This story always comes back every year. With some ground knowledge on this, as I worked previously for Portugal Ministry of Health (Regional Subdivision). All this is price, and the programme works because drugs go where the money is, i.e. not Portugal, goes to the UK and Germany.
On the other hand, Alcoholism is a massive issue in Portugal, and there is no Government action.
Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
81–90 of 252 posts
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#82A lot of this depends on how evenly people suffering are distributed through society. One reason queer rights caught on so quickly is that LGBTQ people are evenly distributed across racial, ethnic and class boundaries. A rich white kid is exactly as likely to be trans, say, as a poor Brown or Black kid. People suffering from drug addictions in the US are more concentrated among certain communities.
Do you have a source on racial/class distribution for lgbt? Would be interested to see it
Are you trolling? It would seem obvious that such things are distributed exactly the same no matter what ones social status or ethnic background is. It would be very surprising if it wasn't.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#83Why is only sensible drugs policy called radical is the real question.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
For obvious reasons, I think many people would be against the suggestion that if more people were suffering from life-destroying drug addiction, a turning point would be reached and the problem would be solved faster. Surely there is a way to push back the spread of drugs and addiction, without letting it overtake society first.
People became more sympathetic to LGBTQ issues when people started coming out of the closet and they learned that their neighbours, cousins, nieces and nephews were being prevented from marrying their loved ones. We didn't need to "turn more people gay" to accomplish this. Similarly, we need to raise the visibility and openness of dealing with drug addiction, to come out of the closet so to speak, not increase drug a…
Unfortunately those in power are not nearly as badly affected by the drug epidemic as the poorer people. Even if they develop a habit or some complication related to it they will have access to the best care and treatment options.
So there is very little cost to being 'tough on drugs' until the effects are also felt at all layers of society. Portugal, a country that is a lot more relaxed about many things than the USA had a much easier time to acknowledge this. The 'war on drugs' will never be won, and the victims are predominantly poor. In the meantime, American jails are overflowing with people who should have been helped, not incarcerated.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, it was hyperbole rooted in missing the latest information (Epidiolex being approved only in June 2018) My main point is about whats available in Europe
I try to be skeptical about medical claims, especially around alternative medicine. But there's a good axiom: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Considering that doing "gold standard" FDA approved double blind tests has long been illegal for marijuana-based therapies I kind of had to trust myself and others (for example a cancer survivor who claimed CBD moderatated their headaches) that there were so…
> But there's a good axiom: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Very true. Thats a good lesson for this site and the expectations of internet detectives. People think they can just say “source” and the lack of immediate response serving as an indictment to nullify whatever statement.
The reality is that a lot of information isnt digital or resolved at all.
With regard to CBD amongst other alternative medicine, I mainly look at WHY there werent conclusive studies. For CBD its the legality challenges and I can accept that. For many other alternative medicines it is the incompatibility to any scientific method and impossibility of having peer reviewed repeatable results, masqueraded as preventative treatment.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#86A lot of comments about why decriminalization of drug use is a no brainer. I'd like to point out that it's not that simple. From what I understand from different "experiments" like Portugal, it's a lot depending on context (eg culture) and how it's done. For example, easier access (lower taxes) on alcohol caused a rise in alcoholics and alcohol related deaths in Finland). Not everyone living in Colorado is happy about the outcome there either (sorry for no references, but please look it up if you'd like).
I'm not saying it shouldn't be done but like a startup venture, an idea is worth very little and the environment/market + how it's realized makes all the difference!
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#87Because Portugal doesn't have countries like Mexico bordering it that will use the legal drug trade to further fund cartel violence and control over the country. Corruption is already so rampant, they need to fix their problems before we should ever think about legalizing all drugs. We already have an Opioid crises in the US..and this is with legal drugs. Lawmakers are already starting to blame the legal drug dealers…
Mexico is less of a problem to the United States than the other way around. With the US drug habit and guns and funds export Mexico is helpless to do much of anything about this. This would hold for any country where the illegal economy is larger than the legal one.
Legalizing the drugs would rob the cartels of a vast chunk of their income and that in turn would allow the Mexican government to finally do something about them that will not be a country-sized game of whack-a-mole.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#88From what I hear (as someone now living in rural Portugal), a turning point came when most of the electorate knew someone suffering from a drug addiction. Be it a family member, partner, or friend - there came a point when the majority of people could not only see the problems caused by the epidemic, but could also empathise with those with addictions. As a result of this understanding/empathy, it was possible to pas…
And yet most people in the USA know a victim of gun violence, yet we are unable to copy even a portion of the regulations used by a majority of our allies. There's also a point beyond which a problem is so endemic that people consider it the natural state of affairs.
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The boundary between drugs and non-drugs is murky. Even refined salt, sugar, and flour could be classified as "drugs" -- your brain gets affected by them, potentially permanently, and they are hardly natural -- and even less people consider them as drugs.
salt, sugar, and flour aren't natural?
They aren't typically found in nature in the form in which we consume them. They require human processing (even if it's much less processing than what goes into making a frozen pizza).
Re: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source on racial/class distribution for lgbt? Would be interested to see it
Are you trolling? It would seem obvious that such things are distributed exactly the same no matter what ones social status or ethnic background is. It would be very surprising if it wasn't.
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