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Title : "Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city as people with gaunt clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips syringes to veins."
link : "Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city as people with gaunt clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips syringes to veins."
"Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city as people with gaunt clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips syringes to veins."
"Authorities are sealing off warren-like alleyways with iron bars and fencing in parks to halt the spread of encampments. A siege mentality is taking root in nearby enclaves of pricey condos and multimillion-euro homes.... On a recent afternoon, an emaciated man in striped pants sleeping in front of a state-funded drug-use center awoke to a patrol of four officers. He sat up, then defiantly began assembling his crack pipe. Officers walked on.... Over the last 18 months, a drug encampment sprung up below a school. More homes have been burgled. One neighbor said she found a person, naked from the waist down, shooting up outside her house gate. Another had her laundry stolen three times. Residents have launched U.S.-style neighborhood watches and hired private security guards — something exceedingly rare in Europe...."
So begins "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts" (WaPo).
The city is Porto, Portugal.
The article quotes something the Cato Institute put out in 2009: "None of the parade of horrors that decriminalization opponents in Portugal predicted, and that decriminalization opponents around the world typically invoke, has come to pass."
That's the trouble with lines. You think the line is the problem, as some people crowd at the line causing conspicuous problems. Relieve the pressure: erase the line. Then you learn how many more people that line was affecting.
There had been a vision of channeling Portugal's drug users into treatment, but:
Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab. Police were observed passing people using drugs, not bothering to cite them — a step that is supposed to lead to registration for appearances before those commissions. “Why?” replied one officer when asked why people were not being cited and referred to commissions. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak with the press. “Because we know most of them. We’ve registered them before. Nothing changes if we take them in.”
From the comments section at WaPo:
This is a far more complicated situation than the article reveals. I am a retired American professor of Portuguese ancestry who has lived for periods of time in the country since 2005 and now lives here permanently. In 2005 I received a sabbatical to study Portugal's new decriminalization regime. The first thing needing to be said here is that the "problem", so to speak, really only appears to a significant degree in the two largest cities, Lisbon and Porto.
No mention whatsoever is made of the massive displacement of the local populace by the gentrification of these cities which has occurred as a result of government policies (local, in particular) encouraging high end development for foreign buyers and tourists. I have been to Porto every year for the past 18 years, and every single year the city looks different than it did the year before, all because of development for the foreign populace/tourism. And the locals have nowhere to go. Displacement produces misery, misery produces stress, and stress produces attempts to self medicate (i.e, drug use). Porto's mayor complains about drug use but has done little to mitigate and much to promote the policies of displacement....
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"Authorities are sealing off warren-like alleyways with iron bars and fencing in parks to halt the spread of encampments. A siege mentality is taking root in nearby enclaves of pricey condos and multimillion-euro homes.... On a recent afternoon, an emaciated man in striped pants sleeping in front of a state-funded drug-use center awoke to a patrol of four officers. He sat up, then defiantly began assembling his crack pipe. Officers walked on.... Over the last 18 months, a drug encampment sprung up below a school. More homes have been burgled. One neighbor said she found a person, naked from the waist down, shooting up outside her house gate. Another had her laundry stolen three times. Residents have launched U.S.-style neighborhood watches and hired private security guards — something exceedingly rare in Europe...."
So begins "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts" (WaPo).
The city is Porto, Portugal.
The article quotes something the Cato Institute put out in 2009: "None of the parade of horrors that decriminalization opponents in Portugal predicted, and that decriminalization opponents around the world typically invoke, has come to pass."
That's the trouble with lines. You think the line is the problem, as some people crowd at the line causing conspicuous problems. Relieve the pressure: erase the line. Then you learn how many more people that line was affecting.
There had been a vision of channeling Portugal's drug users into treatment, but:
Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab. Police were observed passing people using drugs, not bothering to cite them — a step that is supposed to lead to registration for appearances before those commissions. “Why?” replied one officer when asked why people were not being cited and referred to commissions. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak with the press. “Because we know most of them. We’ve registered them before. Nothing changes if we take them in.”
From the comments section at WaPo:
This is a far more complicated situation than the article reveals. I am a retired American professor of Portuguese ancestry who has lived for periods of time in the country since 2005 and now lives here permanently. In 2005 I received a sabbatical to study Portugal's new decriminalization regime. The first thing needing to be said here is that the "problem", so to speak, really only appears to a significant degree in the two largest cities, Lisbon and Porto.
No mention whatsoever is made of the massive displacement of the local populace by the gentrification of these cities which has occurred as a result of government policies (local, in particular) encouraging high end development for foreign buyers and tourists. I have been to Porto every year for the past 18 years, and every single year the city looks different than it did the year before, all because of development for the foreign populace/tourism. And the locals have nowhere to go. Displacement produces misery, misery produces stress, and stress produces attempts to self medicate (i.e, drug use). Porto's mayor complains about drug use but has done little to mitigate and much to promote the policies of displacement....
Thus articles "Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city as people with gaunt clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips syringes to veins."
that is all articles "Addiction haunts the recesses of this ancient port city as people with gaunt clumsy hands lift crack pipes to lips syringes to veins." This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
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