[HN Gopher] Oregon decriminalized hard drugs - early results are...
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Oregon decriminalized hard drugs - early results aren't encouraging
Author : slapshot
Score : 211 points
Date : 2023-08-01 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| KingLancelot wrote:
| [dead]
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Decriminalization isn't a panacea (no pun intended.) If there's
| no integrated treatment, social services, and medical system to
| support this, then it's doomed to fail.
|
| OTOH, militarized and racist Nixonian prohibition also doesn't
| serve a public good. One easy change: the US schedule of
| substances should go away because it levies unfair and unequal
| punishment on users. Psychoactive substances don't need the
| regulations, controls, or expense of monitoring highly enriched
| uranium: it's spending money and effort on the wrong parts of the
| public health situation. There is already a template for dealing
| with other substances, i.e., alcohol and tobacco. Focusing on
| healthcare and mental healthcare for all, with substance
| treatment being part of it, would lead to better outcomes and
| probably reduce the costs of policing.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Expecting legalization to fix drug-related social issues was
| never realistic. What it does fix is mass incarceration of people
| who are ill.
|
| So you need to compare the effects of legalization with the
| effects of criminalization. First order effects might seem bad:
| more drug users in public, more crime. But you also don't see the
| drug users who weren't imprisoned and were able to get help and
| turn their lives around.
|
| What Oregon tells me is that deinstitutionalization doesn't work.
| You can't just kick drug users to the streets and expect that to
| fix the problem. Sick people need help.
| michaelteter wrote:
| I don't even have to read the article.
|
| The US military is, if anything, serious about understanding
| cause and effect. They studied and learned about drug addiction
| during and after the Viet Nam war.
|
| What they found might seem counterintuitive. Addicted soldiers
| could break the habit easily once they returned home. Of course
| this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance
| has a lot to do with behavior.
|
| Given that, if you don't change the circumstances, then changing
| the details (criminalization, penalties) won't change the
| behavior.
|
| WHY are people using drugs (or alcohol, as many of us do?) What
| is being avoided or intentionally clouded?
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that
| circumstance has a lot to do with behavior.
|
| This is why rehab clinics seemingly "work" - you remove the
| person from the environment driving them to seek refuge from
| reality. They relapse very easily once back in the same
| situation that got them addicted in the first place.
|
| Ive experienced it myself on a vacation during an addiction
| long ago: I was not worried about my situation, I had positive
| people around me and we did fun things. During that time I
| realized I had no interest in being high but felt the
| withdrawal so I wound up dosing as little as possible just so I
| wasn't jonesing. I realized breaking the addiction meant making
| life changes which weren't easy but I managed to get over it.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| There was also a pretty famous study w/ mice I believe. One of
| them had a good world w/ plenty of food, plenty of toys to play
| with and ample people to hang out with and have sex with. They
| had two feeding tubes, one contained drugs and other didn't.
| The mouse repeatedly took the drug free version. Then they
| created a shit mouse world. I think it was just overcrowded and
| didn't have any toys or that shit they borrow in. Low and
| behold the mouse in the shit world chose the feeding tube w/
| the drugs.
| thehappypm wrote:
| This study has been widely debunked as junk science
| taeric wrote:
| To help others that may be looking,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park is a good read on
| it.
|
| Calling it junk science is probably overly stated. Seems
| the largest confounding fact is that different strains of
| rats have different propensities to addictions. I can see
| why that would be a scary thing to look at in humans.
| sircastor wrote:
| Any time we have a conversation about this, my wife brings it
| up: People are using drugs to deal with something - often
| trauma of some sort. That trauma might be anything from
| childhood abuse to homelessness. Our society (The USA,
| generally speaking) is not particularly interested in helping
| people deal with their trauma before it becomes a problem.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| We create misery and then distribute poison to escape it.
| Ugly way of disposing of the unwanted, but it can serve as a
| warning to the rest.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Manufactured Misery. Would make a great slogan for America
| plantwallshoe wrote:
| Right, in Vietnam soldiers could use with relative impunity.
|
| In the US they would be jailed or socially ostracized.
|
| The circumstances changed such that there were serious
| consequences for doing drugs, and many were able to get off
| them when presented with consequences.
|
| Removing consequences for antisocial levels of drug use does
| nothing to encourage people to get clean.
