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...
people can be happy in many ways. misery is awfully similar though.
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…
I've made that argument for years. Decriminalization doesn't work because it enables the black market - people should do everything in their power to eliminate the black market. This means real legalization. It's the only way to actually fix the overdose problem. Our number 1 priority should be to keep people from dying. I'm open to harsh penalties on public use, though. This shouldn't be happening in front of schools and in parks.
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…
I think part of it is how isolated the us is. We don't really have walkable neighborhoods in most of the country, which means less spur of the moment decisions to gather at a social place and more isolation since so many people are commuting in single occupancy vehicles and doing drive throughs. Combine that with wealth stratification, Hussle culture, and the complete lack of any real social safety net and if anythin…
Isolation is a big one. The classic study people bring up is the “cocaine rat”.
The rat in isolation was drawn to the bottle with cocaine water. When the rat was in a cage with activites and other rats, lost the preference for the cocaine water.
> Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use. Why not on economic hardship around the pandemic? Am I the only one having the feeling that drog use was picked to blame for some of the troubles experienced (not all, visible use must be a burden, just like the visible alcoholismn on streets and related ill behaviour) and the article…
I have the same feeling. There are problems, so let's point at a marginalized group or a thing that people look down upon, and now we have less to explain!
I wanted to engage with you until I got to this part. Jesus, this whole post is just on another level when it comes to hatred, misinformation ("the science support this", huhh?) and ridiculous ideas (e.g. sure, what could go wrong with forced institutionalisation?).
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…
I have read that some overdoses occur when an addict gets clean for a while then relapses. They think they can tolerate the same dosage they were taking when they quit but their body can't handle tolerate it now, ie, they have to work back up to that dosage. Not sure how common that is, but better labeling and higher-quality drugs wouldn't help, though I agree, letting pharma companies manufacture street drugs and selling them legally would be a good thing.
These guys are not even selling you drugs. They are selling you some fake thing. They just swindle tourists. They are hustlers not even real drug dealers. I'm Portuguese and lived in Lisbon for 12 years. Trust me, you can't buy drugs from those guys
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,…
Maybe that's why they harass tourists. Tourists are exploited in a myriad of cheap ways everywhere. This long article is just the common ones seen all around the world:
Have you seen how much San Francisco and Seattle have improved with drug tolerant policies?
Have you seen how many people are being left behind everyday by the economy, leaving them nothing else to feel good about except maybe some drugs? What makes you think that drug use has anything much to do at all with drug policy? People take drugs because society is shit, not because of the rule of law.
This goes both ways.
Society also becomes shit because people take drugs.
Yes. Portugal. When they fully funded their rehab and social service program, the system worked. Then they reduced funding and seem surprised the programs don’t work any more.
Portugal decriminalised personal drug possession in 2001. We should not expect the impact to immediately present. It takes years and often decades for these policies to affect change. How do you know it’s the reduced funding of rehab programs and not the decriminalisation which caused this issue? Especially given the low success rate of rehab programs.
Interestingly, the opinion of one who reportedly lived there[0] suggests it’s sort of “endemic” in the culture and that government policy (including decriminalization) has had relatively little effect as compared to the decisions made by citizens.
Of particular interest to note is the commenter’s perception that this spike is less bad as in the 90s. Not trying to draw any conclusions based on this but it seems just as presumptive to believe that decriminalization has had this negative effect, regardless of how long it takes to “kick in” so to speak.