The problem with exuberant cries--otherwise gratifyingly progressive--to import this tactic into the US is the implication that such policies can be transplante

The problem with exuberant cries--otherwise gratifyingly progressive--to import this tactic into the US is the implication that such policies can be transplanted hermetically, in an acontextual (and perhaps ahistorical) way. The feasibility of successfully recasting habitual hard drug use as a medical problem would, in reality, depend on a huge constellation of other independent features of socioeconomic policy and culture. I think these features are not present here as they are there, or in the necessary proportion. For one, without a government healthcare sector and universal coverage, a question will immediately arise in the US that does not arise quite so readily or with such urgency in Portugal: "Who is going to pay for these addicts' treatment?" I think that's just one example. There are many other things about the somewhat more raw and brutal existence in America as a mentally ill--or otherwise chronically ill--person that might yield unsuccessful, or at least orthogonal results.