Part I: The Human Cost
Despite IMPRISONING more people than ANY OTHER DEVELOPED NATION IN THE WORLD, the United States’ death toll from Opioids rises to surpass ALL COMBAT DEATHS since WW I
Looking for Part II: The Financial Cost? Click here.
If Richard Nixon’s so-called “war on drugs” had ever been a winnable one, we would probably have won by now. It’s been more than 50 years since he declared “drugs public enemy number one,” and more than 100 years since narcotics were prohibited. Yet, in just two years, drug overdose deaths claimed more lives than the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam… combined.1 In fact, since we have started keeping track of drug overdoses, more people have died (over 600,000) as a result of them than soldiers who died in combat since every single war from World War I and beyond… combined (roughly 500,000).3 Let that sink in for a minute. Clearly, our approach to drug use isn’t working.
Some believe that we need to be “tougher on drug users.” While empty government slogans like “Just say No” and shallow politicians would like to oversimplify this issue, the data are in, and the facts disagree. The United States has one of the toughest penal systems in the world, and it hasn’t curbed drug use.
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth — worse, every single state incarcerates more people per capita than most nations. In the global context, even “progressive” U.S. states like New York and Massachusetts appear as extreme as Louisiana and Mississippi in their use of prisons and jails.
Furthermore, the United Sates currently imprisons more people than any other independent democracy in the world.2 In fact, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, every single state imprisons more people per capita than most other nations. Our worst states imprison more people per capita than countries like Cuba, Iran, and China.
The Chinese Communist Party is “softer” on drug use than any of the 50 states. Again, pause for a moment and ruminate on that.
Why is this? Are people in the United States more evil? Are we more prone to crime and violence? No. The answer is that our government has criminalized so much human behavior. They say on one hand that “addiction is a disease,” while they lock people up for having drugs on the other. If addiction is disease, why are we responding with prison for the sick?
Furthermore, there is a strong libertarian argument to be made for the decriminalization of drug use. While using substances may not be “good for you,” neither is McDonald’s, and you can still buy a cheeseburger for less than $2 at one in the morning in most US cities.
We need to rethink our approach to drug use. As I’ve been saying for years, according to Einstein, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result.” In this way, the United States’ approach to the “drug problem” has been anything but sane.
Let’s try something else.
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