Similarly, we need to raise the visibility and openness of dealing with drug addiction, to come out of the closet so to speak, not increase drug addicted people.
So there is very little cost to being 'tough on drugs' until the effects are also felt at all layers of society. Portugal, a country that is a lot more relaxed about many things than the USA had a much easier time to acknowledge this. The 'war on drugs' will never be won, and the victims are predominantly poor. In the meantime, American jails are overflowing with people who should have been helped, not incarcerated.
And the way large parts of the US jail system are run as a for-profit work camp. This results in miscarriages of justice, unjustifiably long sentences for trivial possession, and outright corruption.
This is not an unfortunate accident. It's motivated partly by greed, partly by class violence, and partly by racism.
Most Western countries don't quite have the culture of political extremism needed to create these conditions.
Meanwhile the murky story of CIA links to drug smuggling is a different topic altogether.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...
Only 26 years before decriminalizing drugs, Portugal was a right-wing dictatorship with concentration camps and which was waging war on Africa to keep its slave colonies. The '74 revolution brought on two years of heavy left-wing power, during which many feared (and others hoped) it could become a communist state attached to the USSR.
There's no lack of culture of political extremism in Portugal.
A lot of people, rich or poor, find it hard to cope with life and need help; if they are poor they go to jail or overdose, if they are rich they just, slowly or rapidly, kill themselves or, sometimes, get help. While all need help ofcourse.
To your point though, anecdotally, most people I know know someone personally who is suffering or has suffered from addiction. I would imagine much of the USA is that way. So in terms of visibility, I would venture to say that most of the population has/had some kind of personal contact with it. In terms of stigmatization, addiction is stigmatized because nobody wants to admit that they're out of control of their being. There's all kinds of social implications for de-stigmatizing being out of control.
Keep in mind you are talking about a social ailment to be corrected. It's tone deaf to LGBTQ community who has been considered a social ailment for a long time. If you avoid drawing analogies between mental/psychological illnesses and LGBTQ people, you will avoid coming off that way.
Homosexuality was illegal and slowly we've reached the point of gay marriage. A lot of political reforms are still required.
Drug law reforms still need to progress.
Gay rights only progressed because of a personal connection. Using the same method for drug reform is not tone deaf.
It's a little offensive drug reform is a mental/psychological issue. For many it may be a choice over legal choices that cause more issues.
Nobody is saying that using the same methods is tone deaf. Tone deafness is an insensitivity the nuances of marginalized groups. It's like saying we should fight systemic racism with the persistence of a field of laborers. The language is tone deaf to historical oppression. The message is right but the tone is way off.
I'm trying to be polite about this, but maybe if you were screamed at in the streets as a blight on society for being gay, you would understand how language like "drug addicts should 'come out of the closet' so that we can treat addiction" (paraphrased, but accurate) is insensitive to gays who were/are treated like social illnesses.
"Gay people are weird" is said, until your child is gay. And those ideas of curing 'gay' then go from something's that's OK to recognizing torture.
What the parent commentor got right was that when things are taboo, solutions are nigh impossible. Only once we started having frank and open discussion did we start making significant progress in equal rights.
And I find your claim of "tone deafness" as a bad hack to shut down conversation you find uncomfortable or don't otherwise like. It's disingenous at best, and stops much needed communication between well-meaning parties.
(0) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay-related_immune_deficienc...
If you go back and read my original post, I only dedicated one sentence to the tone deafness comment, and then addressed the other unrelated points they were making. I only elaborated on the tone deafness comment when I was specifically asked about it. So no, nobody is trying to shut down conversation and I would appreciate it if you not try to assign ill intent to my posts.
But here's a suggestion: Stop policing the "tone" of allies, especially "tone" that only exists because of uncharitable interpretations, and focus on the enemies of the LGBTQ community. There are many enemies.