Ending The War on Drugs - A New Cause For Effective Altruists?

I would expect this not to be very neglected, hence I would expect EAs to be able to have much impact here only if, for example, it's effectively neglected because the existing people pushing for an end to the drug war are unusually ineffective.

For example, there's already NORML, who's been working on cannabis angle of this since the 1970s to decent success, Portugal has already ended the drug war locally, and Oregon recently decriminalized possession of drugs for personal use.

Getting involved feels a bit like getting involved in, say, marriage equality in the 2000s: the change was already clearly in motion, plenty of people were working to push for it, and so there's not clearly a lot additional that EAs could have brought to the table.

I thought Open Phil's Criminal Justice Reform efforts would include work in this area and it seems they've done some research into this. Some links from a quick google for interested persons:

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/cause-reports/cannabis-policy

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform/criminal-justice-reform-strategy#Types_of_policy_reform_we_see_as_impactful:

From the piece:

There is a better option: a regulated market, much as we have for alcohol and tobacco, with controls on who can buy what, when, where and how. It provides the flexibility to treat different drugs differently, thereby minimising the harms of drug consumption and ending those associated with the illicit drug trade.

Unfortunately, overregulation would still lead to illegal drug trade and the associated public health and criminal justice problems. In California, there's a parallel market for unlicensed sales of marijuana because of high taxes, high compliance costs, and the limited supply of licenses. Since Black and Hispanic dealers have been having trouble entering the legal market due to the high costs involved, they are still disproportionately subject to marijuana-related arrests, and legal marijuana shops have been aggressively lobbying to get unlicensed sales shut down. And even in states where marijuana has been legalized, Black and Latino people are still disproportionately arrested for marijuana-related offenses compared to White people (for example, as of 2018, public consumption of weed was still illegal in DC). These harms need to be weighed alongside the benefits and costs of different regulatory models for each drug being considered.

If you're thinking as a citizen, this question isn't so relevant: it doesn't really cost you anything to support this policy change, talk to your friends about it, etc., and it's not as if supporting this would take public money from anything else you might value - indeed, it's a revenue raiser. I leave it open how valuable it is to spend extra 'citizen time' on this vs some other policy. Drug policy reform could be one item in a potential basket of 'no-cost' policies an effective altruist might support alongside, say, improved animal welfare. (I previously posted about a policy platform back in 2019, but nothing much happened.)

This assumes (possibly correctly, but should still be noted) that supporting policy changes/talking to friends etc about this is indeed close to free. I think there are some reasons to think otherwise (eg time spent supporting specific policy changes can be spent supporting other policy changes, time spent being in an "activist mindset"about X  policy  when talking with friends trades off against both being activisty about Y policy and also with time being in more exploratory modes of thinking, etc).

I would think associating the EA "brand" with drug legalisation would cause a negative reaction among at least as many people who would appreciate it because it shows concern for systemic change. I also don't see how it more of an example of systemic change than changing animal welfare laws to ban a lot of current practices, or regulating AI, to cite two political goals that some EA pursue. 

I also think the fact that it is non-neglected means that anyone who thinks this is the most good they can do could easily find a current organisation to join and campaign with. I think figuring out which campaigning methods are most effective is something where EA methodology does not have much advantage anyway, so little reason to think an EA-aligned organisation would be unusally effective. 

I'd be curious to learn more about the "types" of EAs that might be best-suited for this work, or how the "EA perspective" could enhance ongoing efforts.

As it stands, the case for scale (i.e., the magnitude of the problem) is very clear. However, I think scale is usually the strongest part of most cause area analyses (i.e., there are a lot of really big problems and it's usually not too difficult to articulate the bigness of those problems, especially using words rather than models). I think the role that EAs would play is less clear (as has been reflected in other comments relating to neglectedness). So, I wonder:

Are there some clear gaps or limitations in the current anti-War-on-drugs movement that could be filled by EA perspectives/skills? (As an example, one of the commentators emphasized that global efforts to legalize drugs may be neglected, and EAs who have skills/interests related to global advocacy might be especially helpful).

One key argument made in the article is that drug use is relatively inelastic - spending more on enforcement does not seem to change the amoung of drugs consumed in a zone.
I found this persuasive, but I just found one piece of evidence on the contrary: Australia has had a lot of success combating heroin overdoses via enforcing drug trafficking laws 

Obviously the situation in Australia might be different than in other parts of the world, but this gives me a bit of pause. Definitely merits more analysis of the tradeoffs involved!