Hawaii May Become the First State to Decriminalize Drugs

[Christopher1]

Link to article: http://theantimedia.org/hawaii-may-become-first-state-in-us-to-decriminalize-all-drugs/

I know for a fact that Hawaii has a major meth problem and there's a large homeless population. But I'm not sure if this is a good strategy for fixing things?

 

[Rhod]

They should definitely just make weed legal.

 

[Bizarrio]

Making drugs legal is very stupid, in my opinion.

I get it; they probably want to stop wasting money on drug war. But, drugs are harmful to people and legalizing it makes no sense. I hope they will change the decision.

 

[edenwax]

On the contrary, it's actually been very effective in Portugal.

Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2000 and since then the amount of drug use, drug related prison-offenders, and overdoses have dropped significantly.

https://www.attn.com/stories/995/portugal-drug-policy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...anyone-dies-from-a-drug-overdose-in-portugal/

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Criminalizing drugs hasnt been an effective way to deal with them and it never will be. People are consuming drugs whether you like it or not. It's going to happen and its always going to happen. Especially when its outlawed.

If the US used the money they waste trying to police drug users and use that money for properly educating people and start treating it as an illness vs a crime, I feel they'd really cut down on the amount of active use as seen in Portugal.

Here in Canada we've adopted safe injection sites and drug checks that are educating people and not only preventing the spread of disease, but also preventing overdoses every day. Its too early to say how effective these are yet, but I think its a step in the right direction.