Health |
Reduces user harms |
Prevents medical harms to a user resulting from consumption of intended substance; includes blood-borne viruses (BBV) |
Reduces harms to others |
Prevents health harms to third parties due to either indirect exposure and behavioral responses to consumption |
Shifts use to lower-harm products |
Decreases consumption of more harmful substances or increases consumption of less harmful substances |
Encourages treatment |
Encourages treatment of substance-use problems |
Improves product quality |
Assures the quality of products due to mislabeled or counterfeit/adulterated product, unknown dose/purity |
Social |
Promotes drug education |
Improves education about drugs |
Enables medical use |
Policy does not impede medical use |
Promotes/supports research |
Policy does not impede research |
Protects human rights |
Policy does not interfere with human rights as distinct from the individual's right to use. |
Promotes individual liberty |
Policy does not interfere with individual liberty (individual's right to use) |
Improves community cohesion |
Policy does not undermine social cohesion in communities |
Promotes family cohesion |
Policy does not undermine family cohesion |
Political |
Supports international development/security |
Policy does not undermine international development and security |
Reduces industry influence |
Impedes drug industry influence on governments (less lobbying is preferable) |
Public |
Promotes well-being |
Promotes individual and social well-being |
Protects the young |
Protects children and young people |
Protects vulnerable |
Protects vulnerable groups other than children and young people |
Respects religious/cultural values |
Respects religious and cultural values |
Crime |
Reduces criminalization of users |
Does note criminalize users |
Reduces acquisitive crime |
Reduces acquisitive crime to finance use |
Reduces violent crime |
Reduces violent crime due to illegal markets |
Prevents corporate crime |
Prevents corporate crime, e.g. money-laundering, tax evasion |
Prevents criminal industry |
Extent to which the policy discourages illegal market activity |
Economic |
Generates state revenue |
Generates state revenue |
Reduces economic costs |
Reduces public financial costs not directly related to the enforcement policy |
Cost |
Low policy introduction costs |
Financial costs of introducing the policy |
Low policy maintenance costs |
Financial costs of enforcing the policy |