[hospadar]

I'm SURE that there are MANY people for whom incarceration "worked" (i.e., didn't get back in jail, broke their addiction), but on the whole, there's a lot of evidence that incarceration is simply not the most effective (expensive/doesn't work well for many) strategy for reducing drug usage and drug-related health and social ills.

We don't have to guess, there's a lot (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125....) of evidence (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727270...) that locking people up for drug use isn't _very_ effective (isn't very effective != completely ineffective) at reducing crime or recidivism, and great evidence that decriminalization (i.e. portugal https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1464837) sends crime (AND drug usage) downward, as well as a host of drug-related medical conditions.

(^ first page of google scholar results people)