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reasonsforhope · 8 months

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"When Ghana’s parliament voted to decriminalise suicide and attempted suicide in March, Prof Joseph Osafo felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

Osafo, head of psychology at the University of Ghana, had been engaged in a near 20-year battle to abolish the law – brought in by the British – which stated that anyone who attempts suicide should face imprisonment or a fine.

“It was a very good feeling. I felt like a certain burden had been removed. I was extremely elated,” he remembers. “Then the next morning, I realised we had a lot of work to do.”

Four countries decriminalised suicide in just the past year

Ghana is one of four countries to have decriminalised suicide in the past year – Malaysia, Guyana and Pakistan are the others. More could soon follow, which campaigners say is a sign of greater awareness and understanding of mental health. Kenya and Uganda have filed petitions to overturn laws and members of the UN group of Small Island Developing States have committed to decriminalise. Discussions are also being held in Nigeria and Bangladesh.

“There seems to be a domino effect taking place,” says Muhammad Ali Hasnain, a barrister from United for Global Mental Health, a group calling for decriminalisation. “As one country decriminalises suicide, others start to follow suit.”

“It is quite unusual,” adds Sarah Kline, the organisation’s chief executive. “It’s a huge sign of progress and an important step forward for the populations most at risk, as well as the countries as a whole.” ...

A large number of laws were introduced by the British during colonial rule. Suicide was decriminalised in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the 1960s – it was never criminalised in Scotland...

The results of these punishments can be “devastating” and present “a huge barrier” to addressing the problem, says Natalie Drew, a technical officer with the mental health policy and service development team at the World Health Organization. Health experts and advocates argue that suicide should be treated as a public health issue rather than a crime.

Criminalising suicide denies people the right to access health services and discriminates against them because of something they’re experiencing, Drew adds. Research shows that in countries where suicide has been decriminalised, people can seek help for mental health and rates tend to then decline.

Next Steps

In September, the WHO is due to release a guide on decriminalising suicide for policymakers, with explanations of how countries have managed it...

“[Ghana’s decision] should have an impact on the work ongoing in other countries, especially in the Africa region,” says Osafo. Within the past couple of months, he has set up a mental health working group with representatives from about 20 African countries, and one of the biggest issues on the agenda is decriminalisation of suicide, he says. “Nigeria is active, Cameroon is active … Kenya has joined and is doing fantastic work. We have Uganda. People have been asking us how we did it.”

Since suicide was decriminalised in Malaysia last month, Anita Abu Bakar, founder and president of the Mental Illness Awareness and Support Association (Miasa), has already seen things change. Crisis response teams and helplines are expanding, and money from the mental health budget is being given to organisations who work in the community. “This is the shift we’re so happy to see,” she says. “It was such an archaic law.”

She adds: “I’m a person with lived experience. What does decriminalisation mean to people like me? We feel supported, we feel this conversation can go to a different level. Obviously decriminalisation is not the only way to prevent suicide, but it’s a big one. I’m happy for this progressive move – better late than never. I’m excited to see what happens next, not just for Malaysia but for the rest of us.”"

-via The Guardian, July 20, 2023

#cw suicide #cw sui mention #ghana #malaysia #guyana #pakistan #nigeria #kenya #uganda #cameroon #mental health #mental illness #healthcare access #decriminalization #england #colonialism #good news #cw sui attempt #suicide

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trans-axolotl · 8 months

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also i am forever + always angry at all the people who are interested in "saving sex workers from themselves." the way we are made into both a victim to be saved and simultaneously the dangerous threat we must be saved from (the language of psychiatry, "danger to yourself or others" feels very relevant here, there is a connection between carceral psychiatry as a "solution" to madness and policing + criminalization as a "solution" for sex work). the absolute lack of compassion so many "anti-sex trafficking orgs" have for any actual survivors + sex workers is not shocking, but it makes me fucking livid. when i see people pretending to want to help sex workers they never actually listen to what we say we need; they want control and they want to use us to fit into their narratives about morality and safety.

i think about all the shit that actually would have helped me when I didn't want to be doing sex work, and all of it was resources, support, and community that could not happen when sex work is criminalized. whorephobia and criminalization fucking kills, and i am so tired of people pretending to advocate for sex workers while promoting policies that harm us so fucking much.

