[HN Gopher] Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is n...
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Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having
doubts
Author : hrl
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-07-07 21:48 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Has any advanced civilization been gung-ho about legalized drugs?
|
| There are probably strong socioevolutionary reasons why this is
| the case.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Before the invention of antibiotics almost all medicine was
| nonsense and the drugs available were mostly alcohol, cocaine,
| opium, aspirin and caffeine. It is only since the 1950s that
| there is a huge amount of different drugs and mass production
| on top of it.
| bykhun wrote:
| Canada is pretty much fine with drugs, as well as California
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| Yes, and our opioid situation is just super, nothing to see
| here!
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| Spotted the Non-Canadian...
| triceratops wrote:
| Other than religious proscriptions against alcohol, I can't
| think of any civilization in history that has outright banned
| any drugs. Were the Romans, Egyptians or Persians especially
| anti-drug? Any of the ancient Indian or Chinese kingdoms and
| empires?
|
| On the other hand, cannabis has a long tradition of use in
| ancient India[1].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India
| neworbit wrote:
| When the Chinese banned opium the British went to war to
| reopen that market because it was so profitable
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
|
| It seems like many drugs are banned in various societies
| today, so I don't quite follow you.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| Europe, circa the middle ages, had cultural taboos against
| certain "witchy" herbs. To the best of my knowledge, this is
| the only other cultural prohibition against some class of
| drugs at large.
|
| I do believe such bans to be hideous and downright stupid. It
| is crass authoritarianism, nothing less than the
| subordination of the individual's body and mind to a
| tyrannical society clownish enough to demand it.
| [deleted]
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| What do you consider advanced? Keeping in mind, of course, that
| cocaine was legal in the US until ne'er-do-well do-gooders
| decided they knew better for everyone. That is why we have Coca
| Cola, which is a formulation of Mr. John Pemberton's Cocaine-
| Fortified Wine. It's only very recently that we have decided to
| start imprisoning people for the simple fact of putting things
| into their bodies.
|
| So, again, what do you consider advanced? If we go back to the
| foundations of Western civilization, we find the Greeks quite
| enjoyed getting high on many interesting substances. The Romans
| and Egyptians as well.
|
| What about native populations on the US continent? The Peyote
| tribe literally have a mescaline-bearing cactus named after
| them, along with all the various substances known to the South
| Americans before the Spaniards decided to put the torch to
| their accumulated cultural practices. (c.f. The Florentine
| Codex)
|
| The histories of China and India are also rife with periods of
| legalized substance use, some good and some bad.
|
| But to your question: yes, there have been many advanced
| civilizations whom have been "gung-ho" about legalized drugs.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Most civilizations, at least in your meaning of the term, never
| had to deal with the problem much. For much of Europe's
| history, the only known drug of consequence was booze, and it
| wasn't easy to make. Economy's simply weren't diversified
| enough that some could be drunks, they'd have nothing to pay
| for booze with and no one was going to let them freeload and
| drink all the good stuff besides.
|
| Most of the drugs that are a problem for us are late 19th
| century or 20th century inventions. Sure, there are some others
| here and there... in their most diluted, least problematic
| forms. But that's about it.
|
| A better question than yours would be "when has criminalizing
| drugs ever done any of the things we might hope it would
| do?"... but it's a difficult question that most people want to
| avoid. That they're willing to accept dishonest, fallacious
| answers for.
| pravus wrote:
| Any civilization that would use violence against non-violent
| offenders cannot be defined as advanced.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Reeks of lobbying/meddling by those who didn't profit from the
| "human first" approach.
|
| There's a great debate between grenn greenwald and the Bush drug
| Czar on this topic.
|
| Pros and cons end up firmly on Portugal and Glenn's side, but
| it's not the side of fear or profit.
| hrl wrote:
| https://archive.ph/yCiPi
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230707185209/https://www.washin...
| [deleted]
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I love it, the entire argument of this article boils down to, "A
| problem with visibility" rather than any failure of the policy.
