Some interesting articles below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-decri...
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-...
I can tell you that in the late 90s some areas of Lisbon were pretty dismal if not outright dangerous, and now the city seems much safer. I believe there are some studies on the effects on crime rates mentioned in one of the links above (my original comment).
I can't be sue if US political influence had any weight on the final legislation, I mean, it would not be unheard of but on the other hand it would not be a matter of public record either.
In essence these were high up people in the Norwegian business world, coming to set a needle between their toes or snort a line in privacy before going off to make a multi-million deal or party.
After that it seemed all talk about such rooms became very hush hush...
This is not a thing. There are no large veins between the toes, and circulation in your feet is pretty poor anyway, not to mention hygiene and infection issues... There are some veins on the foot that can be used, but it's fucking painful and I wouldn't recommend it. If you use clean works and rotate injection sites regularly, there won't be any real visible marks. Not to mention that any needle marks are not going to be obvious to non users anyway.
Ending the drug war is good, but what do we replace it with?
If a fiscal conservative isn't complaining about the cost of the drug war at this point, I would conclude they aren't a fiscal conservative.
Accepting legalisation as a superior alternative simply doesn't require the mental leap you're suggesting. It should appeal to most people, regardless of their overall political views.
But I think your point is a slightly different issue than the problem I was attempting to describe based on the original question.
As for the fiscal conservative angle, surely you can see the difference between offering rehab to people who freely chose to take a drug, vs. preventing people from committing a crime, even if you don't think that it should be a crime. And fiscal conservatives who do not believe that drugs should be illegal are certainly complaining about the cost of the war on drugs.
Experiment 1: Imagine what you'd think if an enemy nation had a "war on drugs" with similar results. (Highest incarceration in the world, strangling/shooting even children of a formerly enslaved ethnic minority in broad daylight, etc.)
Experiment 2: Ask yourself if you think that politicians systematically use rhetoric to basically lie about a policy's true intentions. (Without necessarily being aware of lying; powerful interests may support oblivious people who act properly.)
Experiment 3: If the "war on drugs" were really about health, what policies would be implemented? (No need to assume a supernaturally effective government; just one which makes reasonable errors but moves towards accomplishing the goal. For example, consider three policy types: prevention, treatment and punishment. How would you rate them in terms of priority, given abundant studies of their effectiveness and cost?)
People who want to use drugs are already using drugs.
Marijuana legalization would never have passed the ballot box in the western states if the reason people supported legalizing it was just to smoke more instead of on the policy merits.
But whenever I am part of a conversation like that, somebody inevitably makes it into a conspiracy fueled crusade -- like it is simply the most important political issue in the world -- and that person is most often a stoner. One who insists on being the loudest voice in the discussion.
Yeah, they don't really help the drive for a pragmatic solution!
Your last statement alludes to other related stereotypes; that people who smoke cannabis are the kind of people who make this argument, or that people who smoke cannabis secretly only want to legalise it for the sake of their personal weed-greed.
This isn't targeted at you, I'm not saying that you believe these things.
Do you support the marriage between any two individuals? So a brother could marry their sister? Or a mother could marry their daughter?
Do you support marriage involving polygamous relationships? Can three or four people can be married?
How do we know that? When did the word equality mean only heterosexual or homosexual couples?
It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality". They are not the same, they are two very different things.
Because marriage equality is a well-established term with a clear unambiguous usage in political discussions. Sort of like "pro-life" and "pro-choice", which could (divorced from context) each have a wide variety of possible meanings, but which, in the actual context of modern American political debate, have very specific meanings in terms of particular opposing positions regarding abortion policy.
> It's a marketing myth that "gay marriage" is the same thing as "marriage equality".
It would be more accurate to say that "marriage equality" is a brand that has been established by advocates of legal marriage without distinction based on the sex of the partners.
So you want to dismiss the ideas above because they belong to a minority and are not supported by the majority? Wow, you sound like a bigot.
Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.
As it stands, the campaign for "marriage equality" is deceptive and has only been concerned with marriage between homosexuals - other minority groups be damned!
No, its not. Marriage where one or both partners are homosexuals is legally permitted (and has often occurred) without marriage equality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/gender-bias-could-tip-c...
Equal marriage is when the government doesn't discriminate by sex in who people are permitted to marry.
> Remember just a few years ago there were no major organizations or groups of people advocating for... same-sex marriage.
Is 1991 a "few years ago"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Hawaii
I know this is a little bit of a canard and what people really mean is "I don't want to see more people go that way", but it strikes me that there is a need to separate these two things -
1. Some drugs, particularly opiates, are a bad thing to get into.
2. Therefore banning them and criminalising use is the right thing to do and the best way to stop more bad stuff.
Personally I think a system which decriminalises possession of hard drugs and legalises their distribution from (or use at) a well regulated medical centre would be a good thing, from a harm-reduction viewpoint. But I'd agree that not everything should be as easy to get as a can of beer.
--edit-- now realise we're not arguing!
I'm not sure, with heroin for instance, where recreation ends and addiction begins. By having it freely available (with a side-order of counselling and you have to take it on-site) we could reduce harm from bad needles, impure drugs etc etc. We would also reduce crime as nobody then needs to rob people to get their next fix - they can get it. In what little I've read about where this is the prevalent method (Switzerland) addicts are often able to function normally and even reduce usage quite rapidly, when the stress of finding the money and the contacts for the next hit is taken out of the equation.
It seems like a good thing to do, to me.
The prospect of heroin corporations selling advertising dirt-cheap heroin on TV is not something I would welcome.
The big "eureka" moment was to start treating drug usage as a health issue instead of a criminal issue. It's not legal to buy or sell drugs in Portugal and if you are found carrying drugs they will be taken away from you (in most circumstances) but it's not a crime to consume them so you won't go to jail or face any prosecution.
Downvote because of the implication that an idea expounded by libertarians is, ipso facto, a bad idea. Our political discourse needs minds considerably more open than that.