We have real, effective tools for dealing with substance abuse that don't involve a giant prison-industrial complex.
One of the major problems with prohibition is that it closes off a lot of the avenues we could otherwise use to reduce harm, while creating a black market and, in the case of the utterly senseless "War on Drugs," pushing tons of people into the criminal justice system and creating a massive industry for incarceration of low-level users.
After all this voluntarily created human misery, we've still got a crisis of opioid and other drug abuse in our society, and it's not clear that prohibition does much at all to reduce real rates of usage on the ground. A quick Google suggests that over 100,000 people died of overdoses in 2021.
What a goddamn victory for prohibition.
The decline of tobacco use is proof that there is a better way. It's just harder, takes longer, and, yes, despite the sneers of those who think they know better, has to respect individual liberty, personal responsibility, and freedom of choice.
One of the major problems with prohibition is that it closes off a lot of the avenues we could otherwise use to reduce harm, while creating a black market and, in the case of the utterly senseless "War on Drugs," pushing tons of people into the criminal justice system and creating a massive industry for incarceration of low-level users.
After all this voluntarily created human misery, we've still got a crisis of opioid and other drug abuse in our society, and it's not clear that prohibition does much at all to reduce real rates of usage on the ground. A quick Google suggests that over 100,000 people died of overdoses in 2021.
What a goddamn victory for prohibition.
The decline of tobacco use is proof that there is a better way. It's just harder, takes longer, and, yes, despite the sneers of those who think they know better, has to respect individual liberty, personal responsibility, and freedom of choice.