| michaelteter wrote:
| Not at all, at least not from what I read a few years ago
| about this. The war situation there was frankly unfathomable
| to us privileged folk. Beside the obvious physical pain and
| injuries there were psychological influences which are
| normally so far removed from our lives that we cannot deal
| with them. Drugs are an escape from the physical injuries and
| pain, and then they turn out to be an escape from the mental
| awareness.
|
| Shooting at other humans, killing them, is not something we
| are designed psychologically to handle. But obviously if you
| feel you must kill another to avoid being killed, you may do
| it. And then your mind must reconcile that memory. Drugs can
| help you avoid it.
|
| The change of attitude has absolutely nothing to do with
| laws.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Shooting at other humans, killing them, is not something
| we are designed psychologically to handle. But obviously if
| you feel you must kill another to avoid being killed, you
| may do it. And then your mind must reconcile that memory.
| Drugs can help you avoid it.
|
| The vast majority of soldiers in Vietnam (and in any modern
| war) don't kill anyone at all, and don't get into
| firefights. Modern armies are basically 90%+ logistics.
| Drug abuse was spread throughout all roles in the military
| in Vietnam, it wasn't exclusive to combat roles.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Your partially stated assumption here is that soldiers
| stopped using drugs _because_ of the punishments. I think
| this is a case of post hoc fallacy. Yes, punishments create a
| disincentive for some behavior, but only in the case of
| rational actors who have the means to act on that motive.
| Some soldiers who left Vietnam had the necessary support
| systems to overcome addiction or were never addicted in the
| first place or weren 't in an environment where those drugs
| were available at home. Others did not and stayed addicted,
| even when they came home. Heavy penalties don't necessarily
| cause a proportionally smaller addiction problem. They just
| punish heavier. The only rational path to reducing drug
| addiction is to improve the conditions that _cause_ drug
| addictions. Very few people become drug addicts for no
| reason.
| mouse_ wrote:
| Experts and the educated class will say it's a complex and
| multifaceted issue. I say it's because the fraction of the
| sweat of our brow we are entitled to is shrinking ever smaller
| into nothingness.
| michaelteter wrote:
| I think you could expand on this a bit, because I want to
| understand... I think I might be close...
| mouse_ wrote:
| In the 1970s/80s, an hour of minimum wage could afford you
| about 7 big macs. Now, it will not even buy you one. Real
| wages have dropped to an all time low, and it is harder
| than ever to account for yourself as a working class
| citizen. Circumstances for the average American have
| devolved to nightmarish levels, and it seems that it is
| only going to get worse.
|
| It has been said that inflation is not a bad thing because
| median wages will increase alongside it. In practice that
| has not been the case. In 2014, when I was asking for $15
| an hour, my rent was $740. Now that I'm getting $15 an
| hour, my rent is $2,400 and I need several room mates just
| to get by. Inflation is not a bad thing if wages increase
| in correlation to it, but if they DON'T, then it functions
| as a tax on our future. The vice is tightening, things are
| becoming miserable, and a growing number of our children
| and our future are turning to hard drugs and escapism as a
| way of coping with it.
|
| The 1% has managed to enslave everyone else; people grow
| apathetic, and take drugs, because, really at this point,
| who cares?
| brundolf wrote:
| There's treating the root cause (totally agree with, except
| that as a task it's almost impossibly large/complicated to
| solve at a societal level), and then there's deciding not to do
| _additional_ harm (prosecution) on top of the harm that 's
| already happening
|
| I don't think the main expectation of decriminalization is to
| solve the drug issue, but to stop adding fuel to the fire. But,
| maybe that will turn out to have been wrong
| FredPret wrote:
| I thought legalization was the way due to libertarian reasons.
| Who is the gov to regulate my behaviour?
|
| But then I met addicts. People who made one (fatal) mistake and
| are now hooked for life, and careening through life completely
| out of their own control.
|
| In the past, we had strong social institutions like the church,
| and mass participation in the army, and insane asylums for the
| bad apples. The problem there was over-control and abuse of
| disempowered people.
|
| Note I don't agree with the above, but now we've swung so far the
| other way that there are people doing hard drugs 100m from where
| I'm typing this, and there are seemingly no answers.
|
| I hope we find an enlightened way to guide those who need help
| because neither the old nor the current way is working perfectly.
