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Comment by YoyoyoPCP | Hacker News Reader

Fair enough, but I don't think I'm saying anything that hasn't already been pretty abundantly documented over the last several years.

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That permissive drug enforcement policy increases crime? I never read any study to that effect, much the opposite.

It's pretty well established that addictive drugs cause users to commit petty theft to support their drug habit.

Switzerland had a huge heroin problem. They fixed it by decriminalization and treating it as the medical problem it really is. You can now get the addictive drugs injected at your doctor's office. Both petty theft and addiction plummeted. So it's not the addictive drugs causing these things. It's the policy around drugs that is causing it.

See also how Portugal reduced a widespread heroin and crime problem.

1) You can now get the addictive drugs injected at your doctor's office.

2) ... and addiction plummeted.

Hmmmmmmm... It doesn't make sense.

Why? Here are several plausible causative links:

* Addicts are more effectively targetable for interventions to reduce or eliminate addiction.

* A safer environment may reduce other pressures that cause addicts to keep resorting to addiction.

* Supervised injections may let you go onto a schedule that lets you slowly wean yourself off of addiction. (e.g., using naloxone and methadone in lieu of heroin).

The numbers speak for themselves. Read more at the link.

Between 1991 and 2010, overdose deaths in the country decreased by 50 percent, HIV infections decreased by 65 percent, and new heroin users decreased by 80 percent. Today, the so-called “four-pillar model” that guides Swiss drug policy—prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement—is internationally recognized as a major step in redefining how to tackle narcotic drugs.

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/inside_switzerlands_radical_...

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