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Comment by erokar | Hacker News Reader

I live in Norway. While I'm happy about this vote, it remains to be seen how it will play out in practice. So far the Norwegian drug policy has been terrible — police searches of homes and cars with questianble probable cause; routinely harassment of drug addicts by police/police policy of going after low hanging fruits to easily improve statistics; and severe penalty for drug-related crimes (> $150 fine for carrying 1 gram of marihuana, as much as 21 years in prison for smuggling marihuana). Norway has a long way to go. The parliment vote is promising, but as for now I'm cautiously optimistic about how it will play out in practice.

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I also live in Norway, my SO is a psychologist specialising in addiction, according to her this is a big step in the right direction.

She routinely have patients motivated to quit, who make big progress during treatment, who manage to turn their life around, they've broken contact with the "drug community", they might even have gotten to a point where they can hold a job, and have gotten a job, some might have started a family, they're essentially on the home run.

Then BAM!, out of the blue, the glacially slow moving judicial system calls them to court, and charge them for their past transgressions from ~2 years ago. If they're really unlucky they got caught with 2-3 days (of personal use) worth of drugs - enough to qualify them as a dealer and several years in jail.

Nothing ruins a successful treatment and break from your past like getting knocked into jail with your old pals for a few years. It happens again and again and again, it's GIANT waste of resources.

Australian here. I was charged with two counts of Traffic Controlled Drug and one count of Possess Prescription Drug without lawful excuse on the 28th of December 2012. I was carrying only a little bit more that I might typically be in possession of because it was three days before new years eve.

It took two years three months to sort it out in the courts. Fortunately I got referred to a barrister who managed to get the charges dropped. I got all my cash back from the police, that was a pleasant experience.

Point being, in those two years and three months I cleaned myself up, got a job and was ready to buy a house, but still had the charges hanging over me. My god, what a stress.

> it remains to be seen how it will play out in practice

Drug policy reform is extremely difficult to carry out well, mostly due to the social impact it has on both the populace and governing bodies - adjustment doesn't happen immediately and are likely to be bumps in the road. From the sound of the article, it sounds like Norway is headed in the right direction, though it may take everyone a bit to get on the right path. Still, this is already happening elsewhere in the world[1], and I think it will continue to happen more as time goes on.

I don't know many details of Norway's drug policies (nor Portugal's, for that matter), but it makes sense that decriminalization + treatment, when implemented well, will generally far exceed incarceration when it comes to overall effectiveness and impact on reducing drug abuse, crime, and deaths.

I hear people are pretty happy in Norway (compared to the states, at least), but police harassment is never any fun - I hope things improve there.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

Please, nobody would ever know how difficult it is. The problem is that a century of draconian enforcement has created a MASSIVE private complex that feeds and pays so many people that the interests have rooted in the system.

Don't be fooled, the lack of progress is almost exclusively a product of vested interest in enforcement and this vague intellectual question of "how?"

In Norway it's even worse.

We generally have very few special interests groups, however the narcotics police have formed their own political group that constantly writes for news papers, joins debates and speaks to the politicians, and their agenda is similar to the reefer madness stuff from the US every time someone remotely threatens their jobs (via deregulation / legalisation).

This _is_ a step in the right direction though.

In Finland we have seemingly corrupted narcotic police and their chief is now going to jail for taking bribes, smuggling drugs and hiding huge amounts of money in his backyard. And then we have the non-profits with crazy fanatical leaders writing texts to newspapers about how a single joint destroyed kids life. We have crazy fanatical ideologies about drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

On the other side we have growing wealth gaps and people drinking and combining it with whatever pill is the cheapest on the corner. The government has a monopoly for selling alcohol, which is created to protect the people from the harms of alcohol and on the other hand needs to gain profit and sell more of the product.

Drugs might become a problem for a person, but how the society reacts to them currently is not really helping anybody.

Finland has one of the lowest wealth gaps in EU (or world) and it's hardly a good reason for someone to do drugs.

Yes, there is a lot of moralizing about drugs and alcohol, but it is slowly getting better.

Yes, the head of Helsinki drug police (not a national position) being on trial for such a series of crimes looks ridiculous, but on the other hand, it shows that the system does something when things go bad.

What do you think about the new law that allows police to walk with dogs in any public happening and check the bags of suspicions people for drugs?

Edit: and looking at the queues waiting to get free food is definitely showing that the amount of poor people in the country is going up.

I don't think much of it: the practice was quite normal until recently when an ombudsman made an interpretation which the parliament apparently had not intended. So the parliament made a specific law about it and the old way is resumed. Overall, I think it is quite okay to try to keep drug dealing out of concerts and such.

Food queues turn up if there is free delivery of food. There was certainly much more poverty (I mean poverty of the "difficulty to make end's meet" kind) in times before the current food queues. But there is no longer a social stigma in picking up food from queues, and similarly the last-resort income support is nowadays increasingly treated as a universal basic income, even if the law wasn't intending it so.

The actual problem is that it is increasingly hard to lift oneself up from (relative) poverty through work because the job market eliminates entry-level jobs.

This is nearly as bad as in the U.S., although I assume you probably don't have the same racial component.

Actually I think the U.S. is ahead of Norway here, as cannabis has been decriminalized in several states in the U.S. As to the racial component — Norway is not as racially diverse as the U.S., but if you are black you will be routinely stopped by police and interrogated on the street in Norway. This will not happen if you are white. I know of a university professor from Africa that experiences this several times a year — he has just resigned to the fact.

