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Comment by lostmymind66 | Hacker News Reader

Because Portugal doesn't have countries like Mexico bordering it that will use the legal drug trade to further fund cartel violence and control over the country. Corruption is already so rampant, they need to fix their problems before we should ever think about legalizing all drugs.

We already have an Opioid crises in the US..and this is with legal drugs. Lawmakers are already starting to blame the legal drug dealers and creators for getting people addicted.

If drugs are legalized, a person shouldn't be able to sue the dealer or creator. In the US, it seems like the attitude is "my body, my choice". Until that choice has negative consequences and then the person with the biggest wallet is sued for damages.

I don't really see happening in Portugal.

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Legalizing drugs is the best thing the US could do with respect to the cartels. Not only would it reduce profits, it would give producers an arbiter to go to when there are disputes rather than forcing them to rely on their own version of justice.

California's legalization has shown this to be untrue. Cartel grows in public lands have exploded as the legal market provides general cover for grow and transport activities. There is an estimated 16 times as much cannabis grown in CA than traverses the legal markets... and that excludes imports.

Mexico is less of a problem to the United States than the other way around. With the US drug habit and guns and funds export Mexico is helpless to do much of anything about this. This would hold for any country where the illegal economy is larger than the legal one.

Legalizing the drugs would rob the cartels of a vast chunk of their income and that in turn would allow the Mexican government to finally do something about them that will not be a country-sized game of whack-a-mole.

You are right, but just to give a better picture of Portugal: We still have a lot of illegal drugs coming from Morocco, it's not a solved problem yet.

When this law was approved (2001) Portugal (Casal Ventoso) was the major Europe's entrypoint for heroin and everybody knew someone who was addicted, and it was impossible to walk in any city's park and not see an used syringe on the ground.

I think what's happening in the US with the opioid crisis is a bit different that requires a different solution. Regulation vs Decriminalization.

If you follow your prescription and become addicted to an opioid, and your doctor received kickbacks for prescribing it from the pharmaceutical company, despite the fact that the pharmaceutical company knew it was addictive… you should be able to sue, and I'd even go so far to say as someone should be prosecuted.

It's not "my body, my choice" with prescription drugs, because I didn't choose. I just trusted my doctor. Which I should be able to do, not have to second-guess whether they're actually working on behalf of a pharmaceutical company that explicitly values profits over human lives.

I'm not sure you should put blind trust in your doctor. My doctor recently prescribed a medicine I hadn't heard of before. I told him I wanted to research it first, but I'd take the initial prescription and let him know if I decided against taking it. Barring a situation where you're not concious, always do your own research and get a second medical opinion if things seem confusing!

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