Whenever someone points out Portugal and you talk to them you find that they think just decriminalization turned Portugal into a beautiful utopia. In practice

Whenever someone points out Portugal and you talk to them you find that they think just decriminalization turned Portugal into a beautiful utopia. In practice decriminalization was 20% of the action. The important 80% was investing heavily in social workers, public health, and temporary housing so that people on drugs could receive treatment. What other countries fail to appreciate is that people in these conditions are almost always self-medicating or escaping something. So great, you don't put them in jail, but they continue living in a vicious addictive hell with no hope for a better future or of ever regaining their lives. That's not exactly compassionate is it? The metric to track can't be: "didn't die" or "didn't incarcerate", it should be "regained their life" and "broke their addiction".