Thursday, July 11, 2019

Portugal's experience decriminalizing drugs

There seems to be quite a brouhaha over my post about the War on Drugs being stupid.  Opinions are running high, particularly from those on the ER front lines.  I'd like to shift the discussion from the realm of opinion to the realm of fact, specifically Portugal's experience when the decriminalized all drugs in 2001.

This is interesting because it is a long-term experiment on an alternative approach to the current War on Drugs.  There are some unanticipated consequences of their approach:


  • Addiction rates have dropped
  • HIV infection rates are way down
  • Drug related crime is down
  • The voting public has come around from strongly opposed to strongly in favor of decriminalization

This article from a couple years ago is interesting, because it highlights what doctors in Portugal have experienced from all of this.  It's a long read, but worthwhile to show what almost two decades of an alternative to our idiotic War On Drugs has done.

Quite frankly, it looks like not only are they spending a lot less than we are, jailing a lot fewer people than we are, suffering a lot fewer no-knock raids and property seizures than we are, but it seems that medical outcomes are better for drug users.

Sure, they haven't eliminated drugs or addiction - but after a trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of dead and millions in prison we have narcotics for sale on every street corner in the land.  As I said before:
I could go on, but let me sum up: The war on drugs has made us less free, has fueled the growth of the Police/Surveillance State that targets us, has corrupted Law Enforcement and driven a wedge between them and the citizenry.  It has done this while drugs have become both more prevalent and more deadly, and while legitimate patients are forced to turn to illegal drugs because their doctors can't prescribe them the pharmaceuticals that would ease their chronic pain.

And let's return to what started this rant.  Consider the death toll: Ohio expects 10,000 overdose deaths this year, from a population of 11.6 M.  Normalizing this to a US population of 320M gives us an expected overdose death total of almost 300,000 a year nationwide.  That's more than the war dead we suffered in World War II.  And that entirely ignores the fact that most murders in this country are over drug turf battles.

Think about that: all the treasure, all the lost freedom, and we are suffering a World War II each year, every year, with no end in sight.

The War on Drugs is futile, stupid, and evil.  It should end immediately.  This is a stupid game, we're losing, and we shouldn't play.
Maybe Portugal can show us a different approach to the problem.  It sure can't be any worse than the nonsense we're trying right now.

10 comments:

The Lab Manager said...

The big issue is how much does society have to invest in people who do this to themselves? I'm with just letting them go for the most part. Plenty of Americans who want jobs or have jobs that pay squat with little to no health insurance that would be appreciative of medical services.

Aesop said...

Portugal's experience in a homogenous country of a few million isn't even equivalent to the experience (nor bare size) of NYFC. It's as facile a comparison as looking to sparsely-populated Norway for answers on government-run healthcare.

Positing that opening the floodgates of all known drugs will decrease addiction, and the 37 societally corrosive sequllae, is quite simply farcical insanity.

All you would do would make it financially lucrative for the drug lords to get their product over the finish line, where once here and legal, they would rub out all competition, and have a corner on the franchise forever.

We know what that looks like in fact: Mexico.
The cartels rule there, and it's a millimeter away from being a failed state in total collapse.

Just out of curiosity: how did surrendering in the War On Germans work for France in 1940? Was Vichy better than pre-war France? Or worse, maybe?

Forget foreign comparisons. Look no farther than San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Franshitsco right now, since only legalizing marijuana.

Literal crap piles and needles everywhere, rats (and their associated lice, ticks, and fleas) in small armies everywhere, hovel cities of homeless addicts (and usually homeless, because addicts) flocking hereabouts from the rest of the country, medieval diseases running rampant, and no end in sight, while the taxes to pamper and pay for this idiocy skyrocket.

Not to mention ignoring a host of other points conveniently left unaddressed. Qui tacet consentire.

Pointing to tiny Portugal does not absolve the responsibility to address the realities on the ground now, and under any notional "Legalize and Tax" fairytale.

It isn't going to work, and in fact will be an unmitigated disaster of biblical proportions, such that what's going on now will be seen and recollected fondly as "the Golden Days" of the republic.

Divemedic said...

There is always this:

https://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-on-drugs.html

Some of the arguments here are mixing in alcohol. How can you tie the two? We tried banning alcohol, and it didn't work. Just like marijuana bans aren't working.

ASM826 said...

Aesop,

You said,

---------------
"Forget foreign comparisons. Look no farther than San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Franshitsco right now, since only legalizing marijuana.

Literal crap piles and needles everywhere, rats (and their associated lice, ticks, and fleas) in small armies everywhere, hovel cities of homeless addicts (and usually homeless, because addicts) flocking hereabouts from the rest of the country, medieval diseases running rampant, and no end in sight, while the taxes to pamper and pay for this idiocy skyrocket."

-----------------

My total agreement with you on the disaster engulfing our cities does not extend to accepting that marijuana, legal or not, has anything to do with it. It has to do with the mentally ill being free to roam the streets and with meth, crack, and opiods being openly available. Legalized pot or executions for pot won't impact that much one way or the other.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Howard Brewi said...

A couple thoughts: Portugal does not have Mexico and much of Central America with a huge infrastructure for producing and moving drugs and people through a pourous border. They also don't have neighbors of relative poverty expecting a free ride when they get there. I understand that much of the product is moved by people getting help for illegal crossing in exchange. I also wonder if the crap in the Californian cities is more because these homeless illegals expect more than even the most liberal can give them for free, just to get their votes. Where are these people supposed to go once the system is overloaded and jobs are not available?

Aesop said...

@ASM826

The two are hand in glove.
The "anything goes" attitude towards pot has become "anything goes" period.

Pretending there is no correlation is ludicrous.
The exact same idiots have instituted both policies, and they stem from a defect of reasoning ability, and a total misunderstanding of both human nature, and the proper role of government. The rest is simply gravity, working.

And as a general Rule Of Thumb, when anyone finds himself trying to make the arguments and case of their nominal political opposition, except even harder and with less cogent follow-through, they ought to rethink their premise.

McChuck said...

Portugal doesn't have 40 million blacks and 80 million Latinos, and it doesn't have the world's supplier of drugs next door.

Portugese culture is not American culture.

Look at where legalization has been tried in America: San Francisco. Would you want to live amongst the drifts of needles and piles of human waste?

McChuck said...

We haven't completely prevented murder and rape, so those should obviously be legalized, too.

Divemedic said...

@McChuck: I see that you are using the "Rush Limbaugh" argument. Of course, the difference is that someone using drugs is only victimizing himself. A person committing rape or murder is victimizing another.
San Francisco's problems are caused more by other factors than by legalization, with the main one being homelessness. For example, the average price of a home in SF is $1.3 million, which has caused an explosion of homeless populations because of jobs leaving the city. Blaming all of SF's homeless problems on drugs is more than a bit of an oversimplification.
There is no reliable way to measure drug use in the city, but if you look at overdose deaths, you see that they have actually fallen in the past decade overall, with every drug class seeing a decline, with the exception of methamphetamines.

McChuck said...

Divemedic:
If A happens, and the B follows every single time, they are related.
Homelessness is caused by drug use and insanity.
The only reason overdose deaths are dropping is because of the copious use of Narcan.
Marijuana overdose deaths are up an infinite percentage.

The rate of traffic fatalities in Colorado doubled in the six months following legalization. Still think drug use doesn't hurt anyone?