Live data from Hacker News

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

washingtonpost.com

371–380 of 660 posts

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

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Criminalize public drug use.

Provide basic unregulated housing, not unlike squattable buildings. Set up AI monitored surveillance and prohibit attempts to form any kind of exploitative enterprise. Self registration with biometric access. Provide fentanyl dispensers. Come through once a day and dispose of the dead.

Create an exit ramp where those that wish to can easily climb out through rehab into a viable path forward. Just by walking out they can register for rehab and get on a bus to a facility with an on-ramp to society.

Let them live in the stark misery that they choose so they can confront it head on and decide if that’s what they want. But keep them outside of the general population during their self destruction process.

Provide stepping-stone housing, mental health services, and educational on-ramps for people that need housing and can test clean of the typical death-spiral drugs.

It should be made clear that certain kinds of drug use are part of a suicide process. Make it unattractive to flirt with, and limit it to private spaces.

Social drugs such as alcohol and thc are not so incompatible with society and don’t really need regulatory interference aside from limiting access to minors.

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

#372

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…

"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.”

What's wrong with having a "drug culture" exactly?

"Meanwhile, overdoses this year in Portland, the state’s largest city, have surged 46 percent."

First, Portland is not Portugal.

Second, are the overdoses happening in people who use legal drugs?

From what I understand, overdoses usually happen when people don't know the dose they're getting, which is a consequence of them using illegal drugs which have no quality control and no reliable labeling as to dosage. So not only do you not know what you're getting, but may get a dose that's much larger than you anticipated.

Having access to legal, high quality drugs which are clearly labeled should eliminate most of the risks of unintentional overdose.

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

#373

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…

[deleted]

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

#374

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 expensive when you’re, by definition, fallen off at the feet of the social ladder?

Temptative 4: Capitalism separates people? Financial success separates people?

Temptative 5: CIA needed off-network money to fund ISIS, so they traded drugs in Columbia, sold to poor schmocks in Texas, and got the money to pay ISIS? (everyone is a victim here)

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

#375
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homeless drug addicts covers a huge range of people. Many actually claw their way back into normal society. No solution is going to fix everyone but you can minimize the externalities from homelessness. It’s simply an optimization problem. Prison is horrendously expensive, and people on the street have real externalities for everyone in the area.

I was with you until “simply”. Nothing about this problem is simple.

Being an optimization problem doesn’t mean it’s simple, just that there are tradeoffs.

If anything the complexity is why it’s an optimization problem.

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

#376

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…

This is a real question, not a retort. But I have known addicts, they don’t exactly take care of their things. It’s very easy to imagine that much of the state supplied housing would quickly become unsafe and or destroyed. How do you handle that?

Concrete. Everything concrete. Anything not concrete is removable.

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

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

"And that last bit - about a death sentence? That is only for a few addicts. A subset of addicts die."

Not only that, but most drug users aren't addicts.

To the general public, when they hear the words "drug user" they immediately equate that with "addict", and many can't even imagine that people could use drugs and not get addicted.

But that's not true, as addicts are a small minority of drug users.

Drug policy affects far more than just addicts. Lots of non-addicted users are affected too.

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

#378

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.…

[deleted]

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

#379
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.)

You obviously have absolutely no idea what communists think, and what "communism" means.

What you are demonstrating is that it is impossible to talk with you. Not sure if that is because you can't understand a basic sentence or just because you aren't open to even learn what a word means before making completely wrong conclusions, but I don't care. We won't have a constructive discussion, let's stop here.

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

#380

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…

Good point. Does anyone know how Norway has handled drugs and homelessness? The reason I ask is that we should probably compare funding and outcomes between Portugal and Norway, no? Two things are needed to change human behavior: 1. A strong deterrent 2. An equally strong support system (ie. Healthcare, housing, food, basic income) You can’t do both of these without a strong financial investment unless… You’re Singap…

You can't compare Portugal and Norway directly as you can survive as homeless in Portugal during winter time (10°C, 50°F) but Norway is so far north that you will likely die if you don't have insulated shelter during winter.

If the government in Norway don't provide shelter, it is the same as directly saying "we don't mind these people die".

Post reply on HN