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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

#321

Post by seventhtiger »

palata wrote: post #113
lolinder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rhetoric matters, and you didn't say "looking at the ultra rich to help solve poverty", you said "prevent the ultra rich [from] get[ting] even richer". If you had said the former, I wouldn't have objected. What you actually said felt more like class warfare than a serious proposal to help poor people.

It goes, literally, like this: > Solve poverty > How? > Maybe a first step would be to prevent the ultra rich to get even richer. If you can't understand the similarity between this and "looking at the ultra rich to help solve poverty", honestly I don't know what I can do.

You can do us a favor and outline for us how doing that is a first step to solving poverty. Otherwise it seems like you just regurgitated a populist meme.

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

#322

Post by Avshalom »

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…

> Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab.

This feels like it could be a direct result of no funding.

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

#323

Post by bandrami »

listenallyall wrote: post #293
bandrami wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only very recently. We're talking about over the past half-century

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

#324

Post by wizofaus »

dazc wrote: post #205
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…

The opposite of this is the UK where you can go to a festival and have any drugs you bought tested to make sure they are genuine and then handed back to you, no questions asked. Obviously, the solution is somewhere between these two extremes. The softer end seems to be loosing though.

Why is that extreme? How would you "moderate" it?

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

#325

Post by bandrami »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #311
bandrami wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of a ballot initiative that essentially made it impossible to raise taxes.

That is not the reason that spending on mental illness can not be increased.

I mean, yes it is, unless you have equivalent cuts somewhere else you're willing to make that can get through the legislature.

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

#326

Post by Broken_Hippo »

za3faran wrote: post #105
standardUser wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Someone smoking something doesn't bother me, unless maybe if I can smell it, then it bothers me very, very slightly. The same way someone drinking a beer in public doesn't bother me. How could it? If sleeping on the street is a crime, enforce that crime. Don't pretend that if we magically banned all of the hypothetical reasons people might commit that crime that it will eliminate that crime. We can't…

> Someone smoking something doesn't bother me, unless maybe if I can smell it, then it bothers me very, very slightly. Read up about the dangers of second and third degree smoking. > The same way someone drinking a beer in public doesn't bother me. How could it? Perhaps those who've had family or friends killed by drunk driving or drunken homicide might have something else to say.

Perhaps those who've had family or friends killed by drunk driving or drunken homicide might have something else to say.

Maybe, but they aren't the folks we should be listening to. I don't drive: I'm pretty sure I'll be OK drinking a beer in public. My decision shouldn't be influenced by those folks.

I don't see many of those people pushing a robust, fare-free public transportation system to help with those either.

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

#327

Post by hef19898 »

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…

Also, why not getting feed-back from the people directly involved in Portugal? Last time I checked, Oregon wasn't in Portugal, nor was Obama President there...

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

#328

Post by galfarragem »

jdmoreira wrote: post #243
stinos wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It's not occasional. They sell a lot. There is a lot of gullible people in this world and an endless supply of fresh tourists or kids from other towns landing in Lisbon everyday. They only need to scam 1 person a day to make 50€. That's more than most Portuguese earn per day. They scammed me when I was a kid (I wanted weed). Don't you think I know what I'm talking about? You can buy drugs is Lisbon of course but real…

> They sell a lot.

They sell a lot because they will force people to buy whenever possible. Most people buy it to be left alone.

> Police leaves these guys alone because there is no real crime. Scamming tourists is hard to persecute. Not worth it!

Often there is crime: forcing people to buy it's petty crime but most will not complain unless there is violence. It's nearly impossible to jail them with the actual political zeitgeist, making it a waste of time and money. This impunity leaves room for retaliation also.

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

#329

Post by firesteelrain »

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…

Reagan left office in 1975 and there have been several governors since then. But governors don’t set funding - state congresses do so you need to try to blame something else after about 45 years

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

#330

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

mcpackieh wrote: post #302
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We've got a communist in this thread being dismissive of 30 million dead. Communism is morally an intellectually bankrupt. It's an ideology for the bitter and depraved.

Do we? You can't mean me since I haven't referred to 30 million dead. How many have died under capitalism?
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