Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

Post by fy20 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:35 AM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #166

quickthrower2 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if respondents were unbiased and truthful. That sounds like a useless metric to me. You need a metric of the harm to society. Drug motivated violent crime for example.

Quote from the article: > Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage. In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the las…

Post by lazystar » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:36 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 dazc » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:39 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #197

“When you first back off enforcement, there are not many people walking over the line that you’ve removed. And the public think it’s working really well. Then word gets out that there’s an open market, limits to penalties, and you start drawing in more drug users. Then you’ve got a more stable drug culture, and, frankly, it doesn’t look as good anymore.” There's the Singapore solution. "Singapore executes man for tra…

Post by samtho » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:42 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #86

asymmetric wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ve…

Post by dazc » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 7:43 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…