| As though an existing problem being visible isn't societal
| pressure to better address the problem. Oh they also present
| statistics contained to the 2019-2023 period as though that
| wasn't pandemic-driven.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| The issue is that making a behavior more visible tends to
| normalize it.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Oh well? When the alternative being supported is, "Return to
| an expensive and inhumane model of frequent and revolving
| incarceration" I can't say that bothers me much. I'm also
| fairly sure that seeing a homeless junkie skin up isn't
| exactly an advertisement for the lifestyle.
| bykhun wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a "learn by example". If anything, it
| makes me doesn't want to try heroine
|
| It's like if we presented corpses of dead drivers on the main
| streets - I bet it'd greatly lower overspeeding and drunk
| driving
| pineaux wrote:
| This is probably not true.for example: People know smoking
| kills. The tabacco industry even popularized stories about
| sad COPD patients that were dying in the hospital and still
| wouldnt quit smoking.
|
| "Its that good!" "It's so nice! Even when you know it kills
| you, you still dont want to stop! Not to mention! Quiting
| is hard! Real hard! Dont try to quit. You will only
| suffer."
|
| That is the narrative that they push.
|
| The human mind is Strange sometimes.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Smoking tobacco was subject to well over a century of
| well-funded marketing, anti-science efforts to hide
| adverse effects, and even claims of being good for your
| health. I don't think there's a Joe Camel for heroin, and
| if there is, some poor homeless bastard shooting up isn't
| it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| In the United States, it's as visible as anywhere in
| Portugal. The visibility just isn't distributed evenly. When
| you hear people complain about such things, it's usually the
| upper class whining about how distasteful it all is.
|
| Whether or not visibility normalizes drug use behaviors, I
| couldn't say. They were normalized before I was born and I'll
| be 50 next year.
| marcod wrote:
| That's what I came away with... so they don't have enough
| resources for treatment... And the police hands are tied? I'm
| pretty sure they can still arrest people who commit crimes,
| just not for using drugs.
|
| Also, why was it working for a few years and now it's not
| anymore? Could it be that the pandemic and economic downturn
| caused more people to turn to drugs and reduced funding? Ah,
| they hid that answer in the last paragraph...
|
| > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its
| drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76
| million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4
| million) forced Portugal's main institution to outsource work
| previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the
| street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country
| is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating
| its drug prevention programs.
| cubefox wrote:
| > Also, why was it working for a few years and now it's not
| anymore?
|
| This is addressed in the article.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Are there countries that have successfully reduced drug use among
| their population without implementing strong penalties for
| possession?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yes. Portugal.
|
| When they fully funded their rehab and social service program,
| the system worked.
|
| Then they reduced funding and seem surprised the programs don't
| work any more.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| People who think drugs should be descriminalized often have no
| experience with actual criminal justice, and are often
| recreational drug users themselves (i.e. too close to the issue).
|
| It is a conspiracy theory to believe that drug criminalization
| has a strictly for-profit motive despite near universal adoption
| as a policy. That is to say, you believe a conspiracy theory
| casually.
| cwkoss wrote:
| "Strictly" seems to be constructing a strawman - I would guess
| almost everyone who believes in decriminalization acknowledges
| other motives like puritanicalism, racism, classism, labor
| productivity, adherence to the societal norms, etc.
| standardUser wrote:
| Decriminalization is a cowardly half-solution that only creates
| more problems, leaves violent gangs in charge and does nothing
| to improve the purity of drugs. A measured and thoughtful
| legalization program for the most popular drugs is the only
| solution if we want to curtail black market dominance and save
| human lives.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| gumballindie wrote:
| Loads of proposals, all missing the obvious: solve poverty.
| Portugal and south Europe in general suffer greatly from it.
| Stats make the region look good on paper but reality is very
| different.
| Kretinsky wrote:
| Thanks, but the poor are not necessarily drug abusers. Drug
| abusers may fall into poverty, but not the way around. There's
| a wealth of drug abuse in rich societies - the fact that SF,
| one of the richest city on the earth, became a drug hot spot is
| an example.
| zoky wrote:
| The link between drug use and poverty is far from clear. While
| there is a correlation between drug addiction and poverty,
| there has not been a causal relationship shown between the two.
