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Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why won't some starving poor tiny pacific island legalize [some] drugs. They could probably make good money from drug tourism.

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There is a not starving (though severely bankrupt) very small peninsula country on the atlantic that has not legalized, though "decriminalized" ALL drugs to measured success. That country is Portugal, which officially decriminalized all drugs nationwide in 2001. It is a very interesting data point in the argument over drug legalizations. Arguably it is the closest anyone has come to large scale legalization of drugs (interestingly, their case is not limited to just marijuana). More information can be found in this Scientific American article and the Wikipedia article on the drug policies of Portugal: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-dr... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

Very interesting. Is there some kind of [psychoactive] drug tourism there? Why isn't it as well known as Holland?

Because it's only legal to posses small quantities for personal use (about 10 days). Possession of bigger quantities has remained prohibited by Portuguese law, and criminal penalties are still applied to drug growers, dealers and traffickers. You cannot go into a coffeeshop and buy some weed as you do in netherlands so it doesn't make much sense to go there as a "drug" tourist.

It's good for portuguese, but not enough for business.

For business, you surely do want to make selling legal. And comfortable.

You have to actively kick the thing out of the door in order to bootstrap a psych tourism business.

They have, I went to the Gili Islands 2 years ago, no cars and they advertise legal mushroom shakes, also amazing island for diving (not in conjunction however!)

Example http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgoralnick/2625980738/

The "funny" thing is that the Gili Islands are Indonesian land, so drug smuggling carries a death sentence.

However, it's not a problem since there are no police on the island.

That picture looked really appealing until I found some context: http://wikitravel.org/en/Gili_Islands#Stay_safe

Well, it does say it's just the locals who get busted; executing tourists would be bad for business.

The shakes are advertised in most bars on the menu's and A boards outside, all very commonplace I found.

IMF and World Bank regulations maybe?

They have no money anyway short of begging and selling their country status. What could possibly go wrong?

You might want to ask a Panamanian that question.

you mean they should copy the holland model :)

(technically the netherlands only decriminalized marihuana; practically use and possession of user quantities go nearly always unpunished)

Yeah, except that they should allow psychoactive drugs too and allow selling (while disallowing taking those out of the country).

Magic mushrooms were actually allowed and sold openly until just a couple of years ago.

http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/542-hallucinogenic-magic-mushro...

They were in most of Europe, certainly here in the UK not that long ago.

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