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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

#611

Post by Aerroon »

defrost wrote: post #564
99_00 wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see the benefit of unrestricted access to medicines but you completely ignore the harms. That's one sided thinking.

The key complaint above as I read it is the cost of both the drug and the doctor's visit. It's entirely possible to have chaep prescription asthma medication regulated by low cost national health care subsidised doctors appointments.

My complaint is: why can't I just buy the asthma inhaler without any kind of subsidy? I know I have asthma, I know how to use an inhaler, but I'm simply not allowed to. Instead I just have to hope for the best when breathing gets difficult.

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

#612

Post by P_I_Staker »

galfarragem wrote: post #310

It's so annoying to read over and over this BS about the success of Portugal's old policies on drugs. It is blatantly false. I grew up in a top drug spot in Portugal. Things were bad, really bad. I would say that worse was impossible, every extended family had drug problems. After the early 90's peak, slowly it got better, addicts' younger brothers and neighbors had real examples. Doing drugs was not "cool" anymore.…

What you're talking about sounds just like the eb and flow of drug markets everywhere. So the policy did nothing either way? Far fewer people were incarcerated? That seems like a net positive and smashing success to me. Portugals policies were a success. It's blatantly true.

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

#613

Post by P_I_Staker »

eastbound wrote: post #374
boredumb wrote: post #354

Anyone who thinks funding rehab centers and getting homeless drug addicts into free apartment units are people who have never been around homeless drug addicts. There may be some wonderful examples of this working but 99.8% of the people you will encounter on your commute are not about to participate in rehab, and if you ask them they will give you a history of apartments and homes they've been asked to leave due to…

Honest question: Why are mental issues so prevalent in USA? Temptative hypothesis 1: People have less roots than in Europe, so they don’t belong somewhere, and have weak ties with close family and no ties with extended family, so they move, and when they fall off their life, there is no social safety net? Temptative hypothesis 2: Americans classify any bad mood as a mental issue? Temptative 3: Medical aid is too expe…

#6 they're prevelant everywhere including Europe, and care for them is terrible everywhere, including Europe.

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

#614

Post by Broken_Hippo »

za3faran wrote: post #596
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the approach of trying to address the symptoms and not the cause. I also mention homicides in my post, but some people are conveniently ignoring it. The dangers of alcohol have been well documented.

In general, me drinking a beer doesn't harm you, though. At all. And this is true for the vast majority of people.

I suspect you think the cause is the alcohol: But realistically, it is that people don't always plan ahead. As far as drunk driving is concerned, robust transport would be a step in the right direction. Especially in the countryside and small towns - in the US, these are filled with bars but no transport.

The link with homocides isn't nearly as clear. More people drink alcohol than other drugs and from what I could find, it might be a part of a series of events than anything else, at least in the US. If it doesn't hold to other places, then I'll dismiss it. Prohibiting alcohol in public simply isn't going to help, and we've seen what complete prohibition does. Do you have an actual solution that doesn't drive it underground? I'd personally start with improving people's lives in general so that there is less stress all around - at least that stuff we can do something about.

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

#615

Post by P_I_Staker »

Kretinsky wrote: post #65

An interesting part of the article: "state-funded nongovernmental organizations that have largely taken over responding to the people with addiction seem less concerned with treatment than affirming that lifetime drug use should be seen as a human right." It's almost like if NGOs that live off the existence of drug abuse didn't want to kill the cash cow. That's another case of why such public services shouldn't be ex…

> "state-funded nongovernmental organizations that have largely taken over responding to the people with addiction seem less concerned with treatment than affirming that lifetime drug use should be seen as a human right."

I don't understand why this is a problem. That is very sensible and a reasonable place to put most of your efforts.