| In many cases, poverty may be a result of drug addiction rather
| than a cause. Consider the much talked about opioid epidemic,
| for example. The people getting these prescriptions tend
| towards middle rather than lower class. When the pill supply
| runs out, either because they can't afford them anymore or
| can't find a doctor to prescribe them, they turn to much
| cheaper and readily available street drugs like heroin, and at
| that point they're more or less locked into a downward spiral
| into poverty.
|
| All of this is to say that if we were to somehow "solve
| poverty" (even putting aside the vast oversimplification made
| by such a statement), while it might reduce rates of drug
| addiction, it by no means would be an overall solution to the
| problem. Addiction respects no socioeconomic boundaries.
| outworlder wrote:
| Note that Portugal has a pretty extensive safety net. Be it
| housing, unemployment, health care, and social assistance in
| general.
|
| The country has been suffering from wage stagnation,
| unemployment and an aging population and that's definitely
| reflected in stats.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| > solve poverty
|
| How?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| give people money so they can buy food, clothing, and
| shelter.
|
| there are solutions that have worked in the past. the problem
| is the US center-right doesn't like them because they can be
| abused, and it's far worse for one person in a million to
| have something given to them that they don't deserve than for
| a million people to be helped.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "the problem is the US center-right doesn't like them
| because they can be abused"
|
| What does the US center-right have to do with Portugal?
| slashdev wrote:
| Who's going to pay for that? Why would those people want to
| work if they can just freeload?
|
| There are serious problems with welfare programs. They've
| been the downfall of entire countries. Look at Argentina
| where the bloated government payroll can be viewed as a
| sort of work for welfare program. The country can't afford
| it and its currency blows up on a regular basis as a
| result.
|
| That's not saying you should have no welfare programs, but
| there's a balance to be maintained. Probably it should be
| time limited so people are given a sort of "financial
| rehab", but not disincentivized to work. And it shouldn't
| stop if you get a job, why, just why would you want an
| incentive against that.
|
| Some people seem to think there can be consumption without
| production or life without work, but that's logically
| incoherent.
| palata wrote:
| Maybe a first step would be to prevent the ultra rich to get
| even richer.
| lolinder wrote:
| Preventing the rich from getting richer does nothing in and
| of itself to help the poor. You might do things to help the
| poor that _as a side effect_ make it harder to accrue
| absurd amounts of wealth, but if your goal from the outset
| is simply to eliminate all billionaires, there are lots of
| ways to do that that will only end up hurting the poor as
| well.
| justrealist wrote:
| Do you think Portugal really has a lot of ultra-rich people
| sitting around to fleece?
| pxue wrote:
| First, solve housing.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| So to solve one incredibly hard problem humanity has never
| solved... you need to first solve another incredibly hard
| problem?
|
| Well shit, get on it Portugal! /s
| KerrAvon wrote:
| indeed, link hands everybody, and chant with me the
| centrist anthem: better things aren't possible and we
| should just give up! better things aren't possible and we
| should just give up! better things aren't possible and we
| should just give up!
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I think there's a vast gulf between abject pessimism, and
| the sort of useless optimism encapsulated in the casual
| statement, "Solve poverty" don't you? If someone asked
| you how people could live longer, you wouldn't be
| helpfully engaging if the response was, "Solve death."
| [deleted]
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I disagree: first, solve culture
| [deleted]
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Finland has solved it.
|
| In fact, you can subsidize housing costs from all the
| savings on healthcare costs.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Talk about burying the lede, 11 years ago they privatized their
| drug oversight operation and cut funding by over 80%. Gee, I
| wonder if that could have an impact?
|
| > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug
| oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros
| ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced
| Portugal's main institution to outsource work previously done by
| the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that
| engage with people who use drugs.
| asymmetric wrote:
| Delegating to nonprofits is not the same as privatizing. Your
| argument creates a false dichotomy in which the only two
| possible actors are the state or private enterprises, but
| that's not the case, even for the simple reasons that
| nonprofits are not the same as for-profit entities.
|
| Common Pool Resources are a prime example of a paradigm that
| escapes this dichotomy.