#personal #sw #ok 2 reblog #decriminalization #decriminalize sex work #anyway i love all of us so fucking much #whorephobia #and i am always so angry about the nordic model.

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randomly-generated-posts-machine · 5 months

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decriminalize killing people criminalize elon musk

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melaninmanifestation · 2 years

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A tale of two personalities.

#luxury aesthetic #black tumblr #you smell like weed #black girls #black girls luxury #decriminalization #rich energy #spoiled gf #black girl #luxury #ig baddie #black femininity #carefreeblackgirl #black women in luxury #guns n roses #wine #mood board #brown moodboard

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olowan-waphiya · 8 months

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#indigenous #native american #ndn #marijuana #cherokee #decriminalization #drugs #usa

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onecornerface · 9 months

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The "epistemic effects" argument for drug decriminalization

One of the many under-theorized & under-investigated arguments for drug decriminalization (of possession + use, at least most obviously) is what I might call an "Epistemic Effects" argument. Prohibition causes or exacerbates many bad epistemic effects, pertaining to drugs, drug users, and drug problems. Decriminalization would eliminate or reduce some of these bad epistemic effects, and/or have good epistemic effects.

I have a bunch of ideas for what may plausibly be among drug prohibition's bad epistemic effects. Here are some:

People are broadly secretive about their illegal drug use or drug problems (more so than their legal drug use or legal drug problems, even though the latter often are badly stigmatized & silenced as well). This is for various direct reasons pertaining to criminalization itself (e.g. fear of arrest), as well as indirectly a subset of aspects of social stigma and institutional discrimination (e.g. threat of loss of job or housing) that are caused or exacerbated by criminalization.

And to the extent that people *do* discuss their illegal drug use, this discussion is largely cloistered within subcommunities, and doesn't filter out to the broader public as much as it could.

Moreover, people who are *more* at-risk of arrest or discrimination (such as poor and nonwhite people) are likely less inclined to talk openly about their illegal drug use-- and/or less likely to see their perspectives about drugs filter into the mainstream-- compared to people who are *less* at-risk of arrest or severe discrimination. As a result, it is likely that we have less knowledge or understanding (and more false beliefs and misunderstandings) about (say) poor and/or nonwhite people's illegal drug use than about wealthy and/or white people's illegal drug use.

Illegal drug use is under-studied. It is often hard to acquire drugs to provide to research participants, and it is often hard to ensure honesty from all research participants about their illegal drug use (e.g. social-desirability bias). A disproportionate amount of drug research takes place in a context of prohibitionist institutions and individuals-- introducing various likely distortions to the scientific research's goals, choice of research questions, methods, interpretive framework, funding incentives, etc.

(It is often alleged by critics that the research by academics who are pro-decrim (or pro-safe-supply, pro-harm-reduction, etc.) is problematically biased toward their own beliefs and agendas. I agree this is often true [albeit in a different and more complicated way than is alleged]-- which I agree is bad and needs to be taken into account. But the implicit comparative assumption seems to be that most other drug research is unbiased. I disagree. I think large swaths of drug research are patently highly biased toward prohibitionism, in various overt and/or subtle, direct and/or indirect, ways.)

More broadly, drug prohibition tends to create and exacerbate an apparatus of drug-related (and often anti-drug-user) stereotypes, propaganda, oversimplifications, exaggerations, heuristics, and omissions, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop with anti-drug-user policies and practices.

Are some anti-drug-user stereotypes sort of true? Sure, maybe. Some of them seem plausibly sort of true. But which ones are indeed true or true-ish, and to what degree, and how confident may we be? What may we do on such basis? Notably, we have lots of higher-order evidence that they are part of a broader apparatus of stereotypes which is basically pernicious in origin and social-political function-- i.e. it has been designed, by intelligent design and/or by cultural evolution (etc.), to produce and promote anti-drug-user and/or pro-status-quo and/or prohibitionist ideology, etc. So we can predict that likely a lot of popular anti-drug-user stereotypes would be exaggerated or distorted, which should lead us to reduce our credence in the stereotypes in many cases.

