Health experts in the U.S. are now calling on the government to decriminalize minor drug offenses. They believe arresting minor drug offenders is a step in the wrong direction towards solving the country's drug problem.
In a new report published on The Lancet medical journal, Dr. Chris Beyrer and 25 of his colleagues evaluated the increasing body of evidence which supports the positive effects of programs like opioid substitution therapy and needle exchange programs.
The health experts concluded that such programs greatly reduced the spread of HIV and hepatitis C in European countries. They now want the U.S. to adopt a similar model while also decriminalizing minor drug offenses so that drug users can be treated in health facilities rather than be locked up in jail.
"We have the evidence to show these things work," Beyrer told CNN. "We should not hold off programs in order to do more research, we should be implementing the programs and rigorously evaluating them."
According to Celeb Stoner, a total of 16 states has decriminalized marijuana while 4 have already legalized its usage. Beyrer predicted that the rate of black and Latino teens going to jail in these 4 states will most likely decrease. The figure will go down even more when the use of more drugs become decriminalized.
Dr. Don Des Jarlais of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who was not part of the study, said the recommendations are long overdue. He believes the decriminalization of minor drug offenses would allow the government to focus on more heinous crimes.
"We should not criminalize personal drug use and put users in prison. We've known that for quite a while," Des Jarlais mused. "There is mounting evidence, that it is not a protective policy for dealing with individual drug users. It is not a cure and creates many social problems."
Portugal in particular has found success in implementing a drug policy that's still foreign to the US, as per Policy Mic. Almost 15 years after decriminalizing minor drug offenses and adopting a robust public health model for treating drug addicts, Portugal, although not perfect, has become a standard by which most countries try to emulate.
