The biggest difference I see comparing the Portuguese reality to the Swedish one is the lack of social stigma regarding drugs. Drugs are just openly discussed in Portugal and addicts are well integrated in society. I have friends whose parents are heroin addicts and for the most part they are a normal family with jobs and responsabilities. Sometimes they relapse but it's not a big deal because they have a network and feel safe to get help quickly and the state sponsors replacement therapies in the meanwhile.

These are people that started doing heroin in the late 80s and for the most part still raised a family and are good parents and neighbors.

It's just a disease like any other and Portuguese people see addiction that way.

I could rant for hours on alcohol and tobacco policy in the UK. A little knowledge of the field of Harm Reduction opens a lot of avenues for criticism. Particularly increasing taxation, which extracts most from the working class and is effective in few use-cases. The UK isn't alone: look up the EU's May 2017 'Tobacco Product Directive' regarding E-cigs. Read: lobbying from groups that are responsible for millions of deaths and public cost are strangling and monopolising a market and technology that is an incredible source of harm reduction... I'm struggling to hold my tongue at this point.

We have a large problem with a political class who don't listen to reason or evidence, simply an innately conservative discourse makes the problem look smaller than it really is. It's fantastic to read a positive outlook on Portugal's policy - it has been smeared countless times here.

If you blame Calvinism for either medievalism or postmodern bureaucracy, let alone the drug war, I suggest you don't know what Calvinism is. I'm for drug legalisation, but if you want the UK to adopt the policies of Portugal (or something similar) it will not help to blame the problem on the wrong people. You ought to be directing your anger at the social planners and the nanny state. That group, I can assure you, is very decidedly anti-Calvinist in nature.

I admit I probably only know a little more than the average about Calvinism, but far less than those who 'know' about it, so I didn't understand your point entirely. You prompted me to do more reading, which was interesting, so thank you for that.

More seriously, I think the causes are so multi-faceted it's difficult to interpret precisely where to place the blame. I think 'Reaganism' is a fine target, but it's a little short-sighted to lay all the blame there. 'Social planners' triggers associations with Edward Bernays' and his legacy, and what else I know from Manufacturing Consent, if that's your gist. Would you mind expanding on your view?

No matter how harmless a drug is, there are always inherent issues bound to it's consumption.

Mindset/cultural attitudes are the central question. Say if the UK's binge-drinking culture transposes to binge-consumption, and introducing legality is considered an opened door, then the healthcare structures are critical. It's also probably quite hard to educate GPs - who seem to be big on drinking away their stresses at uni but avoiding other drugs - into an open mindset that identifies the right problems.

The pros and cons seem to accommodate a careful optimism and evolution-of-culture outlook. Not necessarily sweeping reforms. The problem for this view is that those with vested interests support sweeping anti-reform, whatever way you want to look at it.

You see this in terms of policies on things like alcohol and drugs in particular, but also areas like prostitution, where the attitude is often that the people involved are sinners who both need help and punishment, and where there is an attitude of "we know best" about legislation and treatment options.

The Nordic countries often looks liberal on the surface, but while they have secularised rapidly there is still an undercurrent of Christian moralistic ideas that have had a very firm grip in many areas, aided by the long lasting state churches (e.g. the Norwegian Lutheran church was a state church with the government appointing key people until 2012).

All of them are rather urgent, but instead we get virtue signalling and distancing from the nationalist party, pseudo debates about tax-levels (55% or 54%) and endless mantras regarding "healthcare" and "schools" while ironically those systems are still good but are slowly deteriorating due to New Public Management, unhinged privatisation and a good deal of incompetence. None of which is discussed except maybe the last few weeks when a properly virtue-signalling but spectacularly incompetent General Director managed to outsource classified information to Serbia of all places.

It's obvious that the drug politics has failed. The only thing we need to do is to look at the facts (almost worst in EU), think and discuss, and then modify. But no.

Right now we are just feeding the criminal gangs earning money on lighter drugs such as cannabis where there is an unstoppable demand, while coming down so hard on the heavier users that they literally die on the streets. One mistake or relapse while on a program - and they are kicked out on the street again.

But why? I honestly don't know. Swedish government bodies seems to have a very hard time changing their position, especially when it involves admitting that they have been wrong. Swedes are also very conformist - almost like a big insecure high school class where everyone say the same thing, wear the same things, and bully anyone that sticks out even just a little bit, so it could be hard to discuss sensitive topics.

That is separate from saying that changing the legality of it impacts the usage though. There is not reason to take the result beyond what it indicates.

Taking Sweden as control, for example, they spend loads on health services and treatment; but without decriminalisation, their numbers are still terrible.

You would probably not want this kind of prescription to be signable by just any MD though, but that's another story.

You can not before treatment and for keeping it illegal.

These are mutually exclusive, as treatment for drug addiction has to be voluntary on the part of the user, and often time criminal convictions, and stress of legal issues are what drive people to use drugs.

So you decriminalise to allow addicts to come forth and accept clean needles and other help, while simultaneously investing more money to provide that help.

It's a two prong "attack" and it's pretty simple actually.

If to get treatment they basically have to turn themselves in, and are liable to go to jail, I doubt many would make that choice.

After decades of prohibition, we can conclude the "War On Drugs" is a lost cause and people will always seek out drugs. If people are going to take drugs regardless, let's make sure they're clean and the profits of sale don't fund criminal gangs.

Beyond removing the criminal element, the fentanyl epidemic should make the destructive nature of our current policy so obvious as to warrant the complete legalization (and regulation) of heroin. People are dying at incredibly high rates because they are not getting pure substances - they are receiving substances cut with something that can kill at tiny doses. Not only do heroin addicts have to deal with heroin overdoses (which are still quite possible), but they have to deal with fentanyl overdoses. Every time they use unregulated product, they are gambling with their lives. Our drug policy in America is completely ignorant of this reality.

I can understand "ordinary people" not reading up on it, but at this point I personally consider politicians who continue to oppose large scale drug reform to be morally responsible for contributing to mass murder.

I accept they're not legally responsible, but I genuinely believe most of them should be in prison on murder charges for their parts in perpetuating these violent policies unless they've at the very least voted in opposition to these policies if/when they've had the chance.

Besides that, people are a whole lot more likely to voluntarily go for help if they know they won't be arrested for what they have been doing.

But everyone knows this, it's the obvious corollary of decriminalization and has been stated over and over.

Criminalizing drugs has negative externalities like boosting the profits of organized crime, but is often argued to outweigh those side effects by suppressing drug use, which is harmful.

If we found a way to make drug use much less harmful, then why would we not decriminalize drugs concurrently, given that its positives are negated so there's no argument remaining that they outweigh its negatives?

Even if the critical factor in reducing drug use harms was health services, the argument for concurrent decriminalization is overwhelming.

I think one of the main things is that people stopped being considered criminals to being considered "sick" - they have addiction, they need help, so they require health care.

If the police catches you with weed - you'll need to go psychological counseling for example.

Criminalization means, they send the police to address the issue.

De-criminalizaton means, they no longer send the police to address the issue.

This isn't hand-waving, the term really means what has happened: since people are no longer treated as criminals, humanity has been added to the mix - and, appears to be helping solve the problem.

I think you maybe just don't understand the term. Yes, in fact, de-criminalization is the key issue: patients, not criminals.