Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm confident she did drugs in prison. Because opiates are a way to escape, and prison sucks, and prison has drugs. [1]

If you want to help people get off drugs, don't criminalize them, send them to rehab, end of story. Portugal decriminalized all drugs and started sending people to mandatory rehab if they had problems and the rate of drug harm went from one of the highest in the EU to one of the lowest in just 15 years. Portugal has 3 overdose deaths per million citizens, compared to the EU average of 17.3 [2, 3] The US is 213 per million, accounting for 1 in every 4 worldwide. [4] Clearly the US system does not work.

It's crazy, right, that a country where all drugs are legal has a 100x lower overdose rate than one where drugs crimes are enforced as strictly as humanly possible.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/13/17020002/p...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-dec...

[4] https://www.overdoseday.com/resources/facts-stats/

She came out clean and relapsed several months later, but who am i to argue with your links

Let me start off by saying I feel for you and your family.

It's important to remember a single data point (an anecdote) is no substitute for large-scale studies (country-wide in the case of Portugal). The data I gave you covers millions and millions of individuals, and in my opinion, and should be weighed accordingly. I'd love for you to read them and provide your own thoughts rather than just saying "no, I have one data point close to me and advocate policy based on it."

Drug addictions are truly complicated things. In regards to the relapse after release, there's some evidence that addictions are in part situational. By the end of the Vietnam war, some 20% of service members where addicted to heroin. 95% of them were no longer addicted to heroin as soon as they returned home. Whereas people with additions in the US had a 90% chase of relapse after they returned home to the environment in which they used to be addicted. [1] I even notice this to a smaller degree myself, I drink more in SF - when I'm there, I drink more, when I travel, I drink less even controlling for everything else to the best of my abilities (again, an anecdote not a study).

Prison is a hammer, we need a scalpel, and it's important we use data dispassionately to solve this problem. What we have so far is clearly not working, and it's time to look outside and adopt things that have worked elsewhere even if they fly in the face of the status quo. I would argue especially if they fly in the face of the status quo.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/1444317...

I'm not disputing the stats you linked, and i agree prison is no where close to a good solution. My follow up comment was regarding:

"I'm confident she did drugs in prison"

where you disputed this single data point. I did not mean it was representative of the majority.

Prison was mainly only good for the lives she was destroying in her downward spiral.

But don't be fooled thinking rehab will be that scalpal. Many rehab facilities are privately owned and corrupt.

Her mother is now completely broke from trying to pay for rehab & she was still able to use there & make more addict friends (new roomates after rehab)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com