Wasting Money

It should not be a surprise to you that I think we would be better off spending money on treating drug addiction rather than putting people in jail and hoping the problem goes away. We now spend $74 billion a year on putting drug addicts in jail and $3 billion trying to treat them. This is crazy.

The AP has another article on a country that moved from a prison- to a treatment-orientation and it seems to be working. That country is Portugal. Admittedly, there are a lot of differences between the U. S. and Portugal. But here's what was found in Portugal when they changed the laws:

There were small increases in illicit drug use among adults, but decreases for adolescents and problem users, such as drug addicts and prisoners.

_ Drug-related court cases dropped 66 percent.

_ Drug-related HIV cases dropped 75 percent. In 2002, 49 percent of people with AIDS were addicts; by 2008 that number fell to 28 percent.

_ The number of regular users held steady at less than 3 percent of the population for marijuana and less than 0.3 percent for heroin and cocaine — figures which show decriminalization brought no surge in drug use.

_ The number of people treated for drug addiction rose 20 percent from 2001 to 2008.

Some powerful results.