| urmish wrote:
| The HN/reddit stance on "war on drugs" and drugs in general is
| proof education and common sense don't have as much correlation
| as is commonly thought of. These forums kept bringing up Portugal
| for more than a decade and when finally the results were seen,
| the new favorite psyop they're shilling is "the govt isn't doing
| enough" and "we must do more". Lol.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Drugs have destroyed many societies and we look like we're
| allowing it to happen to us.
| dahwolf wrote:
| Some have the belief that hard drug users are temporarily down,
| but with the proper help can be converted back into productive
| citizens.
|
| I think we overestimate for how many of them this is a realistic
| path. Quite a few of them will struggle for life. Have no family
| or a dysfunctional one, no marketable skills or ability to gain
| them, mental issues and cognitive shortcomings, wrong kind of
| friends/network, a whole host of issues.
|
| Miracle comeback stories will grab the attention, but shouldn't
| be seen as the normal path. The normal path may be dedicating
| enormous resources for very little return.
|
| I don't have the answers. You can't do nothing but you can't
| babysit somebody for their entire life either.
| lampshades wrote:
| I support decriminalizing/legalizing hard drugs. But you need to
| have the force to quickly and harshly deal with crime that it
| causes.
|
| I keep hearing of people on the west coast committing small
| crimes constantly and being let out. We can't blame it all on the
| drugs, people still need to be required to act responsible. Right
| now we're letting people become junkies on the street and not
| even doing anything when they rob all the stores.
|
| Make robbing the fucking store illegal, not doing drugs.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This the most openly bloodthirsty and triumphant comment section
| I've seen in a while. Given the context and implications, the
| power of the consensus and emotional tone here is chilling.
| droptablemain wrote:
| China, not Oregon, has the right idea regarding junkies and
| pushers.
| throw7 wrote:
| paywall and the archive is down.
|
| did oregon have a unified intervention program where there was
| one point of contact who knew and tracked the patient from
| initial contact through all ups, downs, sides, and arounds? that
| p.o.c. would have access to full patient history (in a social
| sense also), and be able track the progression and punishments
| and rewards the "system" offers.
| glonq wrote:
| Vancouver BC says hello, where the same experiment is also
| failing.
|
| On a related note, anybody got a quick turn-around on a Hyundai
| Veloster rear window? Ours was just smashed out _for the fourth
| time_ , because local fentanyl zombies somehow believe we are
| stashing a treasure trove under the back hatch.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| On an individual point of view, being easy on drug makes sense.
| We ought to have the right to do what we please to our bodies.
| But if you zoom out and look at the collective outcome, this is
| the sort of stuff that takes down millenium-old empires and keeps
| them down for centuries - China.
|
| Being so bold to think that a good dose of superior modern
| intellectualism is going to make up for the fundamental flaws
| this introduce in a society, is a special type of belly button
| observationism.
|
| As a society, we shouldn't stop our inquiry by looking at the
| personal tragedy that this causes on the individuals. The real
| long term issue is at the higher order level, where a society's
| fabric is torn apart by the debilitating nature of many drugs
| when deployed at scale on a society. Addictive debilitating drugs
| are a powerful force bringing a people down, taking others along
| with them.
|
| Softness on drugs from a high minded perspective boils down to a
| decoupling mistake similar to the mispricing that carbon taxes
| attempt to correct. Drugs impose a high social cost that's hidden
| from sight when we just look at it from first-order individual
| right's perspective. But if we dig deeper, our collective
| individual rights are all put in jeopardy.
| indymike wrote:
| Addictions and incarceration have three things in common: they
| both rob a person of vast amounts of time, society of whatever
| that person's output is and impose vast hardship on the people
| around the addict/incarcerated.
| hintymad wrote:
| Funny. Chinese people were plagued by opium more than a 100 years
| ago. The Qing government, no matter how corrupted and useless
| they were, were willing to go to wars with British for fighting
| opiums. Pictures like this are national stigma even today:
| https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2011/10/29/be-caref....
| Yet, the US, the lighthouse of the nations on earth, thought it
| was okay to tolerate drugs, and it's certainly okay to have
| streets like in SF or like Kensington in Phili.
| wittenbunk wrote:
| Opiates arent decriminalized in Philadelphia, seems like your
| argument is more based in bias then logic
| hintymad wrote:
| I was talking about the general tolerance towards drugs.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I resided in Portland for two years and volunteered at a free
| medical clinic. We saw many individuals who were addicted to