Towards a smarter drugs policy

US drugs debate is dominated by a Manichean divide between prohibitionists and liberalisers, obscuring real scientific solutions
Keith Humphreys and Jonathan Caulkins
The Guardian (UK)
Friday, January 6, 2011

The loudest voices in US drug policy debates call either for enforcing prohibition with ever-increasing ferocity or for giving up altogether by letting corporations legally sell the currently illicit drugs much as they do tobacco and alcohol. But as our colleagues and we detail this week in the Lancet, there is an alternative: adopting drug policies with scientific evidence of effectiveness. Regardless of what goals for drug policy emerge from the democratic process, everyone wants the policies implemented in the service of those goals to be effective.