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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?

#361

Post by kstenerud »

galobtter wrote: post #332
kstenerud wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil has a homicide rate of 26.74 per 100,000, of which 19.99 are from firearms. The USA has a homicide rate of 4.88 per 100,000. of which 3.60 are from firearms. It's also interesting to note that the USA has the highest homicide rate of all "first world" nations, trailing close behind wonderful places like Kyrgyzstan and Somalia. The next highest "first world" nation, Canada, is 1.68 (1/3 of the USA), of which 0.…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1485564/ "Nevertheless, the correlations detected in this study suggest that the presence of a gun in the home increases the likelihood of homicide or suicide." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11130511 "Across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides."

The executive summary doesn't make sense:

"Two common proxies for gun availability are used, the percentage of suicides with a firearm, and the"Cook index," the average of the percentage of suicides with a firearm and the percentage of homicides with a firearm."

"In simple regressions (no control variables) across 26 high-income nations, there is a strong and statistically significant association between gun availability and homicide rates."

So, if I'm reading this correctly, gun availability is calculated by percentage of deaths by firearm, and using that info they determine that gun availability leads to a higher homicide rate? Also no control variables? Why?

Using such source numbers, it's a foregone conclusion. If you use percentage of firearm deaths as a proxy for gun ownership, you will by definition have a strong correlation between gun ownership and deaths.

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

#362

Post by Retric »

lr4444lr wrote: post #320
Retric wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technocracy implies the people in power are experts. That has never and likely will never happen. People gain power by being good at politics and or inheriting it. Neither of those measures technical skill. At most you can look at countries who listen to relevant experts, which very much includes the United States. Though again on a sliding scale and always secondary to maintaining power for the in groups. Really if…

Technocracy implies a belief that a sophisticated and well-enforced set of top-down policies - which aren't tied to any other vague elements of leadership or political maneuvering - are the best way to rule societies. Not that the people at the top themselves have the know-how to craft and execute them. Just as one can be a AGW proponent by trusting scientists without knowing how to read climatological data or seques…

You're describing something else "well-enforced set of top-down policies" is how things are structured. You can get that from a king's brutal enforcement of divine law.

Technocracy is how to chose who runs things: "is a system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis of technological knowledge. Scientists, engineers, technologists, or experts in any field, would compose the governing body, instead of elected representatives. Leadership skills would be selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than parliamentary skills.[2] Technocracy in that sense of the word (an entire government run as a technical or engineering problem) is mostly hypothetical." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

Critically, having someone technical in charge based on an election is not a Technocracy. It's related to Monarchy/Democracy just replace by birth or by election with by demonstrating relevant technical skill. Knowing how to build a CPU for example is not relevant to setting health policy.

PS: The closest we have come is probably a small hunter gather group lead by a group of the eldest. As they are selected based on their skill in survival. Though presumably they had far fewer regulations etc.

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

#363

Post by wildmusings »

galobtter wrote: post #351
wildmusings wrote: post #340

Drug use is rising in Portugal. https://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/133086356/Mixed-Results-For-P... The Guardian skirts around the issue with some weasley phrasing “ ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use ”. Problematic according to whom? Being a high functioning addict who claims to be fine does not mean that you don’t have a serious problem that is damaging your relationships and potential. How about…

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1464837 "drug-related pathologies — such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage — have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens — enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization." from the g…

It's a very important goal, but if you believe that drug use itself is corrosive to the culture and prosperity of a people, you might prioritize overall drug use.

Let's take a hypothetical. Do you prefer a society where 30% have drug problems damaging themselves and their families, but there are very few overdose deaths and diseases among that 30%? Or one in which only 5% have drug problems, but there many more deaths and diseases among that 5%? I don't think there's an obviously right choice.

Ideally we can thread the needle and lower drug usage in addition to reducing the harms associated with it. That's the trillion dollar policy question and I don't think anyone has solved it yet.

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

#364

Post by Nursie »

foxhound6 wrote: post #343
wereHamster wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

Seems that Australia has a higher suicide rate than Switzerland. Didn't Australia ban guns? https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/who-findings_switzerland-report... http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/27/australias-suici...

Not entirely, but they made owning them very tricky unless you're a farmer AFAICT. City dwellers can own handguns, but they must stay locked up at the gun club when not in use at the gun club.

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

#365

Post by Nursie »

tatersolid wrote: post #331
stupidcar wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious to me that conservatives will talk about political correctness getting "out of hand", while downplaying or ignoring pathologies that result from their own beliefs that have caused, and continue to cause, extraordinary amounts of death, torture, poverty and suffering. Come back when lynch mobs have literally hanged thousands of people for being politically incorrect. Or when millions of people are being…

The 100 million people killed by Communist regimes in the last 100 years were nearly all killed for being “politically incorrect.” It’s basically a defining feature of Communist-Socialist regimes: imprision or liquidate dissenting voices.

In a lot of ways comunist regimes have deeply conservative - see Chairman Mao and his wish to retain the rural, impoverished peasant lifestyle.

