Since Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs nearly 51 years ago, arrests, convictions and mass incarceration have been the centerpiece of the US's drug policy approach.
The first significant breakthrough in the field of drug decriminalization came in the form of the Drug Policy Alliance’s 2020 legislative proposal “Dismantling the Federal Drug War: A Comprehensive Drug Decriminalization Framework,” which seeks to remove criminal penalties for all possession or personal-use quantities of controlled substances, shifting resources towards a public health approach.
