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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?

#321

Post by saladeen »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #301
haggy wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see hard statistical evidence that less guns = less deaths. The problem with your hypothesis (because without proof, that's all that your comment is) is that less guns in the hands of innocent people is a recipe for disaster. I live in the US and we see the exact opposite of what you claim. We typically see higher death rates of innocent people in states with very strict gun regulation (Chicago for ex…

Recent study: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/10/19/states-wi... The Australia and British laws and results are evidence that is plain in front of you. Those are humans on a different piece of land on our planet that on a whole have less gun violence occurring because there are less guns. You can talk about culture, how it wouldn't work, etc. but that is the exact point the parent comment is making. It w…

GP asked about relation of gun laws vs death numbers. You are pretending to answer that, but you weasel in the change from 'general violence' to 'gun violence'. Of course if guns are more easily available, there will be more gun violence, but that's not what GP asked.

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

#322

Post by nerdponx »

owebmaster wrote: post #283
Nursie wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They absolutely need to have it called marriage Yes, because that's equality. We've tried "separate but equal" before, haven't we? It doesn't work out, and it's used as an excuse for continuing discrimination. This is not entitlement, it's equal treatment.

Gay marriage is like plant-based/fake burgers. Some people will say it is burger, some will say it is not. I'm more inclined to say that it is a "fake marriage", but I have nothing to do with the relationship of any two-person out there.

Just because marriage has traditionally been defined one way in your society does not mean that all societies you interact with must adopt the same definition.

In fact, your burger analogy perfectly demonstrates the point. Yes, once upon a time, "hamburger" meant a patty of ground beef. However the word "burger" has long since lost the implication of meat and is now freely used to refer to any and all grilled, fried, and baked patties served on a bun.

It's not as though the hamburger was created specifically to be a meat product, and the non-meat hamburgers be damned: it's that when the hamburger was created, the only things of its kind were made of meat. A veggie burger can be "fake meat", but it isn't a "fake burger" unless it's not actually food.

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

#323

Post by rusk »

saladeen wrote: post #318
rusk wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the beauty of it. It's the left getting their house in order before they go for the right. Also, I never said "left" and "right", or anything to do with political allegiances. These topics transcend political identity.

> These topics transcend political identity. Yup, that's why you had to go with 'hurrrrr Trump!'

Didn't 'hurrrr' anything. His indiscretions are widely known. As are Bill Clinton's.

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

#324

Post by dalbasal »

wereHamster wrote: post #311
dalbasal wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in the US, but I'm skeptical. There are a lot of places where civilian gun ownership causes problems, gun crime, etc. Some of the places where it does not cause big problems (eg Switzerland) have liberal gun laws and high ownership rates. There are examples where widespread gun ownership/availability causes exactly the kinds of is "problems" that (according to some) the American founders intended it to c…

> Some of the places where it does not cause big problems (eg Switzerland) have liberal gun laws and high ownership rates. So you don't consider suicides to be a 'big problem', eh? https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-s-troubling-record-...

Sorry. I never should have used guns as an example.

I don't know much about it, and it's hard to deal in "not a problem" terms when it comes to life and death.

I do think even this speaks to my point though, about looking at examples as fully fleshed out examples. There are all sorts of "gun problems." All sorts of "gun rules." All sorts of simple and complex relationships between those two things and a whole lot of other things.

The relationship between gun accessability and suicide is fairly straightforward. But both suicide and gun availability are related to a bunch of other things.

*I'm not talking about gun laws (don't live in the US, own guns or have a strong opinion), I'm talking about how we think of policies using examples.

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

#325

Post by lr4444lr »

flipp3r wrote: post #230
ueushzvzis wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how you do the same thing you get mad about other people doing. You say that less guns equals less gun deaths... well duh. Then you go on to say less handguns equals less deaths and this actually isn't true. As it stands, in the developed world more guns does not equate to more violence or more deaths. Obviously there are more deaths due to guns because people have access to them but the argument tha…

According to Wikipedia's "Firearm-related death rate per 100,000 population per year" America is at 10.54, compared to countries like Finland and Switzerland which are at 3.5-ish, it is very high. You can however see America's cause of the gun problem clearly, but you're not allowed to say it out loud; https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reeves-... You could call it "culture" which the other countrie…

Does that number control for the gun-related suicides? Obviously that is not what people mean when they talk about gun violence in the US.

