Worthwhile to read the UNDP studies on development alternative incomes in Northern Thailand. Cut flowers resulted in 40x more income to the farmers and drug growing is now pretty much gone( eg “drug dealers live with their mother”). Need a Manhatten project to develop other streams of income for these folks. My guess is that drugs will always we with us, but getting them (mostly)out of South Asia would be a big plus.

I will say this for now, and I think it is key–we need a serious, real debate about what is working and what isn’t. And, at a minimum, we need to admit that despite spending billions and billions, that we are not getting good return on investment. By own metrics (price, supply, use) we are failing and yet the response is always to just spend more money.

We need to recognize that the supply side attacks don’t work. We may also need to admit to ourselves that no matter what we do, a certain percentage of the population will use these substances. So yes, some sort of legalization and public health approach makes more sense.

Is it a panacea? No. But anyone who can look at the current situation and say that is it working is simply incorrect.

The sad thing about the entire discussion is that there is no panacea. The problem is here, and we need to stop acting like we can make it go away.