Decriminalizing drugs: When treatment replaces prison
Decriminalization doesn’t work alone. You need to invest heavily in public health response
The New York Times (US)
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Cities all over the US are copying Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, in which police officers put low-level drug offenders into treatment and social services instead of jail. It is hard to imagine US Congress decriminalizing drugs, but easy to imagine that soon, any debate at the national level may be irrelevant. Where will that take us? We can look at what happened in various countries that have decriminalized drugs.
