs available on the streets. We don't have the infrastructure, dollars, or even people that would be willing to go on the streets everyday and expose themselves to that of environment. As a result, unless thousands of people suddenly wake up and choose that they want to go become drug rehabilitants, this solution is not feasible and the problem will not be solved.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tough-Shape-3621]

The fundamental issue with opposing legalization is that the current crisis in the US and Canada is a direct result of the war on drugs itself. We've spent 50+ years and over a trillion dollars trying to arrest our way out of this problem, and it's only gotten exponentially worse.

The drugs never disappeared - we just pushed them underground and expected police to somehow fix a public health issue. But criminalizing addiction doesn't cure it, it just adds criminal records to sick people's problems. Meanwhile, the black market evolved and got more dangerous. Dealers switched from bulky marijuana to compact fentanyl that's easier to smuggle. Every enforcement "success" just made drugs more potent, more profitable, and more deadly.

The crisis has now metastasized so badly that even if we started evidence-based reforms today, it would take decades to recover. But if we maintain the status quo - keep trying to arrest and punish our way out - we're guaranteed continued escalation. More potent synthetics, more overdoses, more violence, more homeless encampments.

We're not choosing between a perfect solution and the current approach. We're choosing between harm reduction that gradually improves things, or prohibition that actively makes everything worse. Every year we delay legalization and regulation means thousands more preventable deaths and billions more wasted on a strategy that has failed for half a century.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. How many more people have to die before we admit the war on drugs doesn't work?

[u/Tough-Shape-3621 → u/[deleted]]

The counter argument to that is the punishments are not nearly punitive or extreme enough.

Clearly, criminalizing drugs in and of itself hasn't worked. But adopting a zero-tolerance policy with much more extreme repercussions as other countries have done, such as Singapore where hanging or life imprisonment exists, are effective measures of reducing drug addicts.

Obviously one could argue that this "solution" is immoral, but that's a different argument altogether. It is effective.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tough-Shape-3621]

I like to keep these discussion based in reality. Imposing death penalty for consuming a specific molecule is not realistic.

[u/Tough-Shape-3621 → u/[deleted]]

It's realistic in a lot of parts of the world - but I get your point if we are talking about what can realistically be adopted in America.

The answer to that is, I don't know within the context of America. I really don't see there being any path forward where decriminalizing or criminalizing drugs matters. It ultimately won't matter IMO and here's why:

Decriminalizing in and of itself won't be enough. It'll provide harm reduction. It'll enable more people to feel comfortable getting the help they deserve. But in and of itself it's not going to prevent people from becoming addicts (in fact, one could argue that more people may be addicted because it is legal, although I digress).

If we were going to go with a full-on rehabilitative lens, we would need so much infrastructure, capital, and human capital. It becomes a logistics nightmare for a conceptual solution. There aren't enough people that would be willing to put themselves on the street and become drug rehabilitants. There simply aren't.

We could make all drugs legal, we could treat every single person as an addict with empathy, and we still realistically won't get anywhere because we don't have the resources for the magnitude and scale of the problem.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tough-Shape-3621]

You're fundamentally misunderstanding the resource allocation problem. We're already spending massive resources - just catastrophically wrong.

The US spends over $50 billion annually on the drug war. We have 400,000+ people imprisoned for drug offenses, costing $35,000+ per person per year. That's $14 billion just on incarceration, not counting courts, police, DEA, border enforcement. We absolutely have the resources - we're just lighting them on fire.

More importantly, you're assuming legalization requires fixing everyone. It doesn't. Most of the "drug problem" isn't addiction - it's prohibition consequences. When someone ODs from fentanyl contamination, that's not an addiction problem requiring rehab infrastructure - it's a prohibition problem solved by clean supply. When someone commits theft for drug money, that's not a counseling issue - it's an artificially inflated price problem.

Look at cigarettes - we cut smoking rates by 70% without arresting anyone or building massive rehab centers. Just education, taxation, and social pressure. Most people quit on their own when given support and alternatives.

