Drug Policy

and I was green as grass to a lot of gritty urban realities. I landed in a neighborhood that was all students and drug addicts. Since I didn't want to be a victim, I befriended the addicts. It worked, too, although it was embarrassing living in the only apartment in the building that hadn't been broken into.

I really wish someone would stand up for them. Ending the drug war would give them clean and predictable drugs at a price they could pay while working. The experience in the UK of a pilot program that gave hard core users their drug of choice at a steady dose dropped street crime by 80%. And ten years later, half the users had tapered themselves off, leading me to think that illegality itself feeds addiction in some way.

These people are not subhuman, far from it. Criminalizing them is not working, has not worked, will not work. Likely they'd be invisible in the larger population were drugs not criminalized, as they were before the first anti drug laws were passed a century ago.