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Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

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

#231

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #49
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…

Why should the state spend any money here at all? If you want the freedom from society to use drugs, then you shouldn't rely on society for that.

People don’t live isolated from each other. Drug consumption has knock on effect on the rest of the population: traffic props up organised crime, addicts can be violent. Plus there is a direct correlation between social issues and the risk of becoming an addict. All of this is squarely in the remit of the state.

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

#232

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

slashdev wrote: post #82
KerrAvon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Who’s going to pay for that?

Anyone who wants to live in a better society, who realises this policy would help achieve that.

> Why would those people want to work if they can just freeload?

Because most people want more than just the absolute necessities of life.

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

#233

Post by stinos »

jdmoreira wrote: post #182
thucydides wrote: post #61

n=1: during my visit to lisbon in 2021, i was accosted twice by burly guys near my hotel[1] who aggressively asked if i wanted to buy weed or cocaine. the first time, the guy was so angry at my refusal ("no thanks, man") that he followed me up a public staircase to continue his pitch. he backed off when i returned his verbal aggression. so maybe the portuguese policy could use some tweaking. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/y…

These guys are not even selling you drugs. They are selling you some fake thing. They just swindle tourists. They are hustlers not even real drug dealers. I'm Portuguese and lived in Lisbon for 12 years. Trust me, you can't buy drugs from those guys

Trust me, you can't buy drugs from those guys

What I don't get about this: most people seem to know (think?) this. So you'd think these guys have no income at all because no-one is trusting them so no-one buys from them. Yet after decades they're still there, in a lot of cities. So there must be something which works in this system. I find it hard to believe they survive off the occasional sell to a tourist. I mean, could be, but seems far fatched to me?

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

#234

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

oneshtein wrote: post #159
palata wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

USSR did that. USSR collapsed. 250M of people suffered, more than 30M died. Rinse and repeat.

You would never apply this attitude to programming. "Well, I got a segfault, better never touch this C language again..."

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

#235

Post by SllX »

samtho wrote: post #207
SllX wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In most situations, a non-profit entity cannot be owned by a corporation in such a way that would give it controlling interest. If you are planning on filing for tax exemption, this is absolutely the case. A non-profit, however, can own (partially or completely) a for-profit corporation and have controlling interests.

Sure, but also that doesn’t contradict the nature of a non-profits as corporations with a private ownership structure. Non-profit is the colloquialism for a corporation with a certain status per a statute that grants the corporation some tax exemptions in exchange for their ability to return a profit. The corporation receives a benefit for this status and is subject to stricter accounting rules, but is still a private corporation in and of itself.

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

#236

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

belval wrote: post #110
jurynulifcation wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the least responsible drug users be the standard measurement?

There's a debate to be had on that for sure. I'm not for prohibition, I voted to legalize cannabis (even though I don't consume it) because it didn't seem much worse than alcohol and realistically once 50%+ of you population has tried it, that ship has sailed. Some people claim it helps them relax, sleep, etc... Now with that said, crack, meth and heroin are not "social drugs" and are not compatible with a healthy so…

> it didn't seem much worse than alcohol

Honestly, I don't think anyone can seriously claim it is anywhere near as bad as alcohol, other than in two regards: smoking isn't great for you (but that's a method problem, not a substance one) and the smell in public (which is a minor issue and, again, one that can be mitigated).

By any other measure - addiction, short-term and long-term harms, indirect harm to third-parties - alcohol is worse.

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

#237

Post by nelsonic »

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…

Whoever approved the cut in funding by 80% needs to be in prison for the harm they have caused.

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

#238

Post by skissane »

samtho wrote: post #207
SllX wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In most situations, a non-profit entity cannot be owned by a corporation in such a way that would give it controlling interest. If you are planning on filing for tax exemption, this is absolutely the case. A non-profit, however, can own (partially or completely) a for-profit corporation and have controlling interests.

> In most situations, a non-profit entity cannot be owned by a corporation in such a way that would give it controlling interest.

I think you mean to say, "a non-profit entity cannot be owned by a for-profit entity in such a way that would give it controlling interest"

A corporation can be non-profit (aka not-for-profit), and there is no problem with non-profit corporation A owning non-profit corporation B. Non-profit vs for-profit is orthogonal to corporate vs other (e.g. trust) legal structure.

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

#239

Post by comfortabledoug »

randomdata wrote: post #222
99_00 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't. Vancouver and Portugal have very different policy. In Portugal drug possession, use are illegal. They aren't criminal but are illegal and carry penalties at special drug courts which give less protect to defendents. Also, Vancouver's downtown core hardly had any families and things families need simply aren't available downtown.

> Vancouver and Portugal have very different policy. They shouldn't be all that different. Vancouver (well, British Columbia) has tried to model its decriminalization efforts after Portugal's. That decriminalization hasn't even been around for more than a handful of months, though, so it seems rather early for Vancouver to also be having doubts. Nobody was expecting things to change overnight; Health Canada allowed u…

Vancouver and BC's opioid crisis gets worse and worse as the policies continue to become more and more liberal. Every year there are more tent cities, more crime, and more overdose deaths.

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

#240

Post by femiagbabiaka »

scarface_74 wrote: post #143
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe look at Singapore and other places where it went right?

And Singapore is mostly homogenous….

What? The country has four official languages. It is arguably close to the US level of diversity, especially when you consider the implications of how multiracial children are classified and the fact that 70 something percent of the country is put into a vague “Chinese” bucket.
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