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Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

economist.com

251–252 of 252 posts

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#251
post #145
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is with your use of the word "condone". I'm sure you meant it in the sense of "like", but it sounds as though you meant "give permission". I suspect the reply is basically saying, "I didn't ask your permission for anything." :-)

Merrian-Webster defines "condone" as "to regard or treat (something bad or blameworthy) as acceptable". That's exactly how I meant it.

What you find acceptable is not relevant to the bodies of others. This is why "condone" is inappropriate.

It is simply classless and rude to insinuate that your notions of what is or is not acceptable have any relation whatsoever to the bodies of other people.

Re: Illegal drugs: The wars don’t work

#252
post #31

It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…

Has this reduced other related crime as well? Is there a general perception that things are safer?

It's hard to correlate the two because there have been several policies put in place to reduce crime over the years, don't forget that our main industry is tourism and happy people spend more :-).

I can tell you that in the late 90s some areas of Lisbon were pretty dismal if not outright dangerous, and now the city seems much safer. I believe there are some studies on the effects on crime rates mentioned in one of the links above (my original comment).

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