14 Years After Decriminalizing Drugs, Portugal’s Bold Risk Paid Off • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by taneltanel » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 12:43 PM UTC

tompazourek wrote: post #5

When I saw the chart I thought, what's wrong with Estonia?

In Estonia, the police started to act tough on heroin dealers and users. This resulted in dealers and users switching to fentanyl, which is more potent and therefore, more deadly. Heroin is not available any more in Estonia. Fentanyl seems to come from neighbouring Russia, but I'm not sure about that: police keeps reporting about drug busts, but there is very little scientific information available about it. Mostly it's war on drugs propaganda.

The majority of Estonian population view drug users as someone who deserves to die, because of their poor choices. It's hard to get help or any compassion when you're an IV drug user.

Attempts to create needle exchanges are met with fierce resistance from neighbours. There are methadone programs but it's tiny compared to the amount of fentanyl users.

Up to 7.5 grams cannabis is not an criminal offense and smoking weed is quite popular with the younger generation. However, in Estonia it's not uncommon to hear from police that every weed smoker will surely start using fentanyl. Soft and hard drugs are treated the same in state propaganda, which results in many young people not believing that fentanyl is dangerous: since they were lied about weed, how can they trust warnings about hard drugs?

Estonia has also a huge alcohol problem. I believe many hard drug users started using because they were drunk in the first place. Alcoholism leads to violence at homes, murders, horrible car accidents, risky behaviours like trying hard drugs and having unprotected sex - you see, Estonia has a HIV epidemic as well.

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

#102

Post by randomstudent » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 12:45 PM UTC

This article is very weak... They cherry pick a single metric (overdose-related deaths) and use that to prove Portugal's policy is the best thing ever.

Other metrics that are relevant: Has drug use increased or decreased? What about the burden of disease associated with drug use? Also, even more importantly: What has happended to deaths in other countries over time?

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

#103

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:01 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #71

mythrwy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You admit you aren't an expert, but are demonstrably willing to extrapolate from the "few" you've known to "it's a moral failing"?

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by kaffeemitsahne » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:02 PM UTC

untangle wrote: post #9

The singular focus on "drug deaths due to overdose" tells an important part of the story, but not the whole story. For example, per Wikipedia, drug use may have doubled after decriminalization.* If so, that's an acceptable tradeoff to me but may not be to others. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

That's not a problem per se, as long as those drug users are happy and don't put their health at risk excessively.

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

#105

Post by EGO_DEATH » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

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…

Actually, you can say that people are scared to seek help because of the stigma. In a country with a judgemental culture of shame like Sweden you're in between a rock and a hard place. Because anyone with a credit card can access your legal history and see if you have been convicted for something, it's a pretty self destructive choice to make, and leads to unnecessary suffering.

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

#106

Post by mythrwy » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:12 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #71

mythrwy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You admit you aren't an expert, but are demonstrably willing to extrapolate from the "few" you've known to "it's a moral failing"?

You appear to have misread.

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

#107

Post by gehwartzen » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

seanhandley wrote: post #21

Radle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but it clearly shows that making drugs illegal, does not help at all to keep people save.

What about all the criminals that can no longer make money selling on the black market? Killing unregulated production allows for cleaner, safer substances to be created with known strength and purity. After decades of prohibition, we can conclude the "War On Drugs" is a lost cause and people will always seek out drugs. If people are going to take drugs regardless, let's make sure they're clean and the profits of sal…

Just want to point out that the two don't necessarily have to go hand in hand as often portraid in the US. Things can be legalized without being regulated.

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

#108

Post by EGO_DEATH » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:24 PM UTC

randomstudent wrote: post #102

This article is very weak... They cherry pick a single metric (overdose-related deaths) and use that to prove Portugal's policy is the best thing ever. Other metrics that are relevant: Has drug use increased or decreased? What about the burden of disease associated with drug use? Also, even more importantly: What has happended to deaths in other countries over time?

Decreased usage domestically, increased overdose in other countries, Sweden for instance, by a lot.

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

#109

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 1:51 PM UTC

ausvisaissues wrote: post #98

3131s wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore,it is a personal choice only if the other individual's choice does not have negative externalities. So we should ban every personal choice with negative externalities? There goes alcohol, twinkies, contact sports, driving, etc. It's a personal choice as much as anything else, so just estimate the cost of any negative externalities and cover that through taxation. > Yet, a casual stroll through San Franc…

> whether drug abuse is what lead them to the behavior that you disapprove of. I am pretty sure the needles on the sidewalk is just there because everyone suffers from diabetes, right? I think that, fortunately for most IT people like us, we can live in nice neighborhoods, where none of the social ills of drug-ridden neighbortlhoods affect us. So, we can support drug legalization, without being affected by the conseq…

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by Clubber » Sat, Jul 29, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

cpncrunch wrote: post #55

Clubber wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How anyone can believe that harsher sentences will curb drug use in this day and age with 50 years of evidence to the contrary is beyond me.

You're probably right. However the other question is whether dealers should be help criminally liable for fentanyl-related deaths. In essence they are selling something that they know will likely kill some of their customers.

I mean it depends on how far up the chain you want go. Lets say from the source to the buyer, it goes through 5 people. Which put fentanyl in it? Chances are, anyone else in the chain didn't know. Of course the problem with that is you end up executing some guy who had no idea there was fentanyl in there while the guy who actually put it in there continues business as usual.

I mean I find it hard to believe dealers want their clients to die off, they want steady revenue stream just like every other business. If you want to save lives, the way the US does it obviously isn't working. I don't think it's their objective. It seems the main objective for the drug war in US is to give jobs to the FOP and give the government an easier job by eroding liberties, and to make headlines for politicians trying to get reelected.