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Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

washingtonpost.com

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

#291

Post by listenallyall »

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…

I have no idea about the history of California's mental-illness funding, so I have no idea if your comment is accurate and Reagan is actually the bad guy (although I suspect it's more complicated).

However, California has run massive surpluses lately: The average ending balance from 2006 through the 2019-20 fiscal year was a surplus of about $2.8 billion; for 2020 through 2022-23 it was more than $37.5 billion.

So why doesn't Newsom, or his predecessors, re-establish the funding? Clearly it isn't a priority to them either.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/06/13/californias-b...

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

#292

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

mcpackieh wrote: post #288
palata wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you think that no non-communist system has ever killed anyone? The point of the parent is that the fact that USSR collapsed does not mean communism (or any kind of less liberal system, for that matter) is fundamentally bad. Just like getting a crash does not mean that the language is fundamentally bad. What about this one, following your reasoning: "The Nazi were producing cars, and the Nazi brought us into a…

Communism is bad because communists think the ends justify the means and (as you are demonstrating) shamelessly excuse tens of millions of murders (proving they've learned nothing and will do it again when given the chance.)

I don't think communists "think the ends justify the means" any more than capitalists do, probably less if anything.

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

#293

Post by listenallyall »

bandrami wrote: post #286
raverbashing wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how long has it been that Reagan is no longer the governor and why hasn't funding been restored?

CA also in that time passed a ballot initiative that made it essentially impossible to raise taxes. It's also the reason college got so expensive.

they don't need to raise taxes -- California has run huge budget surpluses

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

#295

Post by danShumway »

Izkata wrote: post #223
estebank wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from the article > 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 the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. You'll notice that 2012 comes before 2019.

That's talking about a spike between 2019 and 2023. Why did it take nearly a decade to happen, then happen all at once? Seems like something else changed more recently than the funding in 2012.

> Why did it take nearly a decade to happen, then happen all at once?

Well, by that logic clearly decriminalization wasn't the cause. Why would the negative effect take nearly two decades to happen, then happen all at once? Seems like something else changed more recently than the decriminalization in 2001.

----

Snarkiness aside, I find these discussions on HN to be mostly pointless and circular, precisely for this reason. There's very little actually substantive discussion happening under this article. A trend was noticed, one side has an explanation, the other side says "nah, I don't think that's it" and then we go in circles saying "hmmm... doesn't sound convincing to me" and meme a bit about Singapore and Seattle. It's HN at its worst.

That this comment exists almost immediately after another comment further upstream saying "well, of course we wouldn't expect to see the negative effects of decriminalization immediately" to me sums up how entirely arbitrary online arguments about decriminalization often are.

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

#296

Post by lotsofpulp »

listenallyall wrote: post #291
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…

I have no idea about the history of California's mental-illness funding, so I have no idea if your comment is accurate and Reagan is actually the bad guy (although I suspect it's more complicated). However, California has run massive surpluses lately: The average ending balance from 2006 through the 2019-20 fiscal year was a surplus of about $2.8 billion; for 2020 through 2022-23 it was more than $37.5 billion. So wh…

I would not want my state to establish funding because then it would become other states’ dumping grounds.

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

#297

Post by dan-robertson »

comfortabledoug wrote: post #266
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…

What about the other quotes from the article that have nothing to do with funding... > “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,” said Keith Humphreys, former senior drug policy adviser in the Obama administration and a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. “Then word gets out that there’s an open…

I thought the implementations in the US were very different from those in Portugal though?

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

bolangi wrote: post #229
bugglebeetle wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They slashed funding to successful parts of the strategy and now claim the strategy failed. Neoliberalism in a nutshell.

It's a bit like the matrix, wherever something good and helpful starts to develop anywhere, an agent in a green suit appears to put a stop to it.

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by tinus_hn »

vsviridov wrote: post #227
andrewstuart wrote: post #221

You can’t just decriminalize owning drugs, you have to legalize selling drugs. That’s how you get rid of the criminals in the system. And selling drugs should not be a fabulous glamorous advertised social endevour like marijuana in the USA. Drugs should be sold like tobacco in Australia…. behind the counter, zero advertising, zero branding.

Except people start reselling legal drugs to the jurisdiction where they remain illegal... For this to work out as intended it would have to be planet-wide.

Sounds like a problem for that other jurisdiction.

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

#300

Post by WeylandYutani »

comfortabledoug wrote: post #266
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…

What about the other quotes from the article that have nothing to do with funding... > “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,” said Keith Humphreys, former senior drug policy adviser in the Obama administration and a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. “Then word gets out that there’s an open…

When the Netherlands had a heroine junkie problem in the 80s/early 90s the solution was to accept that most of them were going to die. So the government tried to make their death reasonably comfortable. Economic fortunes turned and the nation became decadent and filthy rich again so the problem was fixed.

Drug use is correlated to the economy and the happiness of the population. Portugal needs to fix unemployment and get some economic growth going.

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