Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

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This is your regular reminder that extrapolating an outcome from a country like Portugal (an outcome we should all be happy about, by the way) to a country like the United States is unwise. I've never been to Portugal, but have friends that live in both Spain and Portugal and I'm pretty envious of the kind of community and shared identity they describe. I image that probably has something to do with the outcome seen there. So, while I think it's possible to decriminalize all drug use in certain contexts, we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success.

>Addiction has a huge situational component.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting at.

>20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2].

This seems to contradict your previous point, no? In Vietnam there was of course zero enforcement, outside of the military (I'm being charitable here for reasons that should be obvious), and they returned home to a country where the drug was illegal.

Edit: very interesting, the negative reaction to this comment. What I said is true, so I can only assume that people who are reacting negatively are doing so because they are projecting a view on me that I do not hold.

I think the reason people are reacting negatively to your comment is that:

(1) We have data from 1971 onward, just shy of 50 years, that shows that the "war on drugs" approach used in most of the world has been an abject and total failure. Drug usage remains pervasive, social harms are clear, and we keep throwing people in jail. No progress is made.

(2) A country was doing terribly on every metric, then they made a bold decision that was the opposite of the failed approach everyone else is using.

(3) The results were spectacular.

(4) Your response is "well that'll never work here." This is an implicit endorsement of the failed status quo, and an explicit rejection of evidence in support of an alternative.

> This seems to contradict your previous point, no?

No, it doesn't. It's not at all related to availability or legality of drugs -- drugs are equally available literally everywhere. Nobody in the US who wants to do heroin has any trouble getting heroin, or any other opioids. Accessibility is not the issue. And nobody addicted to heroin goes "oh, well, it's illegal in America, guess I'll stop."

It's evidence to support that we need to end the abject failure of an approach we've squandered 50 years on, and start a new, public health and community support approach to managing addiction. As evidenced by a place it's been overwhelmingly successful.

We literally can't do worse than what we have now, unless you wanted to make drugs mandatory.

> and they returned home to a country where the drug was illegal.

They also returned to their families and loved ones, trying re-introduce themselves to civil society and many figured out that heroin was not helping (illegal or not)

You (and others in this thread) are helping to make my point for me, which is that personal social structures are paramount for killing drug addiction.

I don’t think anyone is disputing that some variation of this idea is true. What’s not being stated explicitly is that if it’s true that social connectedness (ambiguously including identity, purpose, etc.) matters, then it’s also true that our current enforcement mechanisms are probably incredibly counterproductive.

Everyone gets the point you’re making, you’re just not following it through to something meaningful and instead supposing it implies something it doesn’t.

And... that ties nicely in with the defund the police narrative.

This has nothing to do with the "defund the police" narrative, Portugal did this 20 years ago.

> then it’s also true that our current enforcement mechanisms are probably incredibly counterproductive.

Fits nicely to me.

Ah, I see what you meant, I read it as implying that the "defund the police" people were driving the narrative I was referencing, not that the narrative I was referencing happened to fit the "defund the police" one.

That the experience of war made people take more drugs does actually tell something, but I doubt it is favorable towards the argument for stricter enforcement.

> we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success.

We have? Can we get a citation on that?

Portland, Oakland, Seattle for starters. Maybe you have a different definition of decriminalization.

For Oakland, that's marijuana decriminalization only though. Portugal's decriminalization affected all major street narcotics.

Citation?

Ehh, I lived in Portland - where do you see anything about a decriminalization of all drugs there? I must have missed it.

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