For those of you who don't know, in 2001 Portugal was the first nation to decriminalize (no penalty for simple possession) of ALL drugs. The numbers speak for themselves. This is always a good example to look at and use in conversations to provide direct feedback from a country stopping it's war on drugs. Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report - TIME 5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results: Scientific American Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies | Glenn Greenwald | Cato Institute: White Paper http://www.idpc.net/sites/default/files/library/BFDPP_BP_14_EffectsOfDecriminalisation_EN.pdf.pdf Do your homework and use these FACTS to prove that prohibition is obviously the worst way to keep people from using drugs.
Hehe I'm Canadian but my heritage comes from Portugal. Their it's even harder to find marijuana than Canada. It's mostly hash that's smoked there. Still go Portugal for showing decriminalization is the way!
Yeah I have seen TV interviews by US media types interviewing some high up in Portugal's government and they are all saying how can you do this?,. and isn't the use of hard drugs leaglly making things worse?..and so on, but the actual number of heroin,cocaine,etc.. addicts has risen very little, and many younger people do not use drugs because they have seen people openly using heroin and stuff, so they are carefull even about smoking weed ,whihc is a shame that they associate smoking weed with heroin use, but their is not a lot of drug education programs going on yet, but I think they are working on educating people at least that drug use is a personal thing,and that addiction to heroin or cocaine is a medical problem, a choice at first but a disease after time like any other..good job Portugal, wish the US would let go of it's outdated draconian drug policys.
Hard drug addiction is actually a disease also? Well Mitch Hedberg is a liar when he says alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for. Damnit Otto your a heroin addict Damnit Otto you have lupus
Well actually I think the Portuguese case is a bit strange. As said the act of consuming or possession isn't a crime, however the act of buying IS, and it leads to over-the-top sentences and hard pressure from the cops to find out where you bought it. Everytime you're caught with anything you're very lucky if you don't get you're ass kicked until you give up the name and location of the dealer. But still we're very close to achieve legalization, I think we're 5000 signatures short to get it to be voted by the government.
Portugal is a very different culture from the US. Decriminalization is nice and a step in the right direction, but if there wants to be true results, we need legalization.
I agree with full legalization. But the point of all of this is to show that when decriminalized, more (double) the people admit themselves into rehab, while the number of users goes down, or stays about the same. It's a defense point against the arguments that say decriminalization or legalization will give the wrong impression to the citizens, that it's okay to do drugs now.
[quote name='"Portuguese"']Portuguese hereeeeeeeee[/quote] Caralho! What's up lol. Greetings from the Portuguese in Canada!