Where are you getting these claims? Grok?
Over the last 30 years state and federal criminal laws were enacted to amend both violation and sentencing laws so that the incarceration rate for recreational drug users (only) is now effectively zero.
This is only defensibly true if, 1) we're focusing on the USA only - sure, OK, let's confine the debate there for the purposes of argument, and 2) if you completely discount the people sitting in jail awaiting federal sentencing. In short - "
effectively" is a word doing a shitload of heavy lifting there. This lays it all out pretty well although it's pretty heavy reading and there are some other sources I might have neglected -
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2026_drugs.html.
Police still make almost a
million drug arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences, and drug offenses account for the incarceration of over 362,000 people. Of those, local jails hold about
136,000 people for drug offenses on any given day. largely pretrial detainees and people serving misdemeanor sentences, ie, "recreational drug users"... 3.7% people
sentenced to
state prison had
drug possession as their
most serious offense. This still amounts to
tens of thousands of people. And, frankly, given the lack of consistency, sanity, or justice in federal sentencing, I do not think the relative absence of "recreational drug use" from the official statistics means we can safely conclude that "effectively zero" people are currently being sentenced to
federal prison for simple "
recreational use" rather than trumped up charges such as "
possession with intent", and the USA is a particularly malevolent environment for this kind of statistical-massaging to cover up completely dogshit failed policies given the prevalence of plea deals and whatever other fucking evil garbage the prosecutors or the state can cook up on any given day.
Recreational drug users get probation and drug treatment across the board.
This is a nonsense contradictory statement which concedes the very point you're trying to argue against.
Probation is supervision following
criminal charges. You cannot use the prospect of probation to argue that recreational drug use is no longer a criminal issue while. As for "treatment", well - 68% of people
on probation with a substance use disorder have unmet treatment need (
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/drugs.html). Physicians for Human Rights found that "drug courts largely failed at providing treatment to those who truly needed it, and filled up limited treatment spaces with court-mandated patients who didn't always need the care." -
Neither Justice nor Treatment: Drug Courts in the United States (
https://phr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/phr_drugcourts_report_singlepages.pdf - admittedly that last study is from June 2017 but this is still well within the last 30 years, if you have evidence there's been some massive shift somehow happening invisibly since then, feel free to share and I'll take a look). As for "
across the board"...? Just total, unadulterated BS. There is no "across the board" when it comes to sane drug policy, again, several states still charge simple possession as a felony.
Federal and state laws were amended to prohibit discrimination against drug addicts in employment, housing, public accomodations, etc.
Also false, the ADA and Fair Housing Act protect people
in recovery or with a past addiction but explicitly exclude people currently using illegal drugs. An employer can lawfully fire someone for current use, public housing authorities can evict for drug activity (
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/beyondthecount.html).
Over the past 20 years the United States has spent over $1T to help drug addicts. Annual public spending in the USA towards treatment for drug addicts is in the hundreds of billions, 70% of which comes from tax dollars.
Total bullshit again, I assume the $1T figure is the widely circulated estimated cost of the War on Drugs itself since 1971, which is mostly enforcement and incarceration, not "helping addicts." An audit of government substance-related spending that covered ~$374 billion (
https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ps.2009.60.7.1000) found that ~96% went to "shovel up the consequences" of substance abuse (prison industry, incarceration, prosecution, etc.), and only
1.9% went to prevention and treatment.
That is about $19 billion still which is not nothing I suppose and is congruent with other sources I checked, the 70% figure actually I think is roughly correct - so, bravo - but the "
hundreds of billions" is very much not "
to help drug addicts" or "
towards treatment for drug addicts", it's to mop up the disastrous consequences of just continually trying to fucking
hurt drug users, generally (or dare I say it? Cover the cost of
oppressing them).
Even that $19 billion figure which is actually lower (but in the same order of magnitude, unlike your own bullshit plucked out of your ass) than some other official sources on investment into treatment programs and such is kinda less relevant than the effectiveness of these programs which given the US's notoriously
inefficient healthcare system when compared to essentially the entirety of the rest of the civilized world, is not very impressive and a chunk of that is going directly into the pockets of "Health" insurance executives and the
notoriously corrupt and ineffective 12-step focused pseudoreligious revolving door "treatment" industry.
Why am I even bothering with this, I take the time to dig out and check sources and quotes and data and you come back with bullshit, this is all
I'm going to say about it too, I think, hopefully this lil exchange has been enough that anyone chancing on this to know that you're just completely talking out of your ass and have absolutely no fucking clue about any of this.