| SllX wrote:
| I don't know how Portuguese law works but in the United
| States non-profits have private owners and are private
| corporations. The contrast they have is with "for-profit"
| corporations, not "private" corporations. Given the primary
| purpose of being designated a "non-profit" is a tax advantage
| for the corporation, I'm willing to bet Portuguese
| corporations likely don't differ in this manner.
|
| Privatize is an acceptable verbiage for a public entity which
| has outsourced to a private corporation.
| m463 wrote:
| Same sort of thing happened with mental illness in california,
| probably a leading cause of homelessness problems.
|
| Years ago, the law was changed to allow mentally-ill but benign
| or even non-ill people to escape the "snake pits", mental
| institutions that kept people incarcerated and drugged. This
| allowed lots of people to recover.
|
| But then Ronald Reagan (as governor of california) cut state
| mental illness funding.
|
| Now clearly mentally ill people - who needed help - were turned
| away unless they were clearly "a danger to themselves and
| others".
|
| Many homeless people are these mentally ill people, and they
| can't get help (and they can't be forced in unless they are
| dangerous, which is usually how recovery begins)
| themitigating wrote:
| https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-
| menta...
|
| This nice timelime adds to what this person said.
|
| There's more that helped shape the publics perception of
| mental health. The movie "One flew over the cukcoos nest"
| seemed to create a negative perception about these
| facilities.
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1983.53.1.1.
| ..
|
| This study in 1983, though small, showed that 4 out of 5
| people who were questioned before the film was released ,then
| after, changed their view of mental institutions to negative.
| They also showed them a TV documentary that was more factual
| about the mental health system but it didn't have an impact.
|
| In my opinion this is case of the public hearing about a
| systemtic issue within a very nessacary institution,
| regardless of how frequent or serious, becoming upset,
| locking their view in, then the government taking action by
| either reducing or eliminating that institution.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Why should the state spend any money here at all?
|
| If you want the freedom from society to use drugs, then you
| shouldn't rely on society for that.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The argument for why the government should spend money is
| because not spending it would be more expensive or yield
| worse outcomes.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Where is that peer-reviewed analysis?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| You seem to be acting as though addiction and the issues
| which give rise to it are somehow not part of society, and
| therefore should be discarded. Even ignoring why that's
| wrong, ignoring why letting people slip through the cracks
| still has an impact on your conception of society...
|
| ...how about basic human empathy?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > ...how about basic human empathy?
|
| How about empathy from your side? I have lost a friend due
| to addiction despite "care".
|
| The best solution is not being exposed to some classes of
| drugs at all and fixing other issues that cause this.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > I have lost a friend due to addiction
|
| So have I. The drug was alcohol. Adults make choices and
| live with the consequences. _shrug_
| EA-3167 wrote:
| So let me guess, you think birth control is a bad idea
| and only abstinence works?
| arcticbull wrote:
| > How about empathy from your side? I have lost a friend
| due to addiction despite "care". The best solution is not
| being exposed to some classes of drugs at all.
|
| Maybe that's true, but the genie isn't going back into
| the bottle as like 50 years of the 'war on drugs' has so
| clearly demonstrated.
|
| The war on drugs started 18 June 1971 with Richard
| Nixon's declaration that drug abuse is "public enemy
| number one." At this point, drugs seem more available
| than ever. I strongly suspect we would minimize harm in
| the reality in which we live (rather than the pretend
| reality where drugs don't exist) by acknowledging that.
| api wrote:
| That sounds like SF's outsourcing to nonprofits.
| vngzs wrote:
| Indeed. They slashed funding to successful parts of the
| strategy and now claim the strategy failed. A convenient
| narrative for politicians, but hardly truth.
| gumby wrote:
| Wish I could have upvoted this comment a couple of more times.
| mavu wrote:
| I've got your back.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Drugs should be sold at the grocery store, no question asked.
| They should be cheap too. That would solve the drug problem.
| andybak wrote:
| Either you're just trolling or you haven't spent enough time on
| the internet to realise that it's impossible for us to tell if
| you're trolling or sincere.
