[jillesvangurp]

Most places that focus on treatment rather than punishment see drops in all the relevant stats for deaths, crime, health issues, etc. related to drugs usage. And even drops in drug abuse itself. The one thing that has never really worked and continues to create endless amounts of misery is the war on drugs and all the collateral damage it causes.

It never worked. Not even a little bit.

[crackrook]

I totally believe that treatment should be the focus for drug users; the only focus, even. What I'm having trouble believing is that convenient access to drugs would not result in net-harms that are worse than those inflicted by (imperfect attempts at) holding people accountable for selling these chemicals to the vulnerable, irrespective of whether or not those people are pharmaceutical companies or cartels.

I would like to see evidence that jurisdictions in the developed world that stop prosecuting dealers for freely selling what I'd call "hard drugs", e.g. opiates and amphetamines, see their population's well-being improve, on the whole - if there has ever been such a jurisdiction.

[jillesvangurp]

Drug trade is so lucrative that most drugs are now readily available to those that want them. If you have the cash, getting what you want is very easy and convenient. It's proven extremely hard to make it inconvenient.

So, I think you are over estimating the effects of decriminalizing drug usage. And you are underestimating the effects of getting it out in the open where it can be monitored and be made subject to legislation. And of course there have been plenty of countries that have experimented with this and have gotten good results. And there have of course been plenty of countries that have gotten decent results with decriminalizing drug usage.

The legalization of weed in the US is a good recent example. Before legalization lots of people would get in trouble for smoking or selling weed. And these days the same activity is fine. Do lots more people smoke weed now? Probably to some extent. But it's mostly the same people that were interested in doing that sort of thing anyway. I come from a country where weed smoking and sales were decriminalized decades ago. The system kind of works. Dutch drug usage stats aren't very different from surrounding countries.

I've lived in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland that have a complicated relationship with alcohol. And of course technically, alcohol should be considered a drug. I've seen more alcohol abuse there than in countries where it's perfectly normal to have a drink. You have alcoholics everywhere. But it seems people not getting exposed to a normal set of behaviors around alcohol have a lot of people that overcompensate when it's suddenly made available cheaply. You see this when you meet Scandinavians on vacation elsewhere in Europe.

I currently live in a city (Berlin) where it is considered normal to have a beer on the street, in parks, or public transport. Not just normal. But completely socially acceptable. Nobody frowns at you. Nobody tells you off. And mostly people just stick to a sensible amount. Beer consumption is actually dropping in Germany. People are switching to non alcoholic beverages. That's happening in a lot of places.