Opinion | Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs

Through LEAD, Jennings got medical care, clothing and housing. She also gained confidence in herself, people who cared for her and the idea that life could get better. “They’re some of the most caring people I’ve ever met,” she said of the counselors. “Whether you come in high or not, they always treat you with respect.” Now, she said, “I work to make them proud of me.”

Jennings remains a work in progress. She says she still sometimes uses cocaine, but less over time, and she adds that she’s no longer stealing. If she had been held in jail, she said, “it would have pissed me off, and I would have gotten high when I got out. I’d still be homeless, stealing for food and drug money.”

Prison, she says, just makes people more miserable and more dependent on drugs when they are released. “This bit about ‘I learned my lesson’ — no, it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “People are hurting inside. That’s why they’re using in the first place.”

The war on drugs began in 1971 out of a legitimate alarm about narcotics both in the United States and among U.S. troops in Vietnam. But the “war” approach locked up enormous numbers of people and devastated the family structure. Drug laws discriminated against African-Americans (possession of crack cocaine, disproportionately used by blacks, drew far harsher sentences than possession of the same quantity of powdered cocaine, more likely to be used by whites).

Yet locking up endless waves of users has had little deterrent effect, and overdose deaths have surged. The White House has estimated that the economic cost of the opioid crisis in the United States exceeds $500 billion a year, equivalent to about $4,000 per household. And that doesn’t even include cocaine, meth and other drug use.

While the U.S. doubled down on the criminal justice approach to drugs, Portugal took the opposite avenue, decriminalizing possession of all drugs in 2001. It was a gamble, but it succeeded. As I’ve reported, Portugal’s overdose deaths plunged. The upshot is that drug mortality rates in the United States are now about 50 times higher than in Portugal.