(If you go in for moral encroachment (cf. Rami Basu) or suchlike, then take that into account too. But arguably moral encroachment is dubious or hard to apply (cf. Georgi Gardiner). (I need to read more philosophy of stereotypes.)

Relatedly, I also claim (and argue at some length in my notes, not yet posted) that some common rationales or aspects of drug prohibition, such as institutional paternalism, tend to exacerbate epistemic hazards (e.g. encourage oversimplifed views about the agency and experiences of those who are subjected to coercion)-- possibly, in part, to reduce the cognitive dissonance necessary to coerce lots of people on such prima facie dubious grounds and in such prima facie abusive ways.

Drug prohibition is also in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop with interlocking systems of oppression, such as classism, racism, sexism, and ableism, among others. Each of these, individually and together, introduce or exacerbate further epistemic hazards (cf. feminist social epistemology, Mills "Epistemologies of Ignorance," Stanley on ideology and propaganda, Kerwin Kaye on the effects of racist-classist tropes on drug court & rehab practice, etc.).

In short, prohibition (or many aspects thereof) creates many epistemic hazards-- factors that make people in general less likely to acquire or cultivate epistemic goods, such as knowledge and understanding, about drugs and drug-related topics. This produces widespread ignorance and error not only about (say) drugs and their pharmacology, but *also* about people who use drugs-- how they use drugs, *why* they use drugs, what it's *like* to use drugs, how the drugs relate (positively, neutrally, negatively) to the rest of their lives and projects and communities, etc.

This all contributes to continual bad policy epistemology, as well as epistemic injustice against drug users (and distinctive epistemic injustice against some subsets of drug users, such as those who are poor, black, disabled, etc.).

Decriminalizing drug use (or possession, which is a proxy for use) may help reduce some of these epistemic hazards, improving the state of public knowledge and discourse about drugs and drug users, and thus drug policy. At least, this is highly plausible, and merits further inquiry, philosophically and empirically.

Are my empirical claims here true? Some are sloppier armchair inferences than others. But plausibly, some of them are true or close to true. Arguably, there ought to be more research to investigate this. In countries, states, and provinces that have implemented de jure decriminalization (or de facto decrim, or decrim-adjacent policies), does the epistemic situation improve? If so, how much, and in what ways?

Normatively, if the empirical claim is largely true, is this argument sufficient by itself? Probably not. It may prove too much, unless further work is done.

Consider the following. (Note: mostly serious main point, but slightly more armchair-bullshitting on my part via the too-lackadaisical bizarre hypothetical): Quite possibly, if we were to legalize murder, then we would learn a lot more about why people commit murder, help people to speak more openly about their murdering, and improve the scientific study of murder and related issues in sociology and criminology. There is a lot of very strong anti-murder bias in our society, and this may well contribute to our having distorted beliefs about murder and the people who commit murder. Perhaps we are prone to misrepresent or oversimplify the reasons people commit murder. ...However, all this, even if true, is obviously not a sufficient reason to legalize murder. The reasons against legalizing murder are vastly stronger.

So, the Epistemic Effects argument for drug decriminalization must piggyback on the force of at least some other background arguments for decriminalizing drug use (arguments which would apply to drug use but not, say, murder). But in any case, the Epistemic Effects argument, I suspect, points to a plausible and important strand of benefits of decriminalization or related policy changes, which may help reduce epistemic injustice, improve policy epistemology going forward, etc.

#drugs #drug policy #decriminalization #epistemology

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shinyasahalo · 3 months

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"I tried explaining so many ways that I'm not trafficked and they didn't listen."

#decriminalization #Stop the sweeps #Copaganda #Human rights #SW #Super Bowl

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spaceshipsandpurpledrank · 1 year

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#talkin #tik tok #food #recipes #decriminalization

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etakeh · 9 months

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Hey if anyone needs some ammunition against people saying "Oh but decriminalization in Oregon isn't working!"

here's an article that gives them to you, based on arguments being made in national newspapers.

