If Portugal can do it, Washington state or even Georgia can do it.
For comparison:
So
Portugal, which has successfully decriminalized drugs,
is similar in scale to a mid-sized U.S. state.
Somewhat bigger than
Washington state, which just almost got marijuana decriminalization
on a ballot, and of whose voters almost a majority support it.
With a little more work, people against prohibition could get
Washington to be the first state to end marijuana prohibition.
Too bad they’re not going for
all drugs, like Portugal did,
but marijuana offences account probably for the most drug-related lockups,
so that’s a good place to start.
Still, the problem won’t be solved until the drug cartels
and the prison-industrial-complex are deprived of their drug-related income
by legalizing the rest, and taxing them so states derive income from them.
Meanwhile we could refuse to participate by declining a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia, and spending that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.
-jsq
more readily available and affordable, business leaders including William Randolph Hearst and DuPont stood to lose fortunes. They did everything in their power to have it outlawed. Luckily for Hearst, he was the owner of a chain of newspapers. DuPont’s chief financial backer Andrew Mellon (also the Secretary of the Treasury during President Hoover) was responsible for appointing Harry J. Anslinger, in 1931 as the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