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

#616

Post by P_I_Staker »

mike4ty4 wrote: post #526
fwlr wrote: post #218

Punishing people for being addicted to drugs is miserable, and having people be addicted to drugs is also miserable. When drugs were criminalized, the state had to dole out a lot of misery in punishments, but this also depressed the addiction/usage rate, which consequently lowered the drug addiction misery by some amount as well (not necessarily by more than the extra misery that punishment brought, but not necessari…

This is a good/interesting way to look at it ... add up the total misery level instead of pretending that in either case "the misery" has stopped because you deliberately exclude one or the other miseries from the accounting. Punishment does deter things. Whether it is the only thing that can is a different matter. But I think a lot of those who want alternatives need to get out of the "punishment does not deter" nar…

> add up the total misery level instead of pretending that in either case "the misery" has stopped because you deliberately exclude one or the other miseries from the accounting.

You can't do this. It is neither ethical or practical. There's plenty we could do as a society that may hypothetically "reduce misery", but we don't insofar as it violates their rights.

It's not even possible to do. This is highly subjective. For instance, how do you rate the genocide that's baked into prohibition? Does that just not count because you don't respect a part of our subculture? What about people that are now in pain and misery, but we're maybe hurting their health with illegal drugs (although some of them seemed to be doing fine and not increasing their dosages).

Does the fact that they were previously dependent on drugs, somehow negate their pain, or inability to function well. Is being addicted to drugs some kind of weird nightmare scenario, like the matrix, where the subject is always worse off?

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

#617

Post by 99_00 »

Aerroon wrote: post #611
defrost wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key complaint above as I read it is the cost of both the drug and the doctor's visit. It's entirely possible to have chaep prescription asthma medication regulated by low cost national health care subsidised doctors appointments.

My complaint is: why can't I just buy the asthma inhaler without any kind of subsidy? I know I have asthma, I know how to use an inhaler, but I'm simply not allowed to. Instead I just have to hope for the best when breathing gets difficult.

You don't know that you have asthma because you haven't been diagnosed by a doctor.

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

#618

Post by DropInIn »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #608
DropInIn wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, before we can get funding for treatment we need public will, right? So long as they are viewed as degenerates unwilling to engage in basic care, there will never be the public will. And for some they wouldn't take the help even if it was available, because for a minority it is in fact a lifestyle choice. Given both those facts, the first step to getting public will for treatment is to minimize the negative percep…

> So, before we can get funding for treatment we need public will, right? Again, that's a different problem entirely. In my Country healthcare is public and funded by taxation. We also have publicly funded damage reduction centers where they provide methadone to heroin addicts, problem is most of the time they do not show up voluntarily because of the stigma associated with it, secondly because those willingly partic…

> They aren't all degenerates, you are putting emphasis on something no one ever said, but they are obviously unwilling or they would not need special treatments.

Holy hell active misrepresentation much? Or is your reading comprehension just that poor?

You even quoted it yet didnt actually read it?

> So long as they are viewed as degenerates unwilling to engage in basic care

VIEWED AS

That's not remotely the same as actually being such.

Your whole diatribe is the same disingenuous, misrepresentative, seemingly deceptive, bs.

I'm not engaging with someone so dishonest, regardless of their intentionality.

Be better.

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

#619

Post by DropInIn »

knightofmars wrote: post #604
DropInIn wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sh-t The context was the impacts of X substance vs Y substance, right? In all cases the actual cause is the underlying problems but it's the substance that (is perceived as) causes the manifestation that otherwise wouldn't occur, right? So what purpose did your comment actually serve into he thread other than to derail an extant line of discourse?

I suspect this is a case of under communication on both are parts. What I saw, you ended on a very vague set of statements that I assume were supposed to support that you were saying. "Alcohol was far more popular and consistently harmful..." Implication of alcohol being more harmful without evidence to support the claim. History tells us lots of stories. For example, just because the temperance movement existed does…

Opium addicts pass out, alcoholics beat and rape thier wives.

That's a line straight out of the temperance era.

I don't know why I needed to be more explicit....

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

#620

Post by dang »

orangepurple wrote: post #505
momirlan wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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