Always need to remember: the Portuguese law everyone praises is EXACTLY the law from 1920s Prohibition the same ppl decry.

Sale, manuf, and transport still illegal. Just possession oaky.

That’s the Volstead Act.

It’s not abt the law. It’s abt the enforcement culture. https://twitter.com/theeconomist/status/1360955967245025281

I’m always sort of bemused by how ppl praise the Portuguese law, given what it actually says.

Also, Portugal passes three things at once: possession law, universal basic income, big treatment expansion.

It wasn’t just “less punishment.” It was also “more services.”

Also, important to note the cultural differences. As @KeithNHumphreys always points out, PRE reform Portugal didn’t have a lot of ppl in for trafficking, so the underlying enforcement culture differed a lot... and bet that matters.

Ofc, this sort of reform is better than no reform... as long as it doesn’t kill momentum for bigger, realer change (political capital here is a limited resource).

But let’s be realistic abt what it is, and what really happened/drove whatever changes happened in Portugal.