Handling the "drug problem" through the criminal courts has been an abject failure. A spectacular abject failure by any measure. Almost anything else is better, maybe even doing nothing, i.e., let anybody buy and use whatever they like.
Many jurisdictions around the world are showing some success (e.g., Portugal), at much less cost, by removing drugs from the criminal realm and regulating their access, the way you don't let underage kids into adult movies or not allowing them to buy liquor. As much as Slobodan dislikes the "loonie left" language of the medical model, he is in fact agreeing with that idea and is advocating the same thing in the end, though he may not realize it. For the harder drugs, heroin and so on, regulated dispensing stations where addicts can obtain the drug and use it in a safe place seem to work fine where they've been tried. This approach eliminates two things, criminal gangs and the need for addicts to commit crimes to maintain their addiction. You could argue that these are the only two real issues with the drug trade that affects the wider society, i.e., non-users.
Of course, all those for-profit prison corporations may not like it much, but they're funded by tax money in the end, so if they go away, who cares? I'm sure that most people will agree that corporations that are funded by government that don't do anything useful should not exist.
In Alan's last post above he asks, "What is your solution? Should we allow open sales of opiods, meth, heroin, etc, ?", I would reply that's what we have now anyway. Who is kidding who? You (and me) and everyone else reading this board can probably obtain any illegal substance you choose with a couple of phone calls. The notion that police action has, in any way, even slowed down the availability of drugs in the last 50 years is farce. I can recall a supply teacher in 1968 in Montreal asking some of the students where he could score. The M.B.A. general manager of the office in my first job went around asking where he could get some, and he was a pillar of the business community.
The quaint notion that drugs are these evil things that evil people are poisoning our society with is absurd. It was and is just supply and demand, and there is a HUGE demand, except that it's run by criminal gangs. Drugs are supposedly illegal in nearly all countries, yet there exists a huge international trade in illegal drugs that keeps growing every year and that in some countries has produced gangs that rival governments in power. How has that happened at the same time as we've had a worldwide "war on drugs"? The "tough on crime" approach to drug control is not even trending in the right direction, let alone working. And it costs a ton of money.
One thing is certain. What we've been doing up till now will never make things better, not for the users and not for the larger culture.