On a diffrent note, Norway has a huge problem with drug-related deaths: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-19/which-european-nati...

I don't think we have any states where it has been decriminalized. It has been outright legalized in some, but most still have it illegal - and possession often results in prison time, not just fines. Of course, it's still illegal on the federal level regardless of the state, and you can run afoul of that (e.g. at an internal border control checkpoint).

Alaska for decades.

Illinois decriminalized possession of up to 10 grams last year.

I live in Colorado. Marijuana was slowly decriminalized before it was legalized.

A handful of states stopped putting minorities into prison for marijuana. It's hard to argue that any of the states have applied a reasonable standard of justice for anyone convicted of these crimes prior to the laws changing.

Not quite. North Carolina for instance has decriminalized carrying small amounts of Cannabis.

The map in this article is particularly illuminating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization_of_non-medic...

I can't speak for all of California, but it's effectively decriminalized in San Francisco, and has been for a decade at least.

The distinction is a legal one, but it's important if you're applying for a job or an apartment. A traffic ticket has very different ramifications than a criminal sentence.

I live in a legal state, and I honestly can't imagine living someplace that still prohibits marijuana use by adults... I use edible marijuana pretty frequently while cooking and reading. As far as I can tell, it's just nice and improves my quality of life, like good food or good sex.

The very idea of criminalization is so asinine that it's hard to wrap my head around.

You can still receive jail time for possession of e.g. 1g of marijuana for personal use in states where it is decriminalized. "Decriminalized" just means it's a misdemeanor and not a felony under certain conditions and in certain quantities, but misdemeanors still carry significant penalties.

In New York State, “decriminalized” marijuana means the offense is a violation, which is less than a misdemeanor. It’s essentially a $100 ticket for simple possession under 28g.

Anecdotally, I’ve found it quite easy to get these cases dismissed. They frequently don’t test the alleged substance because it’s too expensive for the state. So, the judge ends up dismissing the case due to lack of evidence.

In my state it means a misdemeanor. Also anecdotally, it's not hard to get these cases dismissed here through a combination of a clean drug test and preemptive community service hours. But I have still spent time in jail for a case that was ultimately dismissed and the state law allows for significant (relative to the 'crime') prison sentences for simple possession, even though we are considered "decriminalized".

why, if the test comes out positive, surely the plaintiff has to pay ..?

The plaintiff is the state. The defendant should not be held responsible for financial costs incurred by the state while gathering evidence.

s/plaintiff/defendant/g # my bad

The racial component in the US is such a hot-button issue not just because of the degree of racial discrimination, but also because the size and non-immigrant status of the black minority here.

> Actually I think the U.S. is ahead of Norway here, as cannabis has been decriminalized in several states in the U.S.

Most states are still as bad as or worse than Norway, though. In terms of laws and regulation, US states are more like separate nations in many ways.

> US states are more like separate nations in many ways.

Indeed, though less so than before the civil war.

Thus Brexit is an interesting test case for seeing if EU is able to "disassemble" without bloodshed.

That's going to depend entirely on the Irish border solution. I'm not sure it's a great test case given the total incompetence of how it's being handled.

Apropos of nothing, but you mentioning that brought up a memory of when I was in Helsinki this summer: I took a taxi back to the airport early in the morning and the taxi driver (a black man) asked me (white) to sit in the front rather than the back, otherwise he would get stopped by police. Not necessarily something I was expecting in Norway. But what do I know?

Not that Helsinki is in Finland, apparently :-)

One reason why they might have asked you this is because working for services like Uber is illegal in Finland (Helsinki is not in Norway), and they might suspect that a darker skinned person driving with a white person at the back is more likely to be an Uber driver (Uber drivers are predominantly from an immigrant background, from personal experience).

Still racial profiling, but maybe not as bad as being stopped for "only" being black.

>they might suspect that a darker skinned person driving with a white person at the back is more likely to be an Uber driver

I think in Finland official taxis say "TAKSI" and have a yellow sign on the roof, so maybe they might suspect any unofficial-looking car with a driver in the front and the sole passenger in the back as being an Uber.

> working for services like Uber is illegal in Finland (Helsinki is not in Norway)

Not really true. However, you do need a taxi license, and many/most Uber drivers didn't have one.

It is standard for taxi passengers to sit in the front in Finland, though.

Though it seems to me that especially in Helsinki the trend is shifting. A couple of time I've gotten momentarily confused looks there when I've sat on the front passenger seat.

Was it a licensed Taxi or an Uber? Or some unlicensed driver at the airport?

A licensed Taxi is very unlikely to be stopped by the police in Helsinki, and lots of taxi drivers are black or other immigrant background.

There is something odd in this story, doesn't sound at all typical.

That does not ring true. I live near Helsinki, use taxis quite a lot - mostly to and from airport but also elsewhere - and half the drivers are dark-skinned people. They are never stopped although I always sit at the back.

If you're an Uber driver (unlicensed taxi) then things are different. A driver in front (of any colour) and a single adult passenger at the back, starting off from the airport in an Uber-looking car, might get attention.

You do realize the current administration is actively trying to go after state governments that have decriminalized marijuana, right?

http://www.newsweek.com/will-jeff-sessions-medical-marijuana...

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