evidence: The war on drugs - Every 25 seconds, someone in America is arrested for drug possession.1 The number of Americans arrested for possession has tripled since 1980, reaching 1.3 million arrests per year in 2015—six times the number of arrests for drug sales.2 - One-fifth of the incarcerated population—or 456,000 individuals—is serving time for a drug charge.3 Another 1.15 million people are on probation and parole for drug-related offenses.4 - Incarcerating people for drug-related offenses has been shown to have little impact on substance misuse rates.5 Instead, incarceration is linked with increased mortality from overdose. In the first two weeks after their release from prison, individuals are almost 13 times more likely to die than the general population.6 The leading cause of death among recently released individuals is overdose.7 During that period, individuals are at a 129 percent greater risk of dying from an overdose than the general public.8 - Incarceration has a negligible effect on public safety. Crime rates have trended downward since 1990, and researchers attribute 75 to 100 percent of these reductions to factors other than incarceration.9