TLDR: Only 17% of the prison population is made up of drug offenders, making up only 20% of the 5-fold increase in the prison population in the last half century, and the types of legislation available to us would likely not lower that population measurably.
And how many of the other 80% were a result of the collapsed economic and cultural sphere that the war on drugs caused for millions of black families? (emphasis there, because such a large percentage of that huge increase in prison population has been black)
None of that happens in a vacuum. If you lock up a parent for drugs, and his son is raised in a broken household, in a broken neighborhood overflowing with the effects of failed war on drugs policies, what's the likely outcome to that situation? You don't have to take my word for it, read any interview with any black person that has ever made it out of that situation. Read about what their lives were like, what the culture was like, what their households were like.
That's why this article's premise is so obviously far off. The war on drugs touches everything.
I don't know which article you're arguing against, but it isn't this one. This isn't a case against decriminalization. It's a case that decriminalization of drugs is not enough to end mass incarceration.
If you believe what you appear to believe about the injustice of mass incarceration and its racial disparities, as I do, you should be celebrating this article, not excoriating it.
