Beyond Decriminalization: Ending the War on Drugs Requires Recasting Police Discretion through the Lens of a Public Health Ethic

to health law and policy that allow extensive harm reduction interventions is a better solution to the harms of America’s drug overdose crisis than is full legalization. It respects the power of Earp and his colleagues’ arguments on racial justice and harm reduction grounds, while taking seriously the public health threat from expanded supply of all recreational drugs. In short, the balancing act I am sketching here recognizes that full prohibition of drugs exacerbates harms to those who plan to use drugs, even if they must acquire them illicitly, while also recognizing that putting all recreational drugs on an open market risks expanding the group of people who use drugs in a way that has serious health consequences. A solution that focuses on decriminalization plus prescription safe supply attempts to walk this tightrope by providing licit drugs only to those antecedently committed to using them, thereby reducing harms among those who already use drugs while still trying to prevent people from initiating recreational drug use. Of course, this tightrope act will not satisfy the more libertarian view on which people have a right to use drugs, but I will have to leave for another time the interesting and important investigation into when, if ever, a state is permitted to restrict access to dangerous goods. For now, I will simply conclude that while racial justice and harm reduction do, indeed, require ending the War on Drugs; those goals do not require full legalization.