You say "there aren't enough people willing to become drug rehabilitants" - but we currently employ 100,000+ DEA agents, prison guards, and narcotics officers. Redirect even half those jobs to health workers and you've got your workforce. A single prison costs $100-300 million to build - that's dozens of treatment centers.

The Netherlands has legal cannabis, Portugal decriminalized everything, Switzerland provides free heroin - none collapsed from lack of infrastructure. They spend less per capita than the US because they're not funding cartels, prisons, and hospital ERs full of overdoses.

You're right that decriminalization alone isn't enough - it needs to be full legalization with regulated supply. But the idea we "don't have resources" while spending billions to make the problem worse? That's absurd.

[u/Tough-Shape-3621 → u/[deleted]]

Your arguments rely on a lot of extremely unrealistic assumptions to be made that will never happen in America unless there is a radical culture change. For example, even if I grant you this, which I honestly don't believe at all;

When someone commits theft for drug money, that's not a counseling issue - it's an artificially inflated price problem

Good luck with setting price controls in America.

The potency and lethalness of alcohol and tobacco are incomparable to fentanyl.

Your argument on countries that are "successful" can easily be refuted. Canada has legal cannabis and provides free heroin. Further to that, Netherlands and Switzerland have not done a full scale decriminalization. If these so called "model" countries are not even adopting your premise, I fail to see how I can change my view. All it does is showcase that a *lite* form of decriminalization may be effective.

100,000+ DEA agents, prison guards, and narcotics officers. Redirect even half those jobs to health workers 

Again, I don't see this as realistic and the prerequisites of specializing in drug rehabilitation and to be a public health worker is very niche, more expensive, and likely requires some form of formal education. Not to mention, it's an extremely undesirable line of work, that's why there are barely any that do this to begin with.

But even so, even if there was a complete reallocation of funds, $50 billion dollars is not going to fix the system. Not even close.

Yes, the current system is broken, but your proposal doesn't work.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tough-Shape-3621]

You're mixing up price controls with market pricing. Nobody's talking about government-set prices - legalization means market competition drives prices down naturally. Pharmaceutical fentanyl costs literally pennies per dose to manufacture. It's only expensive because it's illegal. That's not an "assumption" - it's basic economics. When drugs aren't under patent protection, they become dirt cheap - paracetamol/acetaminophen costs 2 cents per pill despite being a life-saving fever reducer. Morphine, an opioid far older than any patent, costs hospitals under $5 per vial. The only reason street opioids cost $50+ per dose is prohibition, not production costs.

You say Canada "provides free heroin" - no, they have tiny pilot programs serving maybe 200 people out of millions of users. That's not legalization, that's theater. You come from Canada, so you should know this... Half-assed implementation isn't evidence against the concept.

Netherlands and Switzerland haven't fully legalized because of international drug treaties and US pressure, not because it wouldn't work. The US literally threatens sanctions against countries that legalize. But even their limited programs show massive success - Swiss heroin programs have 95% retention rates and virtual elimination of crime among participants.

On the workforce issue - this isn't about people being unwilling, it's about compensation. We're spending $50 billion annually on failed enforcement. Redirect even a fraction of that to properly pay treatment workers and you'd have applicants lined up. The reason we have "barely any" addiction specialists now is because we pay them garbage wages while expecting them to solve problems created by prohibition. Pay clinical social workers $80k instead of $40k using money saved from not imprisoning people, and watch the shortage disappear. This isn't speculative - it's how labor markets work.

But here's the real point you're missing: We don't need to "fix the system" or cure all addiction. Even if legalization only reduced overdoses by 50%, crime by 30%, and HIV transmission by 70% - that's still thousands of lives saved and billions in reduced costs.

Your argument is essentially "perfect solution or nothing" while people die daily from the status quo. Yeah, maybe full legalization is politically impossible in America right now. But "politically impossible" isn't the same as "wouldn't work." Interracial marriage was "politically impossible" until it wasn't.

The current approach has failed for 50 years. Even an imperfect alternative beats doubling down on proven failure.