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Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

theguardian.com

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Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#111

Post by zaarn »

andrewstuart wrote: post #41

Portugal’s policy is deeply flawed because it does not legalize the sale of all drugs, only the consumption. When selling is legal is when organized crime leaves the picture, taxes can be collected, product is clean and measured and of quality. Both sides of the equation are important to legalize, doing one without the other means huge problems remain.

In which case the policy would be similar to germany; german law considers drug consumption a form of selfharm, which the law has no authority to forbid. Selling, owning or doing anything but consuming drugs is basically illegal though.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#112

Post by angry_octet »

arca_vorago wrote: post #90

The nastier side of this elephant in the room is that three letters in general, the CIA in particular, really dislike the fact that congress holds their purse strings, so by creating and then dominating a black market, they can generate money off the books with no congressional oversight for those black projects and whatever other unconstitutional fad of the day is. The CIA learned this all the way back in its OSS da…

This is a batshit crazy conspiracy theory comment. The CIA gets plenty of money in the black budget and full congressional approval. The problem isn't CIA accountability, their actions are the actions of the US Govt, but it is rare for the US Govt to suffer repercussions that the American people understand as stemming from the actions of its Govt.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#113

Post by angry_octet »

adamnemecek wrote: post #15
beager wrote: post #8

So it’s apparent that many governments around the world are unwilling to take a similar approach to drug use. But could Google, Apple, Facebook et al provide services there? Create functionality to aid in harm reduction and addiction outreach? What would those things really look like, and would those companies actually leverage their access to billions of people to help with drug abuse?

Pls no. Pls, really no. I really dont want any of those companies to even get anywhere near this.

"Uber, but for illegal drugs."

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#114

Post by ewjordan »

barsonme wrote: post #81
BatFastard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One things Marijuana legalization has done is decrease opioid usage in states that have legalized it. It has also reduced drunk driving rates. Of course taxes are nice, and removing the money from the underworld is a big win too.

> It has also reduced drunk driving rates. What happened to the overall DUI rates, though?

I'll take 10 stoned drivers over 1 drunk one any day of the week. Stoned drivers may be slow as hell and really annoying, but drunk ones speed and kill people all the time.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#115

Post by zdkl »

adventured wrote: post #110
endymi0n wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the 70% number is true but misleading due to a lot of the new smaller members in the East. More than 80% of EU population is living in a country where either gay marriage or civil unions (which are pretty close) are legal.

edit: the downvotes would be amusing if it weren't because I'm bringing up how regressive most European nations are about gay marriage. I understand it's an inconvenient fact and upsetting to some, I'll go ahead and retain my position however: 70% of European nations not allowing gay marriage, is a travesty. Consider for a moment, that in the responses below, people are actually defending and rationalizing that 70% o…

If you're doing the census of an appartment block, do you count the flats or the people in each? Same difference here.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#116

Post by piokoch »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #83
briandear wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any citation on fewer handguns, fewer deaths? Violent crime actually increased in the UK after they banned guns despite near simultaneous expansion of police funding. These issues aren’t as simple as you might imply. The demographics of Sweden are different than those of Chicago or Matamoros. Conroe, Texas has very high gun ownership and very low violent crime. New York has very low gun ownership and relatively low v…

Here's a study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/ > Gun ownership was a significant predictor of firearm homicide rates (incidence rate ratio = 1.009; 95% confidence interval = 1.004, 1.014). This model indicated that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%. Firearms ownership rate doesn't correlate directly to firearms crime rates, but the…

First of all that research is correlation study, so equally well we can argue that increasing number of homicides in some area made people to buy more guns to defend themselves.

Secondly, this research looks only on guns vs. homicides, I would say that there could be a few other factors that might be more stronger then guns (poverty level, drugs abuse level, local society structure, etc.) - this is speculation, but I don't see that researches even looked on possible other factors that can potentially explain higer/lower homicide rate.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#117

Post by r00fus »

adventured wrote: post #103
r00fus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm - do you have a cite on your claims about the UK? It's hardly fair to ask for citations when you give none.

edit: I'd like to see the people downvoting my facts , counter how this doesn't amount to a wave or big surge of crime, these numbers are huge increases in a short amount of time. --- Crime has seen a huge increase in Britain and it appears set to keep getting worse. Crime in London has increased dramatically. I'm not going to claim that's due to gun laws, however it is factually correct that crime is surging big tim…

You show figures for the past year, yet the most recent legislative acts were both 10 (VCRA) and 20 (Firearms act) years ago.

I agree both that you're factually correct and that your data does not at all support your earlier assertion that "banning guns increased gun crime".

So % are increasing, but the overall per-capita UK gun crime and death is still woefully below the good ol US of A as per: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/06/16/gun-vio...

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#118

Post by adventured »

zdkl wrote: post #115
adventured wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: the downvotes would be amusing if it weren't because I'm bringing up how regressive most European nations are about gay marriage. I understand it's an inconvenient fact and upsetting to some, I'll go ahead and retain my position however: 70% of European nations not allowing gay marriage, is a travesty. Consider for a moment, that in the responses below, people are actually defending and rationalizing that 70% o…

If you're doing the census of an appartment block, do you count the flats or the people in each? Same difference here.

Most of the world consists of small nations, compared to eg the US or Germany. About 130 of the 195 nations have less than 20 million people. The majority of all nations have less than 9 million people.

> If you're doing the census of an appartment block, do you count the flats or the people in each?

If I were doing a census of an apartment block, I would count the number of flats and the people in each. For conceptually the same reason it's a good idea to know how many households there are in a nation as well as how many people total.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#119

Post by matthewmacleod »

adventured wrote: post #110
endymi0n wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the 70% number is true but misleading due to a lot of the new smaller members in the East. More than 80% of EU population is living in a country where either gay marriage or civil unions (which are pretty close) are legal.

edit: the downvotes would be amusing if it weren't because I'm bringing up how regressive most European nations are about gay marriage. I understand it's an inconvenient fact and upsetting to some, I'll go ahead and retain my position however: 70% of European nations not allowing gay marriage, is a travesty. Consider for a moment, that in the responses below, people are actually defending and rationalizing that 70% o…

It's not misleading in the least

It’s possible for something to be both true and misleading - the 70% figure makes the situation sound worse than it really is, IMO.

Re: Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

#120

Post by adventured »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #119
adventured wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: the downvotes would be amusing if it weren't because I'm bringing up how regressive most European nations are about gay marriage. I understand it's an inconvenient fact and upsetting to some, I'll go ahead and retain my position however: 70% of European nations not allowing gay marriage, is a travesty. Consider for a moment, that in the responses below, people are actually defending and rationalizing that 70% o…

It's not misleading in the least It’s possible for something to be both true and misleading - the 70% figure makes the situation sound worse than it really is, IMO.

> the 70% figure makes the situation sound worse than it really is, IMO.

The situation is bad, IMO, when the majority of European nations don't allow gay marriage. It's a grotesque travesty.

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