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

#326

Post by scotty79 »

dalbasal wrote: post #284
scotty79 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which to compare to? Like any-friggin-one! You had to compare to bottom of the barrel to find a country that has the worse situation with guns than US.

I don't live in the US, but I'm skeptical. There are a lot of places where civilian gun ownership causes problems, gun crime, etc. Some of the places where it does not cause big problems (eg Switzerland) have liberal gun laws and high ownership rates. There are examples where widespread gun ownership/availability causes exactly the kinds of is "problems" that (according to some) the American founders intended it to c…

Even Switzerland.

From wiki about gun laws there:

In 2016, the defence ministry estimated that 2 million privately owned guns are in circulation, which given a population of 8.3 million corresponds to a gun ownership rate of around 24 guns per 100 residents. This is roughly a quarter of the rate in the United States, and lower than that in the neighbouring countries of Germany, and Austria, but about the double of Italy and France.

Quarter of guns per person US has. If US taxed gun manufacturers an used that money to buy back 3/4 of guns off the market it would surely have bit less gun related problems.

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

#327

Post by galobtter »

yAnonymous wrote: post #319
toomanybeersies wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Switzerland is proof that gun ownership and homicides are not necessarily related. Education and intelligence are probably the main factors here. So if there is a measurable relation between the two, it says more about the sad state of the society where the tests were conducted.

It still causes suicides - https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-s-troubling-record-...

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

#328

Post by andrenth »

alkonaut wrote: post #306
andrenth wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are absolutely flawed comparisons, because a criminal, by definition, is someone who doesn't care about the law. You cannot make that assumption about smokers or drivers.

> a criminal, by definition, is someone who doesn't care about the law. That was my point too: that it's not really a good argument to argue against laws because they are uneffective against criminals who don't care about them. Laws against child abuse are only effective on people who care about child abuse. Laws against plane hijacking are only effective on people who care about laws on plane hijacking. What's the d…

The correct question following your line of reasoning is not the one about gun ownership, but "Laws against murders are only effective on people who care about laws about murder".

However these cases are fundamentally different. Only criminals abuse children, hijack planes or commit murder.

Guns, on the other hand, are not only used by criminals. They can be used by citizens for their own protection, to prevent crimes. For example, consider a woman preventing a rape attempt by using her gun. Or the recent case of the Texas church, which could have resulted in many more deaths if not by the actions of an armed citizen.

When you forbid gun ownership, then only criminals will have access to them. You remove access for regular people but keep it for criminals who would already have access to them anyway.

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

#329

Post by sandworm101 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #50

This scenario doesn't just happen with drug policy, but with practically any divisive policy discussion. People will debate something that is done elsewhere, and ignore completely that it's done elsewhere. Gay marriage is a prime example, as it's something that has been legalised in a lot of countries now. Every time a country goes through the process of debating whether to legalise gay marriage, there's a bunch of p…

But the sky has fallen. For these people the big evil is the thing they are fighting against. They dont want gay marriage not because of its impacts but because they dont want gay marriage. Full stop. They dont want to decriminalize drugs because they dont want them decriminalized. When an issue becomes so internalized, so tied to ones identity, it is impossible to change. We need to work on keeping people from identifying themselves so much by which actions they permit in others.

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

#330

Post by Nursie »

owebmaster wrote: post #283
Nursie wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They absolutely need to have it called marriage Yes, because that's equality. We've tried "separate but equal" before, haven't we? It doesn't work out, and it's used as an excuse for continuing discrimination. This is not entitlement, it's equal treatment.

Gay marriage is like plant-based/fake burgers. Some people will say it is burger, some will say it is not. I'm more inclined to say that it is a "fake marriage", but I have nothing to do with the relationship of any two-person out there.

Really not, it's just like marriage involving people of the same gender. There's no practical difference.

Marriage has meant all sorts of things over the ages in various cultures.

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