Current drug policies are failing. After 50 years of the war on drugs, the supply and use of drugs hasn’t just increased—it’s created a massive black market that contributes to violence, conflict, and corruption. Throughout the world, poorly designed drug policies, the criminalization of drug users and other low-level actors, and harsh enforcement measures has fueled social marginalization, health crises, and mass incarceration.

It’s time for a new approach.

What Is the War on Drugs?

The war on drugs refers to coordinated campaigns by governments over the last 50 years to enforce the prohibition of drugs largely through the coercive suppression of production and criminalization of drug use, possession, and supply. To quote the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a group of world leaders and intellectuals who promote evidence-based drug policy reforms at international, national, and regional levels:

When the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs came into being 50 years ago, and when President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs 40 years ago, policymakers believed that harsh law enforcement action against those involved in drug production, distribution and use would lead to an ever-diminishing market in controlled drugs such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis, and the eventual achievement of a “drug free world.” In practice, the global scale of illegal drug markets—largely controlled by organized crime—has grown dramatically over this period.

How Have Punitive Drug Policies Failed?

Harsh drug policies haven’t just failed to reduce the availability and use of drugs but have created a whole set of new problems.

What Would Happen If We Ended the War on Drugs?

In countries that have introduced alternative drug policies such as decriminalization of all drugs or regulation of adult access for cannabis, crime and addiction did not increase—and there were important benefits.

In Portugal, where use of all drugs was decriminalized in 2001, drug use did not spike as some predicted. But there were major increases in the number of people accessing treatment and other services, in addition to a huge drop in drug-related HIV transmission. From 1999 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in Portugal for drug offenses fell 44 percent [PDF].

Instead of making people safer, punitive drug policies often stimulate more violence and instability. In the six years that followed the Mexican government’s 2006 declaration of an all-out, militarized war on drugs, more than 250,000 people died because of drug-related violence.

What Kind of Policies Could We Enact Instead?

The failure of the war on drugs has led to exploration of new ideas and alternative models including: