Health problems, health solutions.

A few days ago I posted that if we want to reduce the number of guns on the street, we should end the prohibition of drugs. Some argue this would certainly be worse, and that drug use and the problems associated it would only increase if this were the case. Portugal decriminalized all drugs, soft and hard, in 2000 and this has not been their experience. Instead the situation has dramatically improved since they have stopped mismatching health problems with criminal solutions.

Glenn Greenwald gets to this in the video below at about 8:28 - the money quote, though, is here:

... it's actually incredibly cruel to criminalize and put people in prison for what even prohibitionists are now arguing is a health problem. I mean, it's a basic precept of Western justice that we don't punish people with prison for things that they do that are the byproduct of disease. Even if you murder somebody, and then demonstrate that you did so as a byproduct of mental illness, you will not go to a prison but to a mental health facility because we treat health problems with health solutions, not criminal solutions.

You can watch all of Greenwald's talk on Portugal's success here: