"In the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin, which is kind of mind-blowing, and every year, they tried the American way more and more. They punished people and stigmatized them and shamed them more, and every year, the problem got worse. And one day, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition got together, and basically said, look, we can't go on with a country where we're having ever more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out what would genuinely solve the problem. And they set up a panel led by an amazing man called Dr. João Goulão, to look at all this new evidence, and they came back and they said, "Decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack, but" -- and this is the crucial next step -- "take all the money we used to spend on cutting addicts off, on disconnecting them, and spend it instead on reconnecting them with society." And that's not really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do residential rehab, they do psychological therapy, that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do: a massive program of job creation for addicts, and microloans for addicts to set up small businesses.So say you used to be a mechanic. When you're ready, they'll go to a garage, and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages. The goal was to make sure that every addict in Portugal had something to get out of bed for in the morning. And when I went and met the addicts in Portugal, what they said is, asthey rediscovered purpose, they rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society." "It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began, and the results are in: injecting drug use is down in Portugal, according to the British Journal of Criminology, by 50 percent, five-zero percent. Overdose is massively down, HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down. One of the ways you know it's worked so well is that almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back to the old system." Johann Hari: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong TEDGlobalLondon Filmed Jun 2015
The war on drugs is one of the biggest mistakes this country has ever made. We made all the same mistakes with prohibition, and then turned around and made the exact same mistakes with narcotics. It's pretty obvious to me that it has nothing to do with preventing drugs, and everything to do with making money. Corrupt as hell. The government has made so much money off of drug seizures. It's sickening.
It's honestly hard for me to believe there are still people who think just sending drug addicts to jail is the right thing to do.
Most people going to jail, don't go for being an addict, they go for committing a crime, like Burglary, theft, assault. Perhaps they do these crimes to support the habit. Then we have the sellers of drugs. They mostly belong in jail, especially those that sell to young people. Sell shit to 50 year old, who cares? Sell it to 15 year old, loose your freedom.
Libertarian Party put that in their platform in the 1970s. Don't they deserve some credit, too? It is a medical problem, not a criminal one.
I think hippies were saying that in the 1960s. Except they wanted drugs to be legal and free. Maybe that's what you Libertarians should run on, free drugs! I know Mags would vote for you, probably Maris too.
We should legalize and make available safer yet similar drugs to coke, meth and heroin. Let big pharma profit off of it.
When we found out how much the pot in the veggie garden was worth, we stopped being hippies and stopped giving it away pretty quickly..in the beginning we thought you grew your own beans you didn't have to buy beans, grow your own smoke..same thing....then the money showed up and everybody started shopping again
This is true, but the crime is often a by product of their addiction. If addiction was treated as a social problem there would be less of a need for addicts to commit these crimes to support their addiction. I have a few addicts in my family and friends, and they all tell me that when they are in the heat of their addiction they feel justified taking anything to get by. Its a weird warped logic, that makes sense to them at the time. Dealers are criminals of opportunity, with a revamp of laws they simply lose their current jobs. I didn't watch the video yet but Ive researched Portugal a lot, and the thing that strikes me the most is that heroine addicts can get prescribed heroine, and treated medically to ween them off the addiction. In the states we supplement a heroine addiction with methadone.
I don't think so. It will never be legal for kids to buy, so we will always have those that will seek to fill that market, even create that market. Just lock them up, No hope for someone that figgin low.
I don't think this is true either. Chemically dependent people do not respond to treatment until they want to be helped. It almost never works when they are forced into treatment. Even those that seek treatment or welcome it, have difficulty making it stick. So it is nearly a decease, that almost must run it's course before effective help is possible for those that are chemically dependent. Not all people are in that category, some where around 25% I think. Others may abuse substances but they do not become chemically dependent.
