Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 660 posts

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#81

Post by standardUser »

boringuser2 wrote: post #43

People who think drugs should be descriminalized often have no experience with actual criminal justice, and are often recreational drug users themselves (i.e. too close to the issue). It is a conspiracy theory to believe that drug criminalization has a strictly for-profit motive despite near universal adoption as a policy. That is to say, you believe a conspiracy theory casually.

Decriminalization is a cowardly half-solution that only creates more problems, leaves violent gangs in charge and does nothing to improve the purity of drugs. A measured and thoughtful legalization program for the most popular drugs is the only solution if we want to curtail black market dominance and save human lives.

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#82

Post by slashdev »

KerrAvon wrote: post #21
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solve poverty How?

give people money so they can buy food, clothing, and shelter. there are solutions that have worked in the past. the problem is the US center-right doesn't like them because they can be abused, and it's far worse for one person in a million to have something given to them that they don't deserve than for a million people to be helped.

Who’s going to pay for that? Why would those people want to work if they can just freeload?

There are serious problems with welfare programs. They’ve been the downfall of entire countries. Look at Argentina where the bloated government payroll can be viewed as a sort of work for welfare program. The country can’t afford it and its currency blows up on a regular basis as a result.

That’s not saying you should have no welfare programs, but there’s a balance to be maintained. Probably it should be time limited so people are given a sort of “financial rehab”, but not disincentivized to work. And it shouldn’t stop if you get a job, why, just why would you want an incentive against that.

Some people seem to think there can be consumption without production or life without work, but that’s logically incoherent.

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#83

Post by _a_a_a_ »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #59
EA-3167 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be acting as though addiction and the issues which give rise to it are somehow not part of society, and therefore should be discarded. Even ignoring why that's wrong, ignoring why letting people slip through the cracks still has an impact on your conception of society... ...how about basic human empathy?

> ...how about basic human empathy? How about empathy from your side? I have lost a friend due to addiction despite "care". The best solution is not being exposed to some classes of drugs at all and fixing other issues that cause this.

> I have lost a friend due to addiction

So have I. The drug was alcohol. Adults make choices and live with the consequences. shrug

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#86

Post by SllX »

asymmetric wrote: post #69
virgildotcodes wrote: post #7

Talk about burying the lede, 11 years ago they privatized their drug oversight operation and cut funding by over 80%. Gee, I wonder if that could have an impact? > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by th…

Delegating to nonprofits is not the same as privatizing. Your argument creates a false dichotomy in which the only two possible actors are the state or private enterprises, but that’s not the case, even for the simple reasons that nonprofits are not the same as for-profit entities. Common Pool Resources are a prime example of a paradigm that escapes this dichotomy.

I don’t know how Portuguese law works but in the United States non-profits have private owners and are private corporations. The contrast they have is with “for-profit” corporations, not “private” corporations. Given the primary purpose of being designated a “non-profit” is a tax advantage for the corporation, I’m willing to bet Portuguese corporations likely don’t differ in this manner.

Privatize is an acceptable verbiage for a government or government-owned entity which has outsourced to a private corporation.

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#87

Post by neworbit »

triceratops wrote: post #40
mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

Has any advanced civilization been gung-ho about legalized drugs? There are probably strong socioevolutionary reasons why this is the case.

Other than religious proscriptions against alcohol, I can't think of any civilization in history that has outright banned any drugs. Were the Romans, Egyptians or Persians especially anti-drug? Any of the ancient Indian or Chinese kingdoms and empires? On the other hand, cannabis has a long tradition of use in ancient India[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India

When the Chinese banned opium the British went to war to reopen that market because it was so profitable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

It seems like many drugs are banned in various societies today, so I don't quite follow you.

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#88

Post by themitigating »

m463 wrote: post #77
virgildotcodes wrote: post #7

Talk about burying the lede, 11 years ago they privatized their drug oversight operation and cut funding by over 80%. Gee, I wonder if that could have an impact? > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by th…

Same sort of thing happened with mental illness in california, probably a leading cause of homelessness problems. Years ago, the law was changed to allow mentally-ill but benign or even non-ill people to escape the "snake pits", mental institutions that kept people incarcerated and drugged. This allowed lots of people to recover. But then Ronald Reagan (as governor of california) cut state mental illness funding. Now…

https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...

This nice timelime adds to what this person said.

There's more that helped shape the publics perception of mental health. The movie "One flew over the cukcoos nest" seemed to create a negative perception about these facilities.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1983.53.1.1...

This study in 1983, though small, showed that 4 out of 5 people who were questioned before the film was released ,then after, changed their view of mental institutions to negative. They also showed them a TV documentary that was more factual about the mental health system but it didn't have an impact.

In my opinion this is case of the public hearing about a systemtic issue within a very nessacary institution, regardless of how frequent or serious, becoming upset, locking their view in, then the government taking action by either reducing or eliminating that institution.

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#89

Post by jasonhansel »

EA-3167 wrote: post #23
jasonhansel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that making a behavior more visible tends to normalize it.

Oh well? When the alternative being supported is, "Return to an expensive and inhumane model of frequent and revolving incarceration" I can't say that bothers me much. I'm also fairly sure that seeing a homeless junkie skin up isn't exactly an advertisement for the lifestyle.

There are options between "an inhumane system of frequent and revolving incarceration" and "never punishing public drug use under any circumstances."

Re: Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

#90

Post by virgildotcodes »

asymmetric wrote: post #69
virgildotcodes wrote: post #7

Talk about burying the lede, 11 years ago they privatized their drug oversight operation and cut funding by over 80%. Gee, I wonder if that could have an impact? > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by th…

Delegating to nonprofits is not the same as privatizing. Your argument creates a false dichotomy in which the only two possible actors are the state or private enterprises, but that’s not the case, even for the simple reasons that nonprofits are not the same as for-profit entities. Common Pool Resources are a prime example of a paradigm that escapes this dichotomy.

Hmm? A nonprofit is still a privately controlled entity. Many nonprofits and for-profits are given government grants and subsidies, this does not exclude them from being classified as private entities.

So this still qualifies as privatization, no?

If your contention is more rooted in the amount of direction that the government gives the private entity it is "delegating" to, then maybe that's something to explore?

That said, I would still say that using contractors like Blackwater or Lockheed Martin is "privatizing" various aspects of the military industrial complex, even if their actions are to greater or lesser degrees guided by government mandate.

Post reply on HN