$1 trillion spent on the War on Drugs. 806,000 Americans dead from overdoses. Drug use rates: unchanged. Punishment doesn't work.
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In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse "public enemy number one" and launched the War on Drugs. More than fifty years and over $1 trillion later, the results are in: drug use rates are essentially unchanged, overdose deaths have reached record highs, and the United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than the entire prison populations of most European countries.
The War on Drugs was never primarily about drugs. It was about politics. Nixon's domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, admitted as much in a 1994 interview: the administration knew it couldn't make it illegal to be Black or anti-war, but by associating marijuana with the counterculture and heroin with Black communities, they could disrupt those communities by criminalizing their behavior. Fifty years of data confirm that the policy has always been more effective at filling prisons than at reducing drug use. Today, Black Americans are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans — despite virtually identical usage rates.
The numbers tell the story. The United States has 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners — and drug offenses are the single largest category of federal incarceration. Nearly 400,000 Americans are currently behind bars for drug offenses. The annual cost of incarcerating one federal prisoner is approximately $35,000. We spend more to lock up a drug user than we would to send them to treatment — and treatment actually works. Incarceration does not. Recidivism rates for drug offenders exceed 75% within five years. Treatment reduces relapse rates by 40-60%.
The mass incarceration pipeline created by drug criminalization doesn't just destroy individual lives — it destabilizes entire communities. When a parent is imprisoned for drug possession, their children are six times more likely to be incarcerated themselves. Families lose income. Communities lose social cohesion. The cycle perpetuates itself across generations. For more on how this intersects with the broader criminal justice system, see our criminal justice reform page. For the racial dimensions, see the racial justice policy.
| Metric | 1971 (Start) | Today | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal drug spending | $100M/yr | $35B/yr | +35,000% |
| Drug use rate (adults) | ~12% | ~13% | Unchanged |
| Annual overdose deaths | ~6,000 | 107,941 | +1,700% |
| Drug prisoners | ~40,000 | ~400,000 | +900% |
Sources: ONDCP, CDC WONDER, Bureau of Justice Statistics. See the full drug policy issue page for complete sourcing.
Decriminalization is not legalization. It is the removal of criminal penalties for personal possession of small amounts of drugs — replacing arrest and incarceration with health assessments, treatment referrals, and civil penalties. Drug trafficking, manufacturing, and large-scale distribution remain fully criminal under decriminalization.
The distinction between decriminalization and legalization is critical and frequently confused — sometimes deliberately. Opponents of drug policy reform conflate the two in order to claim that reform advocates want to "legalize fentanyl" or "let drug dealers walk free." Neither is true. Under decriminalization, someone found with a small amount of a controlled substance for personal use is not arrested. Instead, they may receive a civil citation, be directed to a health assessment, or be referred to treatment. They do not get a criminal record. They do not go to prison. But a dealer caught with distribution quantities still faces the full weight of criminal law.
The Portugal model is the clearest proof that decriminalization works. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized personal possession of all drugs — including heroin and cocaine. The results over the next two decades were extraordinary: drug-related deaths dropped by 80%. HIV infections among people who inject drugs dropped by 95%. Drug use among young people declined. Treatment enrollment surged. Portugal went from having one of Europe's worst drug problems to being held up by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction as a model of evidence-based policy.
Switzerland's heroin-assisted treatment program offers another model. In the 1980s and 1990s, Switzerland faced a severe heroin crisis. Rather than doubling down on criminalization, the government launched a program providing pharmaceutical-grade heroin to severely addicted patients in clinical settings. The results: a 60% drop in criminal activity among participants, near-elimination of overdose deaths in the program, significant improvements in employment, housing, and health outcomes, and no measurable increase in new heroin use. The program has been running for over 25 years and has been replicated in Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada.
The evidence from every country that has moved toward health-centered drug policy points in the same direction: treatment works better than punishment. People recover when they have access to care — not when they have criminal records that make it impossible to find housing, employment, or stability. For more on how the healthcare system intersects with addiction treatment, see our healthcare learning page.
The Common Good drug policy treats addiction as a public health crisis, not a moral failure. It decriminalizes personal possession, massively expands treatment access, deploys proven harm reduction tools, redirects enforcement resources toward trafficking, and repairs the damage done by fifty years of failed criminalization.
The plan addresses every dimension of the crisis — from prevention and treatment to enforcement and justice — with policies grounded in evidence, not ideology. Each provision has been proven effective in peer countries, in US pilot programs, or in both.
For the complete plan with legislative detail, cost projections, and sourcing, see the full drug policy issue page. For how these provisions connect to the broader criminal justice reform and mental health policies, explore the linked pages.
