In June of 1971, American President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one” and kicked off the War on Drugs, a continuation of drug prohibition policies in the U.S., which prohibited the production, distribution, and consumption of drugs. Worse still, the concept of using strict law enforcement to stop all drug use spread to other countries, including Taiwan.

Now, more than fifty years after President Nixon’s declaration, drug overdose rates are rising exponentially, and police are making over one million drug possession arrests each year. The problem with the current method of stopping drug abuse is not just America’s problem, but Taiwan’s and many other countries’ too. It’s past time for us to think about why the War on Drugs is not working and start doing drug management right.

Rat Park

Before the 1970s (and some time after that), most people held the unfounded belief that drugs were so dangerous that you would take them once, get addicted, and eventually die of an overdose. Overly simplistic studies done on animals supported this belief. Animals (usually rats) would be administered drugs, and most of the time, the animal would get addicted to the drug and eventually overdose and die. This perception of drugs and drug users motivated a lot of harmful treatment of addicts and drugs.

However, in the late 1970s, Dr Bruce Alexander, a psychologist, tried a new approach to drug experiments on animals. He noticed that all the experiments were conducted in small cages that were devoid of anything except the drug, and maybe something like an alternative to the drug if the scientists were feeling particularly brave. He hypothesized that the subjects’ drug use might be linked to the fact that the rats had literally nothing else to do except get high, so he created Rat Park.

Rat Park was designed to be a rat paradise. Test mice in Rat Park were given lots of space to roam, toys, and other rats to mess around with. He also gave them the option to choose between morphine-laced water and normal water. He discovered that while rats in Rat Park could be coaxed to drink morphine if enough sugar was added, they would not get addicted. In fact, they seemed to actively avoid the mind-numbing effect of morphine. Even other rats that were previously addicted to drugs would stop taking them and rather brave the withdrawal symptoms when put into Rat Park. This led Dr Alexander to conclude that drugs do not necessarily cause drug addiction. Instead, the cause for drug addiction was the isolation of the subjects in previous experiments.

While this experiment has been repeated many times with similar results, most governments trying to squash out drug addiction didn’t care. Notably, America, despite facing worse and worse results in their War on Drugs has, until very recently, not even considered any alternatives to throwing every junkie in jail.

Harm Reduction

An alternative way to treat drug abuse and one that has actually worked is harm reduction. Harm reduction is the method of rehabilitating drug addicts by providing clean drugs and therapy rather than locking them up.

This method reduces overdose fatalities, life-threatening infections related to drug injection, and chronic diseases such as HIV. Furthermore, if drug distribution was up to the government instead of illegal dealers, the government could regulate dangerous drugs and minimize drug-related gang violence, making it safer for everyone involved.

Harm reduction has already been implemented in some places, most notably Switzerland. Switzerland, like most countries, was dealing with drug abuse by throwing everyone who did drugs in jail, but after facing an increase in drug related deaths and HIV rates, instead of doubling down like Taiwan and the USA, Switzerland decided to try a new policy. Switzerland started to provide clean needles, safer access to drugs, therapy, and medical help for addicts.

While this might seem counter-productive at first glance, this method lowered HIV rates because people didn’t need to share needles and more responsible use of drugs prevented overdose deaths. People in treatment also didn’t have to spend as much money and time sourcing more drugs and thus spent more time on family, jobs, and recovery.

People against harm reduction might argue that harm reduction is just enabling junkies and forcing taxpayers to pay for junkies to get high, but that is wrong. First of all, the purpose of harm reduction is to make drug use safer and help addicts get their lives back on track. Secondly, the United States federal drug control spending was 40.4 billion dollars in 2021, with the estimate for 2022 being even higher. Studies done on harm reduction show harm reduction can be more cost-effective than our current methods, which would mean that taxpayers would pay less for drug control under a harm reduction system.

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Taiwan’s and America’s current methods of dealing with drug abuse are outdated and based on conclusions that were scientifically disproven five decades ago. The “War on Drugs” declared by Nixon has been an absolute failure, and it is high time for countries all over the world to rethink their drug strategies. Harm reduction is a new but proven alternative to the War on Drugs, and hopefully, many countries are already taking the first steps down this path.