Conflating drug addiction with homelessness is a long-standing practice of opponents in their attempt to victim blame. Only recently, with the passage of Measure 110, has it morphed into conflating drug decriminalization with homelessness. Officials and pundits persistently attempt to redirect our attention on the housing crisis to drug use, mental health or progressive permissiveness. Yet the fact remains: The sole predictor of homelessness is how rent-burdened people are.

The sole predictor of homelessness is how rent-burdened people are.

#oregon #pdx #portland #decriminalization #addiction #homelessness #housing crisis #housing #honestly get so tired of people trying to paint portland as being on fire or a den of iniquity #just calm the fuck down and don't move here then #since they're obviously not going pay attention to reality

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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“In a landmark judgement, [on 12/12/22] the Barbados High Court issued an oral ruling that decriminalized consensual same-sex relations. The written judgement will be handed down at a later date.

Barbados becomes the third Eastern Caribbean country in 2022 to strike down discriminatory legal provisions and decriminalize gay sex, after Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Barbados’ Sexual Offences Act of 1992 sanctioned “buggery” with up to life imprisonment, and “serious indecency” with up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Both crimes were understood to criminalize consensual same-sex conduct and were relics of British colonial law.

While laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy in the Caribbean are rarely enforced, they are broad in scope, vaguely worded, and serve to legitimize bias and hostility toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report documented discrimination, violence, and prejudice against LGBT people in seven island nations in the Eastern Caribbean, including Barbados, that criminalized gay sex.

The Barbados ruling is a result of local and regional civil society efforts to challenge anti-LGBT legislation in the Eastern Caribbean region, spearheaded in part by the group Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE).

In the Anglophone Caribbean, the Belize Supreme Court in 2016 became the first to hold that laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy were unconstitutional. Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court followed suit in 2018.” -via Human Rights Watch, 12/13/22

#caribbean #barbados #colonialism #lgbtq #homophobia #decriminalization #lgbtq rights #good news #hope

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mxjackparker · 3 months

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Please share to reach a wider range of people. I want to understand not just the positions people have on the law around sex work, but also how the think about the positions they have and whether they'd frame themselves as supporting sex workers or not.

#sexwork #feminism #sex work is work #feminist #decriminalization #criminalization

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randomly-generated-posts-machine · 13 days

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decriminalize killing people criminalize ben shapiro talking

#comedy #funny #haha #meme #joyful cheer #joyus whimsy #randomly generated tumblr posts #randomly generated #random number generation #randomly generated posts #decriminalization #decriminalize killing people #decriminalize murder #ben shapiro hate #ben shapiro

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allthecanadianpolitics · 1 year

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Experts say an upcoming pilot to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs in British Columbia could increase risks for vulnerable youth because it excludes people under 18.

As of Jan. 31, people aged 18 and older will be able to possess up to a cumulative 2.5 grams of opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA within the province.

While advocates for drug users say decriminalization alone won't stop thousands of people dying from a tainted drug supply, others say it is a step in the right direction when it comes to treatment.

But some say the fact it excludes youth could further marginalize drug users under the age of 18 — especially given that there are no youth-oriented harm reduction spaces in the province. [...]

Sedgemore also said the threshold provided under the pilot — 2.5 grams — was far too small, given how youth use and consume substances.

"A lot of people have tolerances that are really high and they're buying large amounts — buying for friends and stuff like that," they said. "It's becoming an issue now where people are going to see their dealer multiple times a day."

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #drug abuse tw #drugs cw #British Columbia #decriminalization #harm reduction

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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As the federal government struggles to recruit young people, a recent survey found that 30% of those between the ages of 18 and 30 have either declined to apply or withdrawn applications for jobs because of strict marijuana policies required for security clearances.

The poll, published on the unofficial marijuana holiday April 20 by ClearanceJobs and the Intelligence and National Security Foundation (INSF), interviewed young adults about federal employment policies, focusing on cannabis.

Participants were first asked whether they’d consider working in a federal position that requires security clearance, and almost 80% said they either would or might consider applying; 40% also said that they’ve used marijuana in the past year.

One of the most notable findings is that 20% of participants said they’ve declined to apply for federal jobs because of the government’s restrictive cannabis policies. Another 10% said they’ve withdrawn applications because of the marijuana rules.

The survey also found that 25% said the government’s marijuana policy would prevent them from seeking employment requiring a security clearance in the future. While 39% said they’d be willing to abstain from cannabis in order to secure a federal job, 18% said they wouldn’t. And 15% said that they wouldn’t stop using marijuana after getting a security clearance.

Interestingly, most of the panel didn’t have a firm grasp on what the government’s cannabis policy actually is. 16% said that any marijuana use automatically disqualifies applicants for security clearance, 37% said there’s no eligibility impact, 24% said it is one of several factors that are considered for clearance, and 23% said they didn’t know.

Similarly, there’s confusion about the policies for people who’ve already obtained security clearances, with 9% saying those individuals can use marijuana anywhere, 31% saying they can use in a legal jurisdiction, 33% saying cannabis use is prohibited, and 26% saying they didn’t know.

Only 4% of participants correctly answered both questions about what the federal government’s security clearance rules are for applicants and those who are already cleared.

The survey involved interviews with 905 adults aged 18-30 living in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, California, Florida, Texas and Colorado. The interviews took place in February. The margin of error is +/- 3.23 percentage points.

While marijuana employment policies under federal prohibition remain strict, various agencies have moved to loosen requirements as more states have enacted legalization.

For example, the United States Secret Service recently updated its employment policy to be more accommodating to applicants who’ve previously used marijuana, making it so candidates of any age become eligible one year after they last consumed cannabis. Previously, there were stricter age-based restrictions.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has also revised its cannabis rules for job applicants. Applicants who’ve grown, manufactured or sold marijuana in compliance with state laws while serving in a “position of public responsibility” will no longer be automatically disqualified.

Late last year, draft documents obtained by Marijuana Moment showed that the federal Office of Personnel Management was proposing to replace a series of job application forms for prospective workers in a way that would treat past cannabis use much more leniently than under current policy.

The Biden administration instituted a policy in 2021 authorizing waivers to be granted to certain workers who disclose prior marijuana use, but some lawmakers have pushed for additional reform.

For example, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said at a congressional hearing on marijuana legalization last year that he intended to file a bill aimed at protecting federal workers from being denied security clearances over marijuana.

Last year, the nation’s largest union representing federal employees adopted a resolution supporting marijuana legalization and calling for an end to policies that penalize federal workers who use cannabis responsibly while they’re off the clock in states where it is legal.

The Director of National Intelligence said in 2021 that federal employers shouldn’t outright reject security clearance applicants over past use, and should use discretion when it comes to those with cannabis investments in their stock portfolios.

The FBI also updated its hiring policies that year to make it so candidates are only automatically disqualified from joining the agency if they disclose having used marijuana within one year of applying. Previously, prospective employees could not have used cannabis within the past three years.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) also took a different approach to its cannabis policy in 2020, stating in a notice that it would not be testing drivers for CBD. However, DOT has more recently reiterated that the workforce it regulates is prohibited from using marijuana and will continue to be tested for THC, regardless of state cannabis policy.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) sent a letter to the head of DOT last year, stating that the agency’s policies on drug testing truckers and other commercial drivers for marijuana are unnecessarily costing people their jobs and contributing to supply chain issues.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also emphasized to its workers that they are prohibited from using marijuana—or directly investing in the industry—no matter the state law or changes in “social norms” around cannabis.

While the Biden administration did institute its waiver policy, it came under fire from advocates following reports that the White House fired or otherwise punished dozens of staffers who were honest about their history with marijuana.

Then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki attempted to minimize the fallout, without much success, and her office released a statement in 2021 saying that nobody was fired for “marijuana usage from years ago,” nor terminated “due to casual or infrequent use during the prior 12 months.”

