Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

Post by bugglebeetle » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 5:55 AM UTC

vngzs wrote: post #10

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…

Indeed. They slashed funding to successful parts of the strategy and now claim the strategy failed. A convenient narrative for politicians, but hardly truth.

Post by connicpu » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 5:55 AM UTC

cafard wrote: post #107

themitigating wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There were movies before Cuckoo's Nest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies

Post by germinalphrase » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:00 AM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #88

m463 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by ReptileMan » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #12

> Porto’s police have increased patrols to drug-plagued neighborhoods. But given existing laws, there’s only so much they can do. On a recent afternoon, an emaciated man in striped pants sleeping in front of a state-funded drug-use center awoke to a patrol of four officers. He sat up, then defiantly began assembling his crack pipe. Officers walked on, shaking their heads. What were they supposed to in a different cou…

Post by oneshtein » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:11 AM UTC

palata wrote: post #97

lolinder wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing the rich from getting richer does nothing in and of itself to help the poor. You might do things to help the poor that as a side effect make it harder to accrue absurd amounts of wealth, but if your goal from the outset is simply to eliminate all billionaires, there are lots of ways to do that that will only end up hurting the poor as well.

Can we reasonably assume that in the idea of "looking at the ultra rich to help solving poverty", there is fundamentally an idea that... well... it should be done in a way that will help poverty? Or was it that unclear that I was talking about solving poverty, with the idea that all the money that goes for ultra rich could actually be distributed better?