3 ms·

I don't have a strong opinion on Portugal's drug policy. But I do think there's a flaw in the premise of this article: the success of Portugal's policy here wa

I don't have a strong opinion on Portugal's drug policy. But I do think there's a flaw in the premise of this article: the success of Portugal's policy here was dependent on Portugal's culture, history, population, and a host of other factors that can't be replicated in another country. It's as though I think the United States Constitution is a great thing — as in fact I do — and say, "The radical US Constitution has worked. Why hasn't the world copied it?" You can't lift one feature of a culture out, apply it in isolation, and expect it to function as it did in context.

AdrianB1 7y ago
Not really: Portugal's history, culture and population has no relationship to drug use. There is no history of drug addictions, no culture about it (not even Woodstock), people are similar to other Latin countries in Europe, nothing there to say Portugal is an exception and their solution will not work for others.
rstuart4133 7y ago
> Portugal's policy here was dependent on Portugal's culture, history, population, and a host of other factors that can't be replicated in another country. What Portugal did was pretty straight forward. A lot of people were dying from drugs. They decided it might be because if you sought treatment you we hauled in front of a judge and from there usually went to jail. They didn't decriminalise it - you are still hauled before a judge. But from there the next step was treatment for the addiction. Not surprisingly, the evidence directed treatments works better than the non-evidence directed treatment (jail) so a lot less people end up being severely harmed by them. As a bonus those treatments were a lot cheaper than incarcerating them. The real difficulty is doing that is having a central government strong enough to get it done. Obviously having such a government is somehow related to "culture, history, or population", but only tangentially as I'm sure every parliament in OECD countries could do it equally well regardless of their history. The only difficulty they would be have is opposition from people who are presumably like you and think it would do more harm than good. The only facet that could be surprising is it didn't change the level of drug usage overly. Roughly the same number of people use drugs in Portugal - the only differences are a lot less harms are caused and their habit costs society as a whole a lot less. I don't know what percentage of people think that that way. It's a bit foreign to me, as I find the idea of trying to prevent people from injecting poisons into their blood stream by threatening to harm them in other ways to be downright odd.

AdrianB1 7y ago

Not really: Portugal's history, culture and population has no relationship to drug use. There is no history of drug addictions, no culture about it (not even Woodstock), people are similar to other Latin countries in Europe, nothing there to say Portugal is an exception and their solution will not work for others.

rstuart4133 7y ago

> Portugal's policy here was dependent on Portugal's culture, history, population, and a host of other factors that can't be replicated in another country. What Portugal did was pretty straight forward. A lot of people were dying from drugs. They decided it might be because if you sought treatment you we hauled in front of a judge and from there usually went to jail. They didn't decriminalise it - you are still hauled before a judge. But from there the next step was treatment for the addiction. Not surprisingly, the evidence directed treatments works better than the non-evidence directed treatment (jail) so a lot less people end up being severely harmed by them. As a bonus those treatments were a lot cheaper than incarcerating them. The real difficulty is doing that is having a central government strong enough to get it done. Obviously having such a government is somehow related to "culture, history, or population", but only tangentially as I'm sure every parliament in OECD countries could do it equally well regardless of their history. The only difficulty they would be have is opposition from people who are presumably like you and think it would do more harm than good. The only facet that could be surprising is it didn't change the level of drug usage overly. Roughly the same number of people use drugs in Portugal - the only differences are a lot less harms are caused and their habit costs society as a whole a lot less. I don't know what percentage of people think that that way. It's a bit foreign to me, as I find the idea of trying to prevent people from injecting poisons into their blood stream by threatening to harm them in other ways to be downright odd.