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onecornerface · 9 months

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Some criticisms of Washington Post's terrible article about Portugal's drug decriminalization

About a month ago, the Washington Post ran a terrible article about Portugal’s drug decriminalization. There are numerous bizarre and unreasonable aspects to the article. I can only make a first-pass overview of the problems here

To be clear, I think many pro-decrim people oversimplify the situation of Portugal, and overstate its importance to the case for decrim. Moreover, there is a lot I simply don’t know about Portugal, especially regarding developments in recent years. So I can’t currently insist, with much confidence, that the article is factually incorrect about many of its particular claims. Nor can I confidently give my own well-grounded overview of what exactly is going on in Portugal or why. Also, I don’t know the authors’ policy views or intentions. Anthony Faiola at least does not seem to have a track record on WP of conservative fearmongering, but that’s what this specific article ultimately is.

Here's what I can say confidently right now. From start to finish, the article has a certain strong pattern—in what topics it mentions vs. omits, what questions it asks vs. erases, what statistics it provides vs. omits, whose concerns it emphasizes vs. marginalizes/ignores, what proposals it spends more time discussing vs. less time, what experts it cites at length vs. briefly or not at all, etc.

Regardless of intent, and despite a few counterinstances to this trend, the article overwhelmingly functions as propaganda which will predictably encourage its readers to think irrationally, to support vicious agendas, and to make the world even worse for people who are already among the worst-off.

From start to finish, the article continually insinuates that Portugal’s police should be allowed to drastically increase how many drug users they can arrest. The details are mostly left unspecified, and the rationale is mostly left unspecified. But basically the idea seems to be (1) the police should be able to arrest drug users on a wider variety of *grounds* (mainly but not limited to public drug use/possession), and (2) after arresting them, the police should be able to coerce these drug users in more ways or to a greater degree.

In any case, the end result is supposed to be some serious reduction in prevalence of various actual or putative bad stuff—e.g. addiction, public drug use, drug-associated crime, homelessness, and/or suchlike. Supposedly, all or many of these problems have increased in recent years. And supposedly, the only solution requires that police be enabled to drastically increase their coercive powers—presumably as a route to force drug addicts into addiction treatment. I’ll call this, roughly, the pro-crackdown thesis.

The authors don’t directly argue for the pro-crackdown thesis. But the overall pattern of the article is clearly to promote the pro-crackdown thesis regarding Portugal—and I think, by further implication, to suggest something in the ballpark of the pro-crackdown thesis for other reform-leaning countries such as the USA. The article should be read in context of the broader conservative “tough on crime” backlash which has been occurring in the USA & Canada for the last couple of years.

To a first approximation, the article alleges that Portugal’s drug problem (or drug-related problems) has gotten worse in recent years. This sounds to me like it is probably basically true and largely agreed-on, so I don’t challenge it, although I note that the article fails to much explain or clarify it. The article mostly relies on anecdotes, and occasionally on a smattering of no-context statistics, which don’t allow much of a sense of what exactly has gotten worse, or over what timeframe—let alone why. Still, actual experts do seem to agree that things have gotten worse overall.

The article insinuates that the police need to arrest lots of drug users in order to seriously mitigate the problem. But the article provides extremely little evidence that this is true. Most of the article’s evidence is too vague and decontextualized for us to interpret its relevance to the pro-crackdown thesis.

Throughout much of the article, the pro-crackdown thesis sounds vaguely like repealing decriminalization, though occasionally it is (very slightly) clarified that it isn't supposed to repeal decriminalization outright but only implement some more limited re-criminalization. Again the details are left remarkably vague. I’m not certain without further research, but it sounds to me like fake moderation that provides cover for extreme changes. The article is obviously pushing for the arrests of quite a lot of people who aren’t currently being arrested.

Most shockingly, the article occasionally mentions evidence which (if true) challenges or even refutes its own pro-crackdown thesis—yet the article mostly ignores the relevance of all this.

On a preliminary note, the article never specifies whether police enforcement powers have actually changed in recent years, in terms of what the police are and aren't allowed to do. Has there been any contraction in the grounds on which police can make arrests? Has there been any reduction in what police can do to coerce those whom they’ve arrested? I don’t think the article indicates any such thing. If the police’s powers stayed the same, but the drug problems got worse, then it would be at least a little surprising if the solution is to change the police’s powers. Of course, decriminalization itself reduced the police’s powers—but decriminalization occurred some 20 years ago, whereas things only started getting worse in the last several years or so. So decriminalization in itself can’t be the cause. So then, what was the cause?

