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14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

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Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#41

Post by mythrwy »

mattnewton wrote: post #39
mythrwy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree with most of what you state I'd like to offer the unpopular opinion that the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing. Not that there aren't extenuating circumstances, not that it's a "terrible crime", but, it is a vice in which people for the most part, at least initially, have some choice. Again, I'm in favor of most everything you suggest, particularl…

I think that shame doesn't help the people already addicted- it makes it harder for them to deal with their current issues. It encourages avoidance of help, and avoidance of looking at the problem head on. A better deterrent in my opinion would simply be ads about the consequences, like successful anti smoking campaigns. It would be hard for me to disagree more than I do with the advocacy of continued shame for addic…

I don't think ads will work. But you might be right about shame.

I don't know, I'm not an expert on addiction and human psychology. But I have known a few and most of them weren't either.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#42

Post by randyrand »

> People caught with less than a 10-day supply of a drug

That's a tiny amount. Punishing people that like to buy in larger quantities for convenience seems silly. They should have come up with a another or increased metric to determine who the dealers were.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#43

Post by shawnee_ »

mythrwy wrote: post #32
shawnee_ wrote: post #27

Portugal's performance in perspective: Only three people for every million die of a drug overdose in Portugal, which puts one of the eurozone's poorest countries in a different league than rich international powerhouse Germany (17.6 per million) and in a different universe than social democratic utopia Sweden (69.7 per million). There's a fascinating documentary called American Addict on what nearly happened before t…

While I generally agree with most of what you state I'd like to offer the unpopular opinion that the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing. Not that there aren't extenuating circumstances, not that it's a "terrible crime", but, it is a vice in which people for the most part, at least initially, have some choice. Again, I'm in favor of most everything you suggest, particularl…

> the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing.

Watch the documentary I mentioned above. Also try this one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4079250/ Addiction is a mental health issue before it becomes a debilitating physical health issue ... one that (very often) leads to suicide or death. To suggest that unwell people have the strength to fight it on their own with the strength of "morals" is really damaging to your argument.

Besides: the healthy environment you want to "give people" is totally subjective. Who decides what is "healthy" for whom? Now you're back to policing and criminalizing ... these things do not work to improve the mental health of sick people.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#44

Post by jdmoreira »

lmickh wrote: post #12

Find it misleading that almost all of the recent articles on this subject talk about decriminalization as the cause for the drop in drug related health issues. They shifted a significant chunk of money to health services. If it proves anything, it is only that health services can reduce drug related health issues. Without a control, there is nothing to point to regarding criminalization vs decriminalization. People a…

I'm Portuguese and I grew up watching the heroin epidemic we had in Portugal. It was horrible, like the article mentions 1% of the population was addicted to heroin. Curiously I now live in Sweden, but I lived in Portugal for the first 11 years of the decriminalization. And the solution actually started years before, in the early 90s. It's a bit like you said, it was an huge investment in public health - the first success was that you could get a kit to inject heroin for free in any pharmacy, paid by the state, no questions asked! It was a huge win against the spread of HIV.

The biggest difference I see comparing the Portuguese reality to the Swedish one is the lack of social stigma regarding drugs. Drugs are just openly discussed in Portugal and addicts are well integrated in society. I have friends whose parents are heroin addicts and for the most part they are a normal family with jobs and responsabilities. Sometimes they relapse but it's not a big deal because they have a network and feel safe to get help quickly and the state sponsors replacement therapies in the meanwhile.

These are people that started doing heroin in the late 80s and for the most part still raised a family and are good parents and neighbors.

It's just a disease like any other and Portuguese people see addiction that way.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#45

Post by woodandsteel »

lmickh wrote: post #12

Find it misleading that almost all of the recent articles on this subject talk about decriminalization as the cause for the drop in drug related health issues. They shifted a significant chunk of money to health services. If it proves anything, it is only that health services can reduce drug related health issues. Without a control, there is nothing to point to regarding criminalization vs decriminalization. People a…

Well, yes and no. You are right that it is essential to spend a whole lot of money on health services. But if drugs are illegal then a great deal of those limited funds go instead to policing.

Besides that, people are a whole lot more likely to voluntarily go for help if they know they won't be arrested for what they have been doing.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#46

Post by monksy »

dmurray wrote: post #37
monksy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, if that data was bad, they should have even included it in the graph.

The data points don't even have error bars, unfortunately. They come through various filters. Leaving out one government's reported numbers and keeping another's is a political decision in itself, so it's best to just report the numbers and warn readers of their veracity.

