Forbes is not a credible source for social issues as their agenda is to cut anything that doesn't immediately benefit the rich, and open up any possible field of economic exploitation. They would have us fight the Opium Wars all over again, a historical fact that contradicts the entirely ignorant and unreal premise of the article: legalization does not, in fact, decrease addiction; quite the contrary.
The article is also a lie because it is built on one statistic that it presents in a mistruthful way:
Quote:
Currently 40,000 people in Portugal are being treated for drug abuse.
Since drug abuse is no longer criminalized, treatment or incarceration are no longer compulsory; there is no legal apparatus to actively pursue drug users. Portugal, like many of the weaker EU countries, has had to make massive public funding cutbacks in recent years. So there is no basis to believe that 40k figure of people
in treatment is an accurate representation of the number of addicts and other victims in the country.
Furthermore, there is no basis for arguing that decriminalizing drugs will reduce addiction rates. As with ending Prohibition, the basis for pro-legalization arguments is the social and financial costs of law enforcement. The very fact that the article makes an argument contrary to fact underscores its dishonest and greedy premise.
Finally, Portugal is in no wise comparable to the US or any other first-rate Western nation. Portugal is a small and relatively poor country, and it has changed less in the last 500 years than any other country in Europe. This is why the rest of Europe has been content to largely ignore Portugal through centuries of war and upheaval: many more Portuguese live in a traditional manner than in any other European country. Thus two of the main factors driving drug abuse in America - abundance of liquid currency, and a lack of social institutions - do not apply there, and thus any comparison is inherently faulty.
Begging the question: why would Forbes not look for a more relevant example from a first-rate Western nation? Probably because such an example doesn't exist. The closest relevant case study would be Russia, which has de facto legalization and extremely high levels of chemical abuse. Contrary example would be China which has very low drug abuse (and extremely draconian laws for the reasons described at the beginning of this post).
But the biggest question of all, Azelma...is...why were these fallacies not obvious to you?