More significantly, the article occasionally mentions that a decade or so ago, Portugal suffered an economic crisis and then drastically cut addiction treatment funding. Near the end of the article, this is briefly discussed in a few paragraphs—but then the article continues and concludes as if this discussion never happened.

So, if and insofar as drug problems got worse in the last several years, the article presents no evidence whatsoever that decriminalization or enforcement changes had anything to do with it. But rather, the article actually presents an obviously salient and severe set of events (economic crisis + funding cuts) that could easily account for the increase in drug problems—seemingly meeting conditions of (1) plausible causal mechanisms & (2) relevant timeframe.

This is not mentioned until late in the article, and the article concludes by ignoring it. The large bulk of the article instead argues for (or insinuates, implicitly arguing for) the pro-crackdown thesis.

If the pro-crackdown thesis is true, how would it work? How would arresting lots of drug users solve the problem? Mostly the article avoids any exploration of the mechanisms that would need to be involved. But insofar as the article *does* suggest a mechanism, it is that the police need to arrest drug users specifically in order to force them into addiction treatment.

The argument presupposes that addiction treatment is crucial for solving the drug problem, and that Portugal needs to get lots more drug users to attend treatment, and that the best way to increase attendance is by empowering the police to arrest lots more of them, on a wider variety of grounds, and coerce them more severely.

Now, there are a lot of unspoken empirical premises that need to be true in order for this argument to have any chance of succeeding. Many such empirical premises are already false or dubious, which I will ignore. But notice that the argument requires, at minimum, that the addiction treatment system be capable of taking in many, many new patients within a short timeframe—i.e. the many addicted drug users whom the police should be newly allowed to arrest & coerce.

So here’s where the argument gets even worse and dumber. Very briefly, early on, the article seemingly mentions that Portugal’s addiction treatment system is basically at capacity, cannot take on new patients readily, and has extremely long wait-lists.

Here’s the key quote: “there are year-long waits for state-funded rehabilitation treatment even as the number of people seeking help has fallen dramatically.” There are tons of variables left unspecified, but the picture given here (and indirectly supported further on, in the section on funding cuts) seems to be a serious problem in treatment capacity. Another quote: “The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available.” Why did this happen? Obviously there could be many variables involved, not suggested by the article.

The drastic funding cuts would likely cause a severe reduction in capacity. And the article never mentions any relevant post-decrim changes to drug laws. There’s no indication that the police used to be allowed to force many people into treatment and no longer are. So, for all the article says, this sounds mostly due to funding cuts. Yet the article barely suggests increasing funding, and rather spends most of its time supporting a drastic increase in police powers.

But the article’s own arguments suggest there needs to be a drastic increase in addiction treatment funding FIRST. Otherwise, what are the police supposed to do with all the drug addicts they’re expected to arrest? They CANNOT force them into treatment, because there is NO CAPACITY for so many new patients.

For the moment, let’s ignore the facts that (1) many scholars have cast doubt on the benefits of forced treatment, (2) many scholars argue that forced treatment causes many direct & indirect harms (which may compete with or outweigh the benefits), and (3) many scholars argue that forced treatment would be unethical or ethically dubious even if it worked and did not cause other harms. (These facts are easy to forget, because the article never mentions or remotely alludes to any of them, other than selectively quoting some vague and easy-to-dismiss appeal to rights.)

Even setting all this aside, the simple fact—acknowledged or strongly implied by the article itself—is that Portugal’s addiction treatment system cannot presently take on many new patients. So, by the article’s own lights, arresting lots of drug users to force them into treatment is *impossible*. Or at least it is impossible unless there were a drastic expansion in addiction treatment capacity first—which the article barely discusses, and clearly considers much lower priority than empowering the police to crack down on drug users. To the extent that any actual experts on drug policy (such as Alex Stevens) have commented on the article, they seem to agree that Portugal needs to re-invest in treatment and/or social programs, not any kind of re-criminalization.