The stance I have is more for data quality. If you can't trust the numbers then they're not good numbers.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#47

Post by JamesBarney »

mythrwy wrote: post #32
shawnee_ wrote: post #27

Portugal's performance in perspective: Only three people for every million die of a drug overdose in Portugal, which puts one of the eurozone's poorest countries in a different league than rich international powerhouse Germany (17.6 per million) and in a different universe than social democratic utopia Sweden (69.7 per million). There's a fascinating documentary called American Addict on what nearly happened before t…

While I generally agree with most of what you state I'd like to offer the unpopular opinion that the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing. Not that there aren't extenuating circumstances, not that it's a "terrible crime", but, it is a vice in which people for the most part, at least initially, have some choice. Again, I'm in favor of most everything you suggest, particularl…

You must being living in a very different community than mine. I live in Texas and being a heroin/cocaine/alcohol/nicotine(not as much) addict is a shameful thing. Yet we still have quiet the drug problem.

I've only known a few people who fell down the deadly spiral of drug abuse. But each one hid their addiction because of shame until it was so terrible they couldn't. And I believe if it had been less shameful they might have gotten support before they completely ruined their lives.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#48

Post by ridgeguy »

mythrwy wrote: post #32
shawnee_ wrote: post #27

Portugal's performance in perspective: Only three people for every million die of a drug overdose in Portugal, which puts one of the eurozone's poorest countries in a different league than rich international powerhouse Germany (17.6 per million) and in a different universe than social democratic utopia Sweden (69.7 per million). There's a fascinating documentary called American Addict on what nearly happened before t…

While I generally agree with most of what you state I'd like to offer the unpopular opinion that the personal decision to use hard or addicting drugs is something of a moral failing. Not that there aren't extenuating circumstances, not that it's a "terrible crime", but, it is a vice in which people for the most part, at least initially, have some choice. Again, I'm in favor of most everything you suggest, particularl…

May I suggest Johann Hari's book "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs"?

It addresses (among other things) the personal responsibility component of American attitudes towards drug use. I found it informative and an excellent read.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#49

Post by martinald »

cpncrunch wrote: post #30
wavegeek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem we have now is that 80% of heroin is laced with fentanyl (at least in Vancouver), and it's causing a huge overdose problem. Even cocaine and MDMA is now sometimes cut with fentanyl. When you give criminals a monopoly on the supply of recreational drugs, it is predicable that quality will be a problem. Potencies will vary, purity will suffer. The solution is legalization combined with more health measure…

>How anyone can think that stronger penalties are going to solve the problem escapes me I was referring to Fentanyl-laced heroin. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fentanyl-traf... It most certainly does make sense to have stronger penalties for dealing drugs that have a high chance of killing people due to being laced with fentanyl. Otherwise it's like having the same penalty for a shoplifter as for an…

How does that work? The whole mess is because of this.

Fentanyl is 100x stronger per gram than heroin. Therefore you can import 100th the quantity and still make (in theory) make similar money on the street. It is exactly because you get a worse sentence for higher quantities that drug dealers have optimised to get the strongest per gram drug. You will get a lighter sentence for 1g of fent vs 100g of heroin, no doubt.

This is a cycle always seen in prohibition - there was a massive shift from beer and wine to spirits in the 1920s US when alcohol is prohibited.

Throwing harsher sentences will not help whatsoever and is likely to be counterproductive.

Re: 14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off

#50

Post by ridgeguy »

cpncrunch wrote: post #24

In Canada we seem to have de-facto criminalization for possession for personal use. The problem we have now is that 80% of heroin is laced with fentanyl (at least in Vancouver), and it's causing a huge overdose problem. Even cocaine and MDMA is now sometimes cut with fentanyl. Not sure what the solution is, but perhaps a combination of stronger penalties for dealers, more resources for treating addiction, and legalis…

This a predictable consequence of heroin's illegal status.

It's a shift by vendors to higher value density materials.

During U.S. prohibition, vendors replaced illegal beer with gin, moonshine, etc. (higher alcohol/mass and alcohol/volume = smaller shipment volume and probability of detection).

Later, weed fell in favor to hash for similar reasons.

Now we have heroin being potentiated with fentanyl and its derivatives, those being much more powerful, reducing shipment volumes and losses due to detection.

In the U.S., when prohibition was reversed and booze was relegalized, low alcohol beverages returned to the market.

Not an expert, but it appears to me that legalization is required for reduction of overdose rates. It may not be enough by itself, but in its absence, lasting improvement doesn't happen.

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