“Incarcerating individuals for drug-related offenses does not lead to reduced drug use or fewer overdoses, according to a newly released report from Pew Charitable Trusts, which the non-profit sent last summer to President Donald Trump’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.
The report, which looked at federal and state law enforcement, corrections, and health agency data from 2014 looking for patterns that may inform efforts to combat the nation’s opioid crisis, found that there was no “statistically significant relationship” between states’ incarceration rates for drug crimes and three specific factors that can reveal a state’s got drug problems: drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and self-reported drug use (excluding marijuana).”