in portugal, which is supposed to be the model, the state continues to run the kind of mental health institutions that are considered to be arcane in north america and that is what the actual policy is in that country. portugal does not have a libertarian drug policy that lets the free market deal with drug use, it has a socialist model that rounds up drug addicts and puts them in mental health institutions, where they are forced to undergo intense rehab in a manner that would be considered unconstitutional in both canada and the united states. this is not some kind of secret; it's easily found in a basic google search. unfortunately, it would appear that neither the political activists nor the politicians nor the minority of health workers that have supported this approach have ever actually read up on what the portugese model actually is, but have instead relied on second or third hand word of mouth descriptions that no doubt originated in social media posts. the idea that the portugese model is a free market model is a purplemonkeydishwasher interpretation of what the portugese model actually is, and this is an actual example of a real life failure in policy brought on by poorly sourced information sharing over social media (and yet is not the kind of 'disinformation' we hear about by pro-government scare mongerers).
it's worthwhile to point out that when useful and correct information that contradicted bad policy by the state was shared over social media, it was attacked as 'disinformation' but the same state bodies were equally eager to write bad policy based on actual poorly sourced information that came to them via the same vector of social media. this proves that the problem is not the technology itself, but the people using it; we should not fear computers or social media, we should fear state institutions run by ignorant people and we should approach the problem by launching education campaigns for government workers, to ensure that the state is better at processing information it receives from questionable sources. we should fear ignorant public servants, not the tools they use to poorly gather information with.
it takes little to no foresight to predict that a free market drug policy divorced from the socialist portugese model of aggressive, enforced rehabilitation would simply lead to chaos, carnage and death. we in truth were not following the portugese model of recent years, but the chinese model of the nineteenth century, when british gun ships introduced opium to the chinese masses in order to weaken the population, and the chinese state didn't take the threat seriously. china certainly takes the threat of mass drug addiction seriously, nowadays. yet, the governments on this continent see the populace as a threat and an enemy to contain, which is fundamentally different from the cultural communitarianism that exists in china. you have to understand that the state is killing people on purpose and that it isn't some coincidence that it targeted portland, oregon, which is the most socialist city in the country.
what's happening, however, is a moral panic rather than a carefully thought out change in policy. while predictable, moral panics are not helpful and don't create good policy, either. we're moving from one failed policy to another, which is reflective of the systemic failure underlying all of the failure in the first place.
i'm typing this as i'm yelling at a smoker that lives upstairs that i thought had moved out and apparently hasn't. this person signed a non-smoking lease and then ignored it. she knows i have asthma, she knows the property is non-smoking and she's listened to me yell at her to go smoke somewhere else for months but she just keeps smoking anyways. this person doesn't care about the well-being of the people around her in the remotest bit; she's simply a worthless, self-centered piece of shit. is there some mental illness underlying her selfish and narcissistic behaviour? my guess is that it's mostly bad parenting, and a culture of hedonism. she's a reflection of the capitalist society she exists within. yet, what i'm experiencing is a clear example of why a policy that forces drug users into residential areas is exactly what nobody wants. this woman chain smokes nicotine and occasionally smokes marijuana; i've smelled some heavy substances that i think might be meth, but she doesn't seem to smoke meth every day. if you're annoyed by the crackhead at the park because you don't want your kids around her, imagine having your kids forced to breath the shit in twenty times a day from your neighbour because the government tells her she's only allowed to smoke crack inside her apartment. this is not a better outcome, this is the worst policy possible. public health experts have been trying to rid the world of second hand smoke for decades, and then the stupid government shows up and tells addicts (who are almost always renters) that they're only allowed to smoke drugs inside their rented units, thereby creating a government policy to maximize the consequences of second-hand smoke. what a disaster.
rather, what we need is something like bars for drug users. bars were the ideal compromise to deal with moral panics around alcohol use, as it kept the drunks inside while keeping them out of residential areas. i don't understand why we haven't had marijuana bars pop up, as it would get the potheads out of residential spaces, where they pollute the lungs of non-smokers. likewise, we should have bars for crackheads and junkies, places where the cops can also keep an eye on what's going on.
i support the actual portugese model of aggressive treatment, to a point. i actually think that most of these people are hopeless and that trying to help them is just a waste of public resources that could be spent on more worthy social assistance recipients, like disabled people. i would rather continue to criminalize hard drug use and force people into treatment when they're in jail (which is the only way we could implement the actual portugese model in north america, because we have bills of rights), and i think there should be hefty $1000+ fines for smoking anything (marijuana, cigarettes, fire pits, bbqs) in residential spaces. nobody should ever have to deal with any kind of drifting or second-hand smoke from their neighbours, ever, at all. yet, if we're to treat the issue like a mental health issue then we need to actually take that idea seriously and generate the resources to do so, not wave our hands and leave it up to the market to figure it out. that is the lesson from the failed free market drug policy in the pacific northwest: free market approaches just don't work.