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Everywhere. I don't know if you were around in the 80s and 90s but the contrast in rhetoric about drug use is amazing. Both sides of politics were tripping over themselves to be tougher on drug crime back when it was perceived as a non-white problem.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/there-was-no-wave-of-compassi...

This not to say that harm minimization is now successfully mainstream, but the shift in attitudes and rhetoric is huge.



I was, and I think the penalties and number of people in "the system" for drug offenses is significantly higher than it was in the 80s and 90s. We now have more people (not percentage of people) incarcerated than any other country, even China. The rhetoric may be softer, but I don't think the judges are.

Here is a year over year incarceration map.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-war-on-drugs-changed-...

Here's prison population by country:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

Incarcerate is the only hammer many of our state governments will even consider using for most social problems.




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