Why decriminalizing drugs will end addiction stigma
[ad_1]
- Ren Brabenec is a freelance writer, columnist, and addiction expert in Nashville, Tennessee.
After speaking with 6,000 addicts and their families, I’m convinced our justice system’s negative stigma towards drug users is the greatest barrier to addicts getting help. Now that two-thirds of Americans support eliminating criminal penalties for drug possession, it’s time to demand policymakers move away from incarceration towards decriminalization and treatment.
Such a dialogue begins by answering this question: “Why does the freest nation in the world have some of the strictest drug laws?”
The war on drugs: 51 years of president nixon’s failed policy
When questioned about the incentive behind the War on Drugs, John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s aide on domestic affairs, said, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Black people with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities… Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nixon, America’s quintessential “Criminal in Chief,” used the drug culture of the time as a political weapon to combat rising disapproval of his failed war of aggression in Vietnam. Fifty-one years later, millions of Americans suffer at the hands of a malicious policy that never intended to be anything more than a bludgeon against Nixon’s opponents.
Today, drug possession is the most arrested offense, with one arrest every 23 seconds. Almost 500,000 Americans are incarcerated solely for drug possession. And let’s not forget the racist element; Black Americans are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than whites, despite roughly equal usage rates. Further, prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue mandatory minimum sentences for blacks than for whites charged with the same possession offense.
Most importantly, the War on Drugs has not worked. Some 23 million Americans are addicted to mind-altering substances, a behavioral health crisis now dramatically worsened by the opioid epidemic.
Stigma prevents addicts from accessing treatment. Overdoses follow.
One study found at least 28% of drug users do not seek treatment because they’re concerned about others having negative opinions of them, employment prospects becoming compromised, and general confidentiality concerns. Essentially, fear of social repercussions account for almost one-third of the reasons why addicts don’t seek help.
When addicts don’t get help, they die. 2021 saw fatal drug overdoses top 100,000 for the first time in recorded history. Further, Americans are dying from overdoses at younger ages, which is why overdoses are now a major factor in our declining life expectancy.
Such developments are a harbinger of serious loss to come if this societal wound is not healed.
But will decriminalizing drugs increase dependency and crime?
Decriminalizing drugs would reduce stigma, transfer public funds from jails to treatment centers, reduce racist incarceration, and shift the country’s focus from drug use as a criminal inclination to drug use as a health crisis. And given that much of the illicit drug supply is trafficked from Latin America, one could argue that U.S. decriminalization would significantly reduce the illicit drug trade, itself a festering wound that has led to the birth of corrupt, often U.S.-supported narco-states and an immigration crisis that neither side of our political spectrum has been able to solve.
Still, critics worry such a policy would increase dependency and crime. Thankfully, other countries have provided a preview of what decriminalization might look like if the U.S. were to implement it.
Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001. Two decades later, drug-related arrests, incarceration, disease, overdoses, and other societal harms are all trending down. Further, Portugal’s drug use rate remains lower than the European and U.S. average, treatment center admissions soared by 60%, people incarcerated for drug law violations dropped 20%, and drug-related fatalities plummeted 80%.
Americans are compassionate people. Our laws must reflect that
One would think a nation that vilifies drug use would be dedicated to preventing its residents from ever using drugs, but even this is not the case. For every federal and state dollar spent managing the consequences of drug abuse, only 1.5¢ is spent on treatment and 0.5¢ on prevention.
In short, the government bilks the American taxpayer to the tune of billions each year to fund the single largest incarceration system on the planet, despite treatment and prevention tools available at a fraction of the cost.
The United States must live up to its founding principles of a free nation designed for minimal government intervention in the lives and choices of its citizens. With 66% of Americans in favor of eliminating criminal penalties for drug possession, 64% in support of repealing mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, and 61% in support of commuting or reducing drug-related incarceration sentences, it’s time U.S. drug policy reflected those views.
Ren Brabenec is a freelance writer, columnist, and addiction expert in Nashville, Tennessee.
[ad_2]
Source link
