normative

War on drugs failing despite enforcement

The US is losing the war on drugs—evidenced by drugs even being smuggled into prisons via drug-soaked book pages—so policies should be judged by consequences not pure intentions; we should experiment with treating addicts more like patients than criminals while not decriminalizing without treatment, learning from places like Switzerland, since Portland's decriminalization had bad city effects without reducing overdose deaths.

normativepending

Speaker

Alvin Roth

Evidence Quote

We're losing the war on drugs, but neither does it accept our surrender. In Portland, we tried decriminalizing opioids, and that turns out to have bad effects on cities and not such good effects on opioid overdose deaths.

Source

353 | Alvin Roth on the Economics of Morally Contested MarketsSean Carroll's Mindscape
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:30:11 AM

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