"The War on Drugs" a Bust?

[Pat Mustard]

Y'all've heard of the war on drugs.

Maybe you've watched Breaking Bad or started Narcos (yet to watch).

Well there's this thing called the war on drugs in which the government fights against the demand and trade of drugs within it's borders.

However the U.S is very bad at this...

The rehabilitation in America is horrible.

And the way we enforce it does not help.

Giving longer jail sentences out to those who sell drugs or take them does not help in any way.

You might think...

"Well, if I want drugs, but I can't do the time, then why do it at all."

This the first approach I took to this topic.

How ever I was wrong.

Turns out that people'l do what ever to get to their drugs...

Kill, Steal, Mug, Risk disease.

However in country such as Switzerland during the 80s there was a huge spike in heroin use. So they took a risk, and here's what we learned...

They opened up free rehabilitation centres, gave free heroin in those centres except it would be high quality and the needles would be clean.

People who take drugs realize the effects and want to stop, but they can't. The rehabilitation is almost never good.

So Switzerland would give these addicts social workers too and they would eventually help the addicts find homes and guess what?

The use of heroin dropped significantly, stoping this crisis.

However, I wonder, how come the U.S or other countries don't try this method anymore.

Decrease crime rates, less drug use, and heck, if regulated some drugs could be legal too!

But I wonder, why?

Here's a video on the topic that is more in depth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJUXLqNHCaI

The UK's heroin crisis started simply because Maggie Thatcher stopped the 700 or so addicts from being able to get the drug on perscription. Most of them were WW2 or Korean War vets who had been hooked on heroin because they were given it as pain relief for war wounds.
Because these people could no longer get their fix they turned to criminals to get the drugs, and started the trade in heroin, some of them even having to become pushers themselves to feed their, now very costly, habit. And the gangs themselves realised how lucrative the trade was and expanded their operations massively.

So thanks to Maggie being mean to a few hundred war heroes, the UK now has a massive drugs problem.