

Portugal drug law shows results ten years on, experts say - gruseom
http://news.yahoo.com/portugal-drug-law-show-results-ten-years-experts-180013798.html

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hartror
This policy should make sense to anyone who has ever had any involvement with
someone with an addiction. Generally the addiction is a symptom of other
problems, often mental illness, that if treated appropriately would help
prevent a slide back into addiction.

I would be interested to see a comparison of the total cost of this policy
contrasted against, for example, the US style. Certainly I would expect the
initial outlay to be greater in the Portuguese style system but as it gets
people out of the system for good the lifetime cost should be lower. While I
don't like to have everything measured with a monetary cost, social and moral
duties are important, it would make it an easier sell to law makers and their
constituents.

~~~
barrkel
If you talk to an economist, they'll find a way to put monetary values on
"social and moral duties"; there are all sorts of tricks for teasing them out.
Money is just a score, a way of measuring and quantifying things (and of
course, if you're not measuring, it's not science, in so far as social science
is ever science).

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ilitirit
I read this recently:

> That fewer young people are trying drugs in Portugal may be the case
> (“Radical drug law could be imported to Britain”, April 22). But this simply
> reflects a Europe-wide trend, nowhere more evident than in the United
> Kingdom. The alarming Europe-wide increase in young people’s illicit drug
> use between 1995 and 2003 has come to a halt and is decreasing — in Portugal
> by rather less than the European average.

[http://dpnoc.ca/2011/05/01/portugal-drug-direction-
praised-f...](http://dpnoc.ca/2011/05/01/portugal-drug-direction-praised-for-
all-the-wrong-reasons/)

Now I'm fairly skeptical of any article of this sort written by someone from
an organization who has "oppose legalization of drugs" as one of their
principles, but I've checked some of their facts against the UNODC World Drug
Report and they seem sound. Now either I'm missing something, or the UNODC
report is wrong, or there's something else not being taken into account. Can
anyone shed some light?

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yaix
Not really surprising. Rehabilitation and re-socialization are common for
treatment of other criminals in Europe too. It makes much more sense than
"getting revenge" by locking people up to "punish them", especially if the
crime they committed is largely victim-less (in case of drug abuse its the
offender who is actually the victim at the same time).

~~~
iwwr
Why should drug users even have to be forced to take medical 'treatment' if
they have not otherwise committed any other crimes.

The problem with rehabilitation is that it places people at the mercy of
subjective assessment for _unlimited time_. In the case of prison at least
there is a definite term, but those undergoing rehabilitation may never be
released (they may simply never be deemed 'cured').

But note that we are talking about an otherwise victimless crime here.

~~~
garyrichardson
Doing illegal drugs may be victimless, but I can pretty much guarantee that an
addict has at committed other crime to support their habit (like theft or
prostitution).

Furthermore, study the organizations that supply the drugs (Hell's Angels for
instance), and consider the amount of crime they perpetrate, directly related
to the drug trade. For instance, murder (turf war), theft, various building
code violations (grow ops are typically fire hazards), etc.

Bottom line, it takes a lot of crime to support a single addict.

~~~
yid
There are millions of prescription drug abusers living in upper middle class
suburbs; are they overwhelmingly guilty of prostitution and supporting a crime
infrastructure too?

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olifante
I live in Portugal and know many doctors. The fact that drug addicts are now
able to use public health services without fear of arrest is huge.

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abalashov
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.

~~~
gruseom
_Who is going to pay_

Treating people costs less than imprisoning them.

~~~
icebraining
Definitively. These places (I know on of them) have almost no expenses with
personnel; the people interned there do all the work - including growing
vegetables for food, although they obviously get other kind of food from
outside - and there are no guards or anything like that.

