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If Drugs Were Legal
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If Drugs Were Legal

60 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Drug policy runs on assumptions that rarely get tested, so this film goes looking for places that actually tested them. It examines Switzerland's heroin-prescription program, where giving addicts a legal, medical supply is credited with cutting crime and getting more of them into jobs, and it looks at countries that have legalized or decriminalized cannabis to see what happened to drug use and arrest rates afterward. Researchers and policy experts lay out the case for and against legalization, weighing the potential for reduced crime and safer regulation against fears of higher addiction and use. The film moves country by country rather than arguing from theory, treating each policy experiment as evidence to be checked against outcomes rather than ideology. It resists a tidy conclusion, presenting legalization and prohibition both as trade-offs with real costs, and leaves the viewer with the specific numbers and programs rather than a verdict. The question it keeps returning to is practical: not whether drugs are good or bad, but what a given policy actually does once it is in effect.