Its purpose seems to be to motivate people already convinced to actually do something,

In other words to motivate idiots to act on their stupidity.

or to spread awareness of a position (again, without arguing for it).

What exactly is "spread awareness" supposed to mean? It seems to mean "convince people using dark arts".

The obvious answer is "drug laws and mandatory sentences", and the article does propose to do away with them.

Drug laws have been around a lot longer than 40 years. As for mandatory sentences, they were introduced because crime was reaching unacceptable levels. So I don't think repealing them is a good idea without addressing the issue that made them necessary.

which is (as the article fails to mention but should have) similar to some European countries

The same European countries that have given up enforcing any sense of order in large parts of their major cities.

By the way, if you want to deal with some of the actual politically untouchable issues that make the problem unsolvable, you can start by looking at the correlation between race and violent crime.