Last year, 109,680 people in the US died from drugs, and every year that number has been rising. Add up all the motor vehicle fatalities and all the gun fatalities, and that is still less than the number of overdose deaths last year.

The War on Drugs has completely failed to alleviate the problem it supposedly set out to solve. It has only created more problems, fueling mass incarceration and violence at home and abroad. We have spent $1 trillion and continue to spend $100 billion annually on the failed drug war. Over half of our incarcerated population is in prison because of drug-related charges. Our approach is not defeating the drug cartels in Latin America; rather it feeds the horrifying violence that fuels the crisis at our Southern Border.

While many say the War on Drugs has been a failure, it is more accurate to say that it has worked as intended. An architect of the Drug War, Nixon’s White House Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman explained its true purpose:

“The Nixon White House … had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

If actually interested in solving drug problems we must recognize that drug addiction is a symptom of the wider malaise in our society; punishing people for it does nothing to address its root causes. Every adult deserves the right to control what they put in their own body, as long as they are not harming anyone else. For a fraction of the $100 billion per year that we currently spend on the failed drug war, we could build a national network of world-class treatment and recovery services available to all at no cost.

It is time to end the prohibitionist War on Drugs, while stopping the crisis of drug overdoses. We need to shift as a society from fighting drugs to fostering sobriety. The four pillars of this change are: Ending prohibition, harm reduction (including safer supply programs and supervised consumption sites), universally available addiction treatment and recovery, and creating more social and economic opportunities to eliminate America’s epidemic of despair.

1. Ending prohibition

   Addiction should be seen as a health issue, not a criminal one, and people suffering from addiction need help, not incarceration. Right now, 46 percent of all federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders. Prohibitionist policies do not work, and no one should be locked in a cage for experimenting with drugs or becoming addicted to them.

   We should immediately decriminalize less harmful drugs such as cannabis and psilocybin by instructing the DEA to reschedule them, and pardon and grant amnesty to those convicted of nonviolent drug possession. We should also fully legalize and regulate cannabis and psilocybin by nominating an attorney general, Drug Enforcement Administration administrator, and Health and Human Services secretary who will work towards this goal. As we build a national infrastructure for harm reduction and addiction treatment, we should work towards decriminalized possession of all drugs. We should have not a Drug Czar, but a Sobriety Czar.

   In the global arena, we should modify international treaties that sustain ineffective prohibitionist policies, and work with drug policy reform allies in other countries working towards similar goals.

   We should form a commission of experts to study possible paths toward legally regulating other drugs. Unless we legalize we cannot regulate, or adequately stop fentanyl-laced drugs. Drug cartels feed on the black market created by our Drug War, and their violence causes immeasurable crises including the immigration problems at our Southern border.

   Obviously we cannot simply legalize all drugs tomorrow; we need a detailed plan. Drugs must be subject to regulation, and building a framework for legal regulation will be crucial.

2. Harm reduction: Safer supply and supervised consumption sites

   The harm reduction approach recognizes that not everyone is going to abstain from all harmful drugs immediately and forever, so we must get people using drugs to do so in the least harmful way possible.

   While we eventually want to help people reach full addiction recovery (see pillar 3), treatment takes time, and people cannot be treated if they are dead, so we need to take harm reduction measures immediately to help those at high risk of overdose now.

   Safer supply programs piloted in parts of Canada and elsewhere provide those at high risk of overdose with their drugs, but these drugs would be regulated and tested by the government instead of coming from the dangerous black market where they are often laced with fentanyl.

   People should also be able to use drugs at supervised consumption sites, where they can use their safer supply of drugs and clean paraphernalia while being under medical supervision in a designated environment. This would not only save many lives – it would also solve the issue of public drug use on the street.

   A harm reduction approach rather than a prohibitionist one should also apply to currently legal harmful drugs like nicotine. We should reject prohibitionist bans on non-combustible forms of nicotine and promote these as alternatives to smoking tobacco, as the evidence indicates they are far less harmful. Of course, we should also try to stop any form of nicotine from getting into the hands of minors. Regarding legal prescription drugs, we must ensure that patients get the medicine they need by reforming DEA policies that lead to medication shortages.

3. Addiction treatment and recovery

   After we stop the immediate deaths through harm reduction, we need to make sure that people suffering from addiction can get the treatment needed to reach a full recovery. We must treat addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one, and we must treat healthcare as a human right.

   For a fraction of the money we spend on the failed drug war, we should build a national network of world-class treatment and recovery services available to all. Experts in the field of recovery, not simply experts in law enforcement, should be in the forefront of our efforts to turn around this scourge on our society.

   A universal healthcare program (preferably Medicare for All) should include addiction treatment and recovery programs. Addiction treatment must be based on the principle of immediate help at no incurred cost or other barriers. If people have to wait months or longer to get treatment, they might be dead by the time treatment arrives.

   We should provide everyone with robust, state-funded, free residential and outpatient treatment, which could include psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for addiction using psilocybin and ibogaine. Recovery programs will also include education, housing, and job support – including loans to start worker cooperatives.

4. Treating root cause

   Drug addiction is merely a symptom of an underlying malaise. As a society, we need to address the rampant despair at the root of our drug crisis. When every American has a right to housing, food, education, childcare, healthcare (including mental healthcare), a good union job, and all other necessities, then far fewer people will become addicted to harmful drugs. That is why a fundamental economic turnaround (such as an Economic Bill of Rights) is a key to solving the overdose epidemic as well as other major issues that our country faces.