For at least the past decade, I’ve believed that all drugs should be decriminalized. I have had direct experience working with alcoholics and addicts to help them recover. I myself recovered from alcoholism with the help of AA more than 20 years ago. I’ve had friends and family members struggle with alcoholism/addiction and have seen too many people die from both.
So what I thought would help would be to legalize all drugs. We could then sell drugs on the retail market in known quantity and quality with the assurance that there were not unknown ingredients and additives. Similar to alcohol, you would at least know what you were buying. Overuse could still harm or kill someone, but there wouldn’t be “surprises” of unknown ingredients, strengths or poisons.
The taxes could be used to fund addiction treatment programs.
Instead of wasting money imprisoning drug users, we could send them to college or trade school and even subsidize jobs to help them get back on their feet.
When I heard that Portland and San Francisco were decriminalizing drug use, I was in full support.
But I was wrong about what would happen.
Instead of providing a focused program to help addicts recover, these cities simply stopped prosecuting drug users. They allowed them to use drugs openly and live on the streets.
That didn’t work out well.
Nobody wants addicts living on the streets, committing crime, harassing citizens and living in encampments in commercial and residential neighborhoods.
It’s a f***ing mess.
As I think about what I got wrong in my assessment, I thought back to what I knew about a drug addiction program in Amsterdam. In this program, they treated opioid/heroin addicts. The program actually supplied the drugs in a clinic to addicts who would visit each morning for their “fix”. It was legal and free. The catch was that the addicts had to follow a program that helped them reintegrate into society. The program helped them get jobs, obtain and maintain housing, reconnect with their families, get physical/mental rehabilitation and function as part of society. In exchange, the users did not have to stop using drugs, find money for drugs or face prosecution.
The doctor running the program said that nearly all of the participants tapered off to much lower usage over time because they had become a valuable part of society. Some were able to quit altogether. Some maintained a much lower baseline “fix”. The program focused on harm minimization instead of total abstinence. By wrapping the social integration and life rebuilding program around recovery, it worked.
And not a single participant had died of an overdose.
They weren’t’t living on the streets and shooting up in public parks. There were nurses, tech workers and blue collar workers who were all program participants who actively used each morning then went to work, school, and home to take care of their families each night.
My mistake was thinking decriminalization could make things better without all of the wrap around services and community reintegration that they did in the Netherlands.
Just not arresting addicts is not sufficient.
Unfortunately, I don’t envision any city in the US spending money on this type of program. Instead, we’ll look at the street encampments, the “zombie videos” of addicts nodding off in the street and the Youtube videos of skid row and imprison them instead. Then when they get out, we’ll dump them back in the streets were they will repeat the cycle until they die.
That’s too bad. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We could learn something from Amsterdam.