Drug decrim works

Glenn Greenwald will be giving a talk at Cato on decrim on April 3rd. If you live near the Beltway, I'd bet it be worth attending. He'll be saying sensible things like this:

Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.

As a consensus in that country now recognizes, decriminalization is what enabled them to manage drug-related problems far more effectively than ever before, and the nightmare scenarios warned of by decriminalization opponents have, quite plainly, never materialized.

It comes as no surprise to me. I've been saying for years, it doesn't matter whether you think drug use is bad or good, the inescapable truth is -- some people are going to use drugs. And some people will never use them. It seems silly to think there are hordes of people just waiting for illicit drugs to become legal so they can fulfill their life long dream of becoming addicts. It's good we're finally seeing some empirical evidence to prove that a public health approach is the best one to deal with those who became caught up in the nightmare of addiction. [via]

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