We can think of at least five good reasons to legalize drugs:

1. The current state of selective prohibition reinforces postcolonial injustices by placing the more onerous burden on supply-side nations. Rich countries provide an insatiable demand for drugs that poorer countries produce while simultaneously shaming them and forcing them to crack down on farmers that barely break even, essentially fueling both sides of cruel wars that conveniently take place far, far away, in places we think we can afford to not care too much about, like Colombia and Afghanistan. Is it fair for more modest countries to suffer on account of the appetites of wealthy ones? #JUSTICE

2. Since the official beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the US skyrocketed from 40,900 (1980) to 452,964 (2017). Today, there are more people behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980. This trigger-happy incarceration destroys individual lives, families, and communities—and in the US this cost has been borne disproportionately by black lives. #FREEDOM

3. Besides these more human costs of the war on drugs, letting crime bosses manage the drug business levies heavy costs on the environment, driving deforestation in the Amazon, for instance, and leading vast swathes of land to be indiscriminately sprayed with glyphosate, poisoning the ground. We can’t afford this kind of sloppiness towards natural resources in the Anthropocene. Governments aren’t perfect but we think they could do better than drug cartels. #TREES

4. It’s old-fashioned to treat people’s drug problems as a crime instead of an illness. As Portugal has proven with elegance over the last decade, you can actually reduce pathological drug intake by decriminalizing drugs. That approach is also cheaper, reduces other kinds of crime, puts less strain on the criminal justice system, and treats people with compassion. #HEALTH

5. If we have a right to anything—our bodies, self-determination, education—shouldn’t we have a right to alter our consciousness as we see fit? Outlawing certain drug classes underscores the implicit message that people can’t be trusted with freedom, which goes against at least 400 years of liberal western tradition. It is an insult to human imagination and agency. #EMANCIPATION

What are your best arguments for legalizing drugs?

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