If the war on drugs has proven to be a failure, why are most governments focused on incarceration instead of rehabilitation?
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Because for fifty years the conversation has gone “drugs = bad” and few politicians have been bothered to try to change that, unless they’ve really had to (i.e. Portugal).
Appearing to be tough on crime is a usually a safe vote winning strategy and it’s much easier to continue saying “drugs = bad” than explaining to people – particularly a disengaged voter base – why it’s cheaper and better for society in the long run to rehabilitate people.
And many people, even having heard the arguments for decriminalisation and rehabilitation still say have a deeply held moral panic about drugs. Over the course of last summer in Australia half a dozen people died having taken dodgy ecstasy at festivals. There were calls for pill testing which the government avoided – and it wasn’t uncommon for people to say, of the people that died, “good, thats what you get for taking drugs”. Try selling rehabilitation to a voter base that thinks people deserve to die because they take drugs.
Also, particularly in the USA but elsewhere as well: the prison industrial complex.
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