I cannot upvote this enough. It also mirrors how Portugal is approaching illegal drug use - with dedicated teams of professionals providing free, compassionate care. “The commission assesses whether the individual is addicted and suggests treatment as needed. ‘Non-addicted’ individuals may receive a warning or a fine, but the commission can decide to suspend enforcement of these penalties for six months if the individual agrees to get help — an information session, motivational interview or brief intervention — targeted to their pattern of drug use. If the individual completes the program and doesn’t appear before the commission again for six months, their case is closed.”
It’s not perfect, but it is getting results: “According to a New York Times analysis, the number of heroin users in Portugal has dropped from 100,000 to just 25,000 today. The number of HIV diagnoses caused by injection drug use has plummeted by more than 90 per cent. Over the last 20 years, levels of drug use in Portugal are consistently under the European average, particularly with young people between the ages of 15-34.”
Turns out when you treat people as valuable and give them real alternatives they’ll more often than not start cooperating in improving their lives. Not all of them - the model isn’t perfect and neither are all people - but it seems to work way better than a “war on drugs/drug users” approach.
In Oregon, we attempted to model Portugal’s drug policy. The roll out was a mess and treatment centers weren’t funded for several years. Additionally, following the advice of people in the field, the measure didn’t include the mandatory meeting with the inter-disciplinary local commission like in Portugal. Instead, there was a hotline set up and possession became a citation. Unfortunately, the citation didn’t have the number to the hotline. In places like Portland, the cops at least gave out a business card with hotline number on it in addition to the citation.
Several years later, we have a roll back of the citations to making drug use illegal again. It’s not as bad as 2019, but it isn’t Portugal either. The biggest strike against it was the public use of drugs in downtown areas and in small encampments. Sadly, this was happening nation wide, but Measure 510 was blamed. And this roll back seems to have taken drug decriminalization off the table in other states altogether. I hope someone braves these waters again, but the advocates who helped design the program have seemingly shuttered their legislative pushes elsewhere.
I wonder if things would have been slightly different if we hewed closer to the Portugal model. Sad that the worst off of us will suffer.
UBH!
(Universal Basic Housing)
All these Universal Basic * programs seem to work, and the only things holding them back are rich people not wanting to be taxed, and the people they have brainwashed into supporting them.
idk, America seems to push Universal Basic Gun Owning pretty hard. Can’t say that it’s helping anyone tho.
Hah! I almost wish that were true, just so more poor leftists would arm themselves. Guns (and ammo) are fucking expensive and there are no subsidies.
As a European, how much does it actually cost to buy a gun in US?
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Damn, didn’t expect guns to be that cheap, but I guess it’s probably the printer ink situation with ammo. Thanks for the reply. (⌐■_■)
Damn. 0.215 USD per round. (9mm)
A 9mm handgun can be as cheap as $100, however that is for a quite poor quality gun (hipoint). For something that is more standard, higher quality handgun like the Glock 19 is around $500.
There are some additional fees, if you buy online you have to have it shipped to an FFA which may charge you, in my state, you either need a conceal carry permit, or a ‘pistol purchase permit’ the conceal carry is like a lifetime pass to buy guns, with the idea being you proved you can be safe by doing the CCW courses and exams. The pistol purchase permit is like $15 and involves a background check.
Private sales require no ancillary permits or anything, so a used hi point 9mm could probably realistically be as low as $50-$75 if it were quite beat up.
A box of ammo for a 9mm may cost around $20 for 20 bullets depending on where you live and such.
That seems cheap and it is. But for regular use at a shooting range for example, a single box would only last a couple a minutes. If you wanted to go for an ‘all day’ thing at the range, it would cost $100-$200 (about 200 rounds) plus the fees for the range, $20 - $100 depending on the place, unless you have safe private property. Though with a hi point, it will probably fall apart before you get 200 rounds through it 😅.
Things do get real expensive though for people like shooting as a hobby, as more exotic ammo can get very expensive ($10-$15 a bullet or even higher)
It’s almost as if actually trying to solve problems is the best way to solve problems. The US doesn’t try to solve problems, we just criminalize them.
As a country, we’ve barely moved beyond nuns smacking you with a ruler and telling you to stop being left handed.
My teacher at a Catholic school tried that on me in the early 90s. Didn’t work, I just became ambidextrous and a little more damaged.
Solves the problem of too many empty beds in a for profit jail