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| The amount of people I want consuming recreational PCP around
| me is 0.
| Kretinsky wrote:
| It was the case in Weimar Germany, as a result drug use and
| antisocial behavior exploded.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Have you seen how much San Francisco and Seattle have improved
| with drug tolerant policies?
| belval wrote:
| This is the new "but that was not TRUE communism". The more
| tolerant places are overrun with drug users and homeless
| camps yet their supporters online will say "but if we
| provided more money for housing and decriminalized all drugs,
| now that would solve the issue".
| User23 wrote:
| It always trips me out reading early 20th century novels where
| the protagonist will stop in a drug store, buy a pint of
| whiskey, some cocaine or other now schedule 1 drug, and then
| sit down at the soda fountain counter and have lunch. Talk
| about one stop shopping.
|
| On a related tangent, Heroin is actually a former trademark.
| Not a lapsed one, but one that was specifically revoked to
| punish Bayer during the war. Aspirin was another one. And
| that's why you see generic "aspirin" but no generic explicitly
| marketed as "xerox" or "kleenex." The kleenex mark is weakened,
| but not dead like aspirin and heroin.
| thucydides wrote:
| n=1: during my visit to lisbon in 2021, i was accosted twice by
| burly guys near my hotel[1] who aggressively asked if i wanted to
| buy weed or cocaine. the first time, the guy was so angry at my
| refusal ("no thanks, man") that he followed me up a public
| staircase to continue his pitch. he backed off when i returned
| his verbal aggression.
|
| so maybe the portuguese policy could use some tweaking.
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/y3N88pENiH8rVXTM6
| ohashi wrote:
| That's the heart of touristy downtown. Lot of guys selling
| fairly aggressively there towards tourists. Been offered quite
| a lot, I didn't have the aggression experience you seemed to
| experience though. That is unfortunate.
| personjerry wrote:
| > Porto's police have increased patrols to drug-plagued
| neighborhoods. But given existing laws, there's only so much they
| can do. On a recent afternoon, an emaciated man in striped pants
| sleeping in front of a state-funded drug-use center awoke to a
| patrol of four officers. He sat up, then defiantly began
| assembling his crack pipe. Officers walked on, shaking their
| heads.
|
| What were they supposed to in a different country? Arrest the
| guy, spend money putting him in jail, wait til he gets back out
| and repeat?
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| Your comment gave me SF vibes. Somewhere in the middle; the
| answer isn't jailing or ignoring.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| The answer is treating it as a medical and social problem,
| it's a known solution, it just costs money and Portugal
| decided in 2012 to cheap out on it, outsource it, and then
| act shocked when it went wrong.
| fuzztester wrote:
| What is the known solution? I don't know much about this
| area.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| I am not sure they could have done anything different, but
| that's the point - if law enforcement officers can witness
| someone doing something illegal, but there is no point in
| enforcing the law, there is a bigger problem.
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't get it. Someone smoking something doesn't bother me,
| unless maybe if I can smell it, then it bothers me very, very
| slightly. The same way someone drinking a beer in public
| doesn't bother me. How could it?
|
| If sleeping on the street is a crime, enforce that crime. Don't
| pretend that if we magically banned all of the hypothetical
| reasons people might commit that crime that it will eliminate
| that crime. We can't enforce every-fucking-thing - and we have
| proven conclusively that we can never effectively ban popular
| street drugs - so let's focus instead on crimes with victims
| and enforce them more aggressively.
| ndlan wrote:
| Arrest him and put him through forced rehab.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I wonder what is the effectiveness rate of forced rehab
| programs.
| slashdev wrote:
| It's very low, lower than regular rehab, which is already
| not that effective.
| standardUser wrote:
| Why, what did this person do that was so serious they should
| be jailed?
| ndlan wrote:
| Using in public.
| Kretinsky wrote:
| An interesting part of the article: "state-funded nongovernmental
| organizations that have largely taken over responding to the
| people with addiction seem less concerned with treatment than
| affirming that lifetime drug use should be seen as a human
| right."
|
| It's almost like if NGOs that live off the existence of drug
| abuse didn't want to kill the cash cow. That's another case of
| why such public services shouldn't be externalized.
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