It is at best an open question whether arresting people would be a good way to improve treatment attendance *after* drastically expanding addiction treatment capacity. Perhaps the expansion of addiction treatment would be enough by itself, or perhaps not. But the article’s own brief discussion of Portugal’s history during ca. 2000-2010 suggests the already-successful solution was expanded addiction treatment *without* police coercion. Now, this may or may not be accurate. And I think it is plausible that all sides are inclined to overstate the importance of addiction treatment. It wouldn’t surprise me if other changes to Portugal’s society, e.g. investment in infrastructure other than addiction treatment (e.g. housing, healthcare, etc.), played a bigger role than the addiction treatment itself. But setting that aside, by the article’s own evidence, everything here tends to logically support the solution of expanding addiction treatment without empowering the police. Yet the article instead insists, illogically, on empowering the police and putting treatment at a distant second-place.

One of many elephants in the room: There are also many possible policy domains OTHER than police OR treatment, which could well have a big impact on drug problems—such as housing, job programs, etc. The article avoids all these topics, of course, despite the obvious opportunity presented by the mention of the economic crisis. And so far I have ignored the matter of homelessness, which I’ll briefly return to further down.

In the meantime, absent such a big expansion of addiction treatment capacity, the suggestion of seriously increasing police powers as a way to increase treatment attendance is OBVIOUSLY INSANE. If the police were to empowered to arrest lots of drug users immediately, without other massive changes first, then it would just lock most of them up without treatment anytime soon.

But I think that’s the real agenda here, regarding the thrust of the article in itself and in the broader ongoing context. The real agenda supported by the article, at least functionally, is to support a combination of policies that prioritize getting (some) drug users off the streets and out of sight of wealthy people—that’s basically it. This agenda may need to be artificially propped up by vague appeals to the notion of helping the drug users by forcing them into treatment. But it doesn’t really matter whether this is logistically feasible in terms of scale (it’s not) or typically overall beneficial to the user (it’s not) or ethical (it’s not). The agenda, first and foremost, is to remove some marked underclass of people from the sight and mind of a more wealthy and powerful class of people.

Those are some of the main problems with the article. Even without knowing much about what’s really going on in Portugal in recent years, I can recognize that the article is making an invalid argument for an insane conclusion that obviously clashes with the evidence already provided in the very same article—and in the service of moral priorities that are vicious. But even beyond this, the problems with the article go much, much deeper.

The article is continually unclear about the exact targets of its complaints. Most of the discussion is ostensibly on drug use and/or addiction—but a ton of the article seems really to be complaining about homeless people (possibly even including homeless people who don’t use drugs). I have been simplifying my discussion for the sake of argument as if this were about “drug users” or possibly “addicted drug users,” but a great many aspects of the article simply cannot be interpreted other than being about homeless people.

This raises layer upon layer of issues that I haven't even touched on, all of which make the article worse and worse. Among other things, it raises the question of whether and how much homelessness in Portugal has increased, and why. Although I need to research this a lot more, there are all kinds of debates on the causal relation between homelessness and addiction. The article is clearly premised on the notion that addiction is pretty much the main cause of homelessness—despite the fact that any simple version of this theory cannot be true. The article avoids discussing any other contributors to homelessness.

This in turn is obviously an opportunity to discuss housing policy. I have many serious questions about all this, which I’ll need to research at length. But the article has no interest whatsoever in any of this—except to repeatedly encourage the reader to find homeless people scary and insinuate that the police should be given more power to arrest them en masse.

Yet more problems abound. The article continually casts aspersion against harm reduction services—without acknowledging (or, at most, barely acknowledging) that lots of research and health authorities support these services on the grounds of consistently positive evidence. No evidence or arguments are presented against harm reduction services, nor does the article directly condemn them—but it consistently depicts them negatively, largely using emotional rhetorical techniques.

Notably, the article provides no reason whatsoever to reconsider decriminalization. And, while I’ll need to look into the specifics more to say for sure, I don’t think there is any serious chance that its vaguely described “limited re-criminalization” has any merit.

I have many more complaints besides these, and a lot of possible elaboration on many of these. I have multiple complaints about nearly every paragraph. Nevertheless, by reading it I have gained a better sense of where I need to do more research into Portugal’s policy and society, especially over the last 15 years or so.

#drug policy #decriminalization #addiction #Portugal

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