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

#366

Post by neves »

vertex-four wrote: post #269
yAnonymous wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's a bunch of people that say it's going to cause the corruption of society Well, just look at the US. Political correctness is getting totally out of hand and the same is happening more and more in European countries. Changing traditions causes a lot of entitlement in people who also feel that they should get a special treatment and it seems that there's no end to it. In a democratic society, entitlement from…

Sorry mate, marriage isn't just religious. It's also societal, and Governmental. Many, many people get married outside of church, and for entirely nonreligious reasons - do you speak out against those as well as much as you do marriage between people of the same sex? What about people of a different religion getting married against your religion's rules? By the way - last time I looked into this, marriage predates or…

Other day I read a story a story in NYT (sorry, couln't find it) about a gay couple. They had a large age gap, and since there was no option to legally marry, they decided the best way to legally bond was to have one adopted by the other.

It proved a wise solution when the older one were dying in the hospital and the only allowed visits were from the spouse and the sons.

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

#367

Post by andrenth »

alkonaut wrote: post #348
andrenth wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crime…

I wasn't talking about guns in general, I was talking about "illegal guns" (with some definition of illegal). They can be illegal because they are stolen, because they aren't allowed to be owned by people in general (such as an anti aircraft missile) or because the owner doesn't qualify to own it for some other reason - perhaps because of previous convictions in weapons related crimes etc. Let's just say that regardl…

I don't think we're in complete disagreement. I'd just to comment on two points:

> but on the other hand the chance that someone has a semi auto high velocity gun at a church service in the first place is almost zero

Indeed, but w.r.t gun restrictions, I don't see this guy thinking "Going for a spree kill today... oh wait, guns are forbidden! Guess I'll stay home and watch something on Netflix instead". My point being, someone with the intention to kill will find a way to get a gun, with or without gun ownership restrictions.

So in my view, the such a law does nothing against the bad case, but prevents the good case (i.e. someone being prepared for the low-probability event).

> then something is already wrong

Well, that's the thing, something is always wrong. I live in a country where criminals regularly commit crimes while carrying assalt rifles. Heck, they carry their rifles even in open space parties: https://s03.video.glbimg.com/x720/6261094.jpg

I don't know in which country you live but I'm sure it has less wrong things than in Brazil. However, here they will kill you even if you don't react, so I see no benefit in removing from citizens even the chance of trying.

Incidentally, in 2005 we had a referendum about the prohibition of guns. The majority vote was against the prohibition, and yet the government ignored the result and prohibited them anyway.

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

#368

Post by lr4444lr »

Thailand's policy of granting the police shoot-to-kill license against street pushers in the early years of the new millennium worked also. Why don't we copy that too, if lower metrics around overdoses and infections are sufficient motivation to make "radical" decisions?

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

#369

Post by andrenth »

kaybe wrote: post #307
andrenth wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are picking the country that fits that narrative but forget about all of the rest A proof by contradiction only requires one single example. > Brazil compared to US is so poor and with shitty corrupted police That's true but completely unrelated to gun ownership. The police has to deal with people who don't care about gun ownership laws. > Also the fact that Brazil has gun problems even when guns are prohibited…

> Criminals can be absolutely sure that citizens won't be able to protect themselves. How about this: Criminals can expect not to be shot when they try to pull something, thus they don't have to shoot first. If the amount of criminals trying to pull something does not go up or down (which I expect but don't know) the whole criminaling might become less deadly.

> Criminals can expect not to be shot when they try to pull something, thus they don't have to shoot first.

This doesn't seem to match reality, at least in my country.

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

#370

Post by kstenerud »

hectorlorenzo wrote: post #275
kstenerud wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil has a homicide rate of 26.74 per 100,000, of which 19.99 are from firearms. The USA has a homicide rate of 4.88 per 100,000. of which 3.60 are from firearms. It's also interesting to note that the USA has the highest homicide rate of all "first world" nations, trailing close behind wonderful places like Kyrgyzstan and Somalia. The next highest "first world" nation, Canada, is 1.68 (1/3 of the USA), of which 0.…

"Tighter gun controls" doesn't always lead to "harder access to guns". How strong is the black market in Brazil (for everything, not only guns). How strong it is in the USA? How easy is to access otherwise prohibited goods in general?

The point is that gun control is not proven to reduce violent deaths. Gun ownership just doesn't correlate to violent deaths. People want it to because guns are instruments of violence and "it just stands to reason", but the numbers don't bear this out.

The USA has 101 guns per 100 residents and a homicide rate of 15.696 per 100,000.

The Bahamas has 5.3 per 100 residents and a homicide rate of 29.81.

Canada has 30.8 per 100 residents and a homicide rate of 1.68.

Norway has 31.3 per 100 resdents and a homicide rate of 0.56.

Finland has 34.2 per 100 residents and a homicide rate of 1.60

Serbia has 58.21 per 100 residents and a homicide rate of 1.13

In other words, it's all over the map.

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