Time to End the War on Drugs ⇥

Richard Branson:

The paper, published by Cato in April 2011, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.

I’m not a drug user, but there’s no denying the sheer mass of money that’s wasted every year at the municipal, provincial (or state) and federal levels on this pointless exercise. Portugal is simply a better country with less of a drug problem, fewer incidences of HIV and less theft as a result of their drug policy efforts.