Comment by mjevans
5 years ago
If only they'd legalize, tax, and regulate the meth...
We could get our real cold symptom treatments back as true OTCs and stop wasting so much time chasing petty criminals.
It would also help identify drug addicts and get them help before problems become bad.
If they did that, the consumption would only go up, resulting in even more overdoses. That’s what happened in Portugal, after drug decriminalization — drug consumption there went up significantly (with exception of heroin, which went down, but it also went down in other European countries at the same time which did not decriminalize it). Full on legalization will increase consumption even higher.
Of course, one might argue that it’s fine, because it’s the drug users themselves who would suffer from this. But, considering the current push to get people vaccinated against their will, for their own good, I don’t expect this argument to work for drugs either… who am I kidding, of course people should have a right to use as much drugs as they want, but should have no right to get a job if they are not vaccinated, it’s 2021 after all.
> That’s what happened in Portugal, after drug decriminalization — drug consumption there went up significantly (with exception of heroin, which went down, but it also went down in other European countries at the same time which did not decriminalize it). Full on legalization will increase consumption even higher.
...Do you have sources on this? My awareness of Portugal's situation is basically the opposite of that, ascertained via [1][2][3] et al. I'm interested in dissenting information if it's available. I also wonder why it is that the assumption is "more drug use" == "bad" when the range of things that constitute 'drugs' is so wide - from alcohol to cannabis to lsd to cocaine, there's a ton of delta between the effects (sociological and personal) of use.
[1] https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po... [2] https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1... [3] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald...
Your own first link discusses this:
> In the first five years after drug policy reform, use of illegal drugs rose slightly among the general population but fell again in the following five years.
I remember looking at the actual figures, and what happened was that use of heroin in Portugal went down significantly, and use of all other drugs went up significantly, giving slight rise in total drug use on net.
> Use among 15-24 year olds fell throughout the decade,
This implies that use among other groups than 15-24 year old had not fell throughout the decade.
> and among the general population was lower in 2012 than in 2001.
The reason they pick year 2012 is because it's convenient to their argument, and they give out the game later:
> However, consumption trends in Portugal have been keenly disputed and often misrepresented. While drug use during individual lifetimes among the general population appeared to increase in the decade following reform, use within the past 12 months fell between 2001 and 2012. Both the World Health Organization and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime consider use in the past 12 months (recent drug use) or within the past month (current drug use) as better indicators of trends among the general population.18
> Since 2012, past-year use appears to have risen, particularly among those over the age of 25.20 This is, however, based on relatively limited data from SICAD (the Portuguese drug dependence agency) and only one further dataset — in 2016.
The lesson here is that there has been a lot of very dishonest reporting about the results of drug decriminalization in Portugal. You are just another victim of it. Omission of critical facts, cherry-picking groups and dates, and flip-flopping between different ways to measure as needed, are all very common techniques in crafting narratives, misleading people into believing falsehoods, without actually stating them outright, so that they can't easily be caught with blatant lying -- the blatant falsehoods then are repeated by people who were tricked into believing false narratives, which facilitates spreading it, while allowing the authors to wash their hands.
Of course, you don't need to trust some random guy on the internet who's too lazy to dig up relevant statistics, you can keep believing the non-profit industrial complex. You might spend some time looking up these figures yourself, but why bother, after all these non-profits would never lie to you, would they?
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Well, to be fair. Your drug use can't put me in the ICU.
Not directly, but addicted people sometimes turn to violent crime to raise funds, and that violent crime certainly can put you in the ICU.
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People trying to steal to get drugs could. People high on drugs certainly could. A lot of Breaking and Entering, for example, is to obtain money to feed a drug habit. For the person doing the stealing, all they care about is the cost of the drug, so plans to regulate and tax meth, well, don't necessarily improve that situation.
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Yeah, it's not about you... it's the other people you may infect and kill. Kids are mostly fine... if only they didn't have teachers or parents.
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> Your drug use can't put me in the ICU.
Take this to its logical conclusion, please. It's the big bang's fault!
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Meth was legal until the 70s, society functioned. The current problem is another side effect of the war on drugs
https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-meth
Until recently the dutch government ran opium factories: https://decorrespondent.nl/7514/nederland-runde-eeuwenlang-e...
> If they did that, the consumption would only go up, resulting in even more overdoses.
I believe the former. People like taking drugs after all.
But what makes you think the latter is likely?
(Anecdotally, from what I can tell American teenagers seems more likely to bing drink hard spirits than German teenagers who can legally enjoy a pint at the local pub.)
Only if they are over sixteen. Same for buying at the supermarket, gas station, or such. No sale without verification of legal ID. Of course there are ways around that, but it isn't that easy anymore.
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> German teenagers who can legally enjoy a pint at the local pub.
Was that an intentional cultural mixup? My brain just stopped working after reading it, because of how little sense it made.
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