FROM CRIMINALIZATION TO REHABILITATION: Abandoning “The War on Drugs” THESIS EDIT | Page 2

laws. Portugal’s radical approach to dealing with the disease of addiction, legally, is seeing
astoundingly positive results, and it stands as an example of how we all need to reform our drug
laws to achieve a healthier, more functional society.
RESULTS OF BAD LAWS
When we look to history, the experiment of alcohol prohibition lasted only a little over a
decade before the United States declared this move a colossal mistake. “Congress recognized
that Prohibition had failed to stop drinking and had increased prison populations and violent
crime. By the end of 1933, national Prohibition [in the United States] was history,” (Boaz 1999,
under “Drug Legalization, Criminalization, and Harm Reduction”).
However, when it comes to other illicit substances, governments all over the world -
including the United States, seem not to have learned their lesson. Somehow the failure of
alcohol prohibition and the continued failure of the war on drugs have not been enough to kick-
start a new wave of consciousness approaching addiction and substance abuse. The results of this
stubbornness are tragic. In the next few pages I will briefly discuss a few of its consequences.
Research shows that criminalization has not effectively decreased drug use. According to
an article published in Cato.org and written by David Boaz, the executive vice president of the
Cato Institute, not only has criminalization failed in discouraging younger generations from
using, but it has been reported that, “about half the students in the United States in 1995 tried an
illegal drug before they graduated from high school” (Boaz 1999). Additionally, criminalization
has not had a real impact on people’s access to illicit substances. It has been reported that “every
year from 1975 to 1995, at least 82 percent of high school seniors have said they find marijuana
‘fairly easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain.” Federal statistics have even suggested that the rise and fall
of drug use has been influenced more by cultural factors than by governmental law enforcement