2 years ago

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"The fact is, America really is crazy when it comes to drugs," said Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance in a 2014 TED talk.

So what would happen if America actually ended its 52-year-old War on Drugs? What can we learn from the example of Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2000? What about Oregon, which decriminalized them in 2021? What if the U.S. not only decriminalized drugs by ceasing to prosecute users but actually legalized commercial sales? Is any of this even possible amidst an opioid overdose crisis fueled by fentanyl?

Join Reason's Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller this Thursday at 1pm E.T. as they discuss all of these questions and more. Watch and leave questions and comments on the YouTube video above or on Reason's Facebook page.

VIDEO CLIPS:
Excerpt from Zach Weissmueller’s interview with Michael Shellenberger about his book San Fransicko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tF5DzLWwcw
Excerpt from Reason TV documentary on Oregon’s Measure 110 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNglhmeM72U

SLIDES:
Gallup: Americans’ views on legalizing marijuana https://news.gallup.com/poll/323582/support-legal-marijuana-inches-new-high.aspx
Washington Post: How Obama’s Spending Plan Would Change the Drug War https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/10/the-radical-way-the-presidents-spending-plan-would-change-the-drug-war/
White House: Federal Drug Control Funding Priorities https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FY-2023-Budget-Highlights.pdf
CDC: Drug-involved overdose deaths 1999-2021 https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
NIH: Opioid Addiction Numbers - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448203/#:~:text=Three%20million%20US%20citizens%20and,States%20are%20dependent%20on%20heroin
National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics: 30-day drug use in the U.S. - https://drugabusestatistics.org/
Yale: What the needles said. https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/what-the-needles-said/
Does the evidence support supervised injection sites? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5685449/
CBC: Supervised consumption sites “A System of Chaos” - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ucp-supervised-consumption-site-review-committee-announcement-findings-1.5486579
Alberta government study on supervised injection sites: https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/dfd35cf7-9955-4d6b-a9c6-60d353ea87c3/resource/11815009-5243-4fe4-8884-11ffa1123631/download/health-socio-economic-review-supervised-consumption-sites.pdf
Harm Reduction Journal: Scrutinizing the Alberta study on supervised consumption sites - https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-020-00456-2
Oregon Live: Oregon’s Drug Decriminalization Sends Fewer than 1% to Treatment - https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2022/09/oregons-drug-decriminalization-effort-sends-less-than-1-of-people-to-treatment.html
Drug deaths in Portugal and EU: https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
Pierre Anderson for the Swedish Drug Policy Centre: Decriminalization of Drugs. What Can We Learn from Portugal? (2020) https://narkotikapolitisktcenter.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NPC_Portugal_Decrim_Eng.pdf
Harper’s: Legalize it All by Dan Baum - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) Modernizing Opioid Treament Access Act - https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sens-markey-paul-and-reps-norcross-bacon-introduce-modernizing-opioid-treatment-access-act-to-reach-more-americans-suffering-from-opioid-use-disorder-as-annual-overdoses-surpass-100000-across-us