[bitcharmer]

> damage that decriminalization of X enables,

This is a pretty ignorant comment to see on HN. So far we have strong evidence to show delegalisation causes huge issues and legalization works as expected. Have a look at any country that went that route.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Such as Portugal. Although decriminilisation was part of a wider social shift towards treating drug use a health issue rather than a legal issue.

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...

[bombcar]

Apparently it worked well for awhile, but WaPo now reports that people aren't as happy with it anymore:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

[clairegraham]

It sounds like a big part of the issue is that Portugal has substantially pulled back on funding after COVID...

"Speaking more quantitatively, drug users in treatment declined from 1,150 to 352 (from 2015 to 2021) as funding dropped in 2012 from $82.7 million to $17.4 million. "

Prior to that, the numbers seemed quite impressive:

"By 2018, Portugal’s number of heroin addicts had dropped from 100,000 to 25,000. Portugal had the lowest drug-related death rate in Western Europe, one-tenth of Britain and one-fiftieth of the U.S. HIV infections from drug use injection had declined 90%. The cost per citizen of the program amounted to less than $10/citizen/year while the U.S. had spent over $1 trillion over the same amount of time. Over the first decade, total societal cost savings (e.g., health costs, legal costs, lost individual income) came to 12% and then to 18%."

Source: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-dru...