The Conversation - Why Oregon decriminalized all drugs

There was a lot of election news last month, so you might not have noticed that Oregon voted on Nov. 3 to decriminalize all drugs. Heroin, meth, cocaine, MDMA and other narcotics are still against the law, as is selling them. But possession of small amounts of drugs will now be a civil rather than criminal offense, punished with a fine or court-mandated drug treatment – not jail time.

“Oregon’s move is radical for the United States, but several European countries have decriminalized drugs to some extent,” write drug policy experts Scott Atkins and Clayton Mosher. They look at evidence from Portugal, Switzerland and U.S. states that legalized marijuana to explain why Oregonians are abandoning one front in America’s expensive, racially disparate and ineffective war on drugs.

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