The United States leads the world in drug-related incarceration and overdose deaths while trailing far behind every peer nation in treatment access and harm reduction. The countries that treat drug use as a health issue — not a criminal one — have better outcomes on every measure.
| Country | Approach | Drug Deaths/100K | Drug Incarceration | Treatment Access | Marijuana Status | OD Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Criminalization | 32.4 | ~400,000 | Limited | State-by-state | Rising |
| Portugal | Decriminalized (2001) | 0.3 | Minimal | Universal | Decriminalized | Falling |
| Switzerland | Health-centered | 4.2 | Low | Universal + HAT | Decriminalized | Stable |
| Netherlands | Tolerance policy | 2.8 | Low | Universal | Tolerated (coffee shops) | Stable |
| Canada | Mixed / reform | 18.6 | Moderate | Expanding | Legal (2018) | Declining |
| Uruguay | Regulated market | 1.4 | Low | Available | Legal (2013) | Stable |
The comparison is stark. The United States has a drug overdose death rate more than 100 times higher than Portugal's — the country that decriminalized all drugs over two decades ago. The US incarcerates more people for drug offenses than the entire prison populations of Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Uruguay combined. And American drug use rates are no lower than in countries with far more permissive policies.
The lesson from international comparison is unambiguous: countries that treat drug use as a health issue spend less money, lose fewer lives, and achieve better outcomes than countries that treat it as a crime. For a detailed comparison of party positions on drug policy, see the Compare Parties page.
Fentanyl now accounts for approximately 70% of all overdose deaths in the United States — over 75,000 deaths per year. It is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and it cannot be solved by the same criminalization-first approach that failed for every previous drug crisis.
Fentanyl is different from previous drug crises in critical ways. It is synthetic — manufactured in labs, not grown in fields — which means it can be produced cheaply, in enormous quantities, anywhere in the world. A lethal dose is smaller than a grain of rice. It is increasingly being mixed into counterfeit pills, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other drugs, meaning that people who had no intention of using fentanyl are dying from it. This is not primarily a drug addiction problem. It is a drug poisoning problem.
Supply-side approaches alone will not work — and the data proves it. Despite record-setting fentanyl seizures at the border in recent years, overdose deaths continued to climb. The economics of fentanyl make interdiction almost futile by itself: a kilogram of fentanyl worth $5,000 to produce can generate $1.5 million on the street. As long as demand exists, supply will find a way through. This doesn't mean border enforcement is unimportant — it means that enforcement alone is insufficient.
Demand-side and harm reduction approaches save lives now. Naloxone (Narcan), the opioid overdose-reversal drug, has saved over 100,000 lives since 1996. Fentanyl test strips — which allow users to check whether a substance contains fentanyl before using it — cost less than $1 each and have been shown to change behavior in 70% of users who receive a positive result. Yet fentanyl test strips remain illegal as "drug paraphernalia" in many states. The Common Good plan legalizes them nationwide.
The fentanyl crisis demands both aggressive supply interdiction and a massive expansion of harm reduction and treatment. Either approach alone is insufficient. The Common Good drug policy combines both — because treating this as exclusively a law enforcement problem or exclusively a health problem misses the reality that it is both. For how this connects to broader police reform and healthcare access, see the linked pages.
Decades of "tough on crime" politics and industry lobbying have created a set of deeply entrenched myths about drug policy. Here are the four most damaging — and what the evidence actually shows.
Myth: "Decriminalization increases drug use."
Reality: Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Drug use among 15-to-24-year-olds decreased. Overall drug use rates remained stable or declined. Drug-related deaths fell by 80%. HIV infections among people who inject drugs dropped by 95%. The Czech Republic, which decriminalized personal possession in 2010, saw similar stability in usage rates. Not a single country that has decriminalized has experienced the surge in drug use that opponents predicted. The fear is not supported by evidence from any jurisdiction that has implemented the policy.
Myth: "Addiction is a moral failing."
Reality: Addiction is a chronic brain disorder recognized by every major medical organization in the world, including the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It involves changes to brain circuits governing reward, stress, and self-control that persist long after drug use stops. Treating addiction as a moral failure is not just scientifically wrong — it is directly responsible for the stigma that prevents millions of Americans from seeking treatment. Only about 10% of people with substance use disorders currently receive treatment. Stigma is the number one barrier.
Myth: "We can arrest our way out of the drug problem."
Reality: The United States has been trying this approach for over fifty years. Over $1 trillion spent. Over 40 million drug arrests since 1971. The result: drug use rates are unchanged, overdose deaths are at all-time highs, and the US has the highest incarceration rate on Earth. Recidivism among drug offenders exceeds 75%. By contrast, treatment reduces relapse by 40-60% and costs a fraction of incarceration. Every dollar invested in treatment saves $4-$7 in reduced crime, criminal justice costs, and healthcare spending. The enforcement-only model has been the most thoroughly tested and most thoroughly failed policy in modern American history.
Myth: "Marijuana is a gateway drug."
Reality: The "gateway drug" theory has been rejected by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Academy of Sciences, and virtually every major longitudinal study on substance use. Most people who use marijuana never use harder drugs. The correlation between marijuana use and later drug use is driven by social environment, not pharmacology — and the same correlation exists for alcohol and tobacco. If marijuana were a genuine gateway drug, states that have legalized it should have seen increases in hard drug use. They haven't. In fact, several studies show that opioid overdose deaths decline in states with legal marijuana access, likely because marijuana serves as a less dangerous alternative for pain management. For more on the criminal justice implications, see our criminal justice learning page.
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$1 trillion spent. 806,000 lives lost. Drug use unchanged. Every country that treats addiction as a health issue has better outcomes than the United States. Read the full plan and see the evidence.