Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 660 posts

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

#391

Post by shuckles »

Retric wrote: post #370
shuckles wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In San Francisco, where I am most familiar, SROs which are used to house homeless junkies are the primary location of overdose deaths, even though they house fewer junkies than the streets surrounding them.

Different populations, you really need to randomly assign people to each group to discover if it’s harmful or a side effect of the selection criteria. I would expect people in SF SROs to OD more for multiple reasons, but I haven’t seen any research on the specifics.

While it's true that shelter placement has some advantages for high needs folks (e.g. older, women, or disabled), those themselves don't correlate with opioid overdose deaths. There was a randomized trial of permanent supportive housing, which is a stronger intervention than simple housing, in Santa Clara (DOI 10.1111/1475-6773.13553) where those who received PSH died at slightly higher rates than those did not and never found housing of their own.

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

#392

Post by carlosjobim »

asymmetric wrote: post #69
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…

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.

Non-profits are private.

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

#393

Post by momirlan »

K0balt wrote: post #371
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tent cities don't exist solely in places without access to housing "Access to housing" isn't enough. You might have "access" to health care but unable to afford it. You need housing as a right - even without payment - alongside enough adequate housing for everyone. And allow folks to do things in their own home. If they cannot do it at their home with other people, the person in question does not have adequate housin…

Life is misery by default, as a natural consequence of life itself. The never ending tyranny of the need to eat and avoid being eaten is the normal state of affairs. Honestly, if a person isn’t up for it, we need to stop trying to convince them to stay around and be miserable. Elective suicide should be a basic right, and drugs are one way out. We only create misery by “helping” people that don’t want hep. Criminaliz…

that is the premise of a good distopian movie. or a book, if you prefer.

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

#394

Post by shuckles »

pmoriarty wrote: post #387
shuckles wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the California budget is famously boom and bust (currently running large deficits) because it relies on income taxes instead of property taxes, the former of which vary a lot with economic conditions while the latter don’t.

They should start taxing wealth, as many of the wealthiest people have a tiny income in proportion to their wealth.

Wealth taxes* are economically inefficient, impossible to administer, and have little popular support. Consider this: a land value tax is the best (and only good) type of wealth tax, and the people of California hated it so much they voted it out on the ballot!

* Outside of LVT.

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

#395

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

The problem isn't homeless people who are addicts, it's politicians who are addicts.

Homeless and about-to-become homeless addicts are at the bottom of the food chain, with extremely limited agency. Their choices are basically improve (v. difficult), tread water (slightly less difficult) or die (not difficult at all.)

Politicians who are addicts can create and enforce disastrous irrational policies on an entire country.

Self-indulgence and law-breaking are one of the most popular benefits of privilege, and the fact that many "serious people" hide this behind a veneer of upper class respectability doesn't change how toxic this culture is.

I guarantee that any country that institutes mandatory drug tests for politicians, CEOs and senior executives, the entire financial industry, lawyers and judges, and other senior officials, is suddenly going to find itself making much more rational and sane decisions.

If anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, here's the former Chancellor of the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wo3hDtDs7g

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

#396

Post by siffin »

zoky wrote: post #37
gumballindie wrote: post #6

Loads of proposals, all missing the obvious: solve poverty. Portugal and south Europe in general suffer greatly from it. Stats make the region look good on paper but reality is very different.

The link between drug use and poverty is far from clear. While there is a correlation between drug addiction and poverty, there has not been a causal relationship shown between the two. In many cases, poverty may be a result of drug addiction rather than a cause. Consider the much talked about opioid epidemic, for example. The people getting these prescriptions tend towards middle rather than lower class. When the pi…

The link between drug use and poverty is not relevant. It's only addiction and unhealthy drug use that are problematic. Alcohol being the number 1 problematic drug by far.

You jumped through a lot of hoops to explain that there is an avenue from middle class to poverty through drugs, but any avenue from drug use to poverty pales in comparison to the avenues from poverty to drug addiction. People who have no place in society, because they have nothing worth contributing, or for whatever other reason they end up in poverty, they find good feelings and usefulness in drugs, in the participation with others in a similar position.

The link between poverty and drug use is very very clear.

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

#397

Post by tappio »

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.

Ideally, it could also be great source of tax income, which could be further used to help people get rid of drugs.

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

#399

Post by momirlan »

orangepurple wrote: post #362
thriftwy wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A billion people across the world may want a house "as right" in San Francisco. It may only fit three order of magnitudes people realistically, though.

[flagged]

these would not all be drug users, right? most of them would start a successful life in America

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

#400

Post by [deleted] »

shuckles wrote: post #391
Retric wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different populations, you really need to randomly assign people to each group to discover if it’s harmful or a side effect of the selection criteria. I would expect people in SF SROs to OD more for multiple reasons, but I haven’t seen any research on the specifics.

While it's true that shelter placement has some advantages for high needs folks (e.g. older, women, or disabled), those themselves don't correlate with opioid overdose deaths. There was a randomized trial of permanent supportive housing, which is a stronger intervention than simple housing, in Santa Clara (DOI 10.1111/1475-6773.13553) where those who received PSH died at slightly higher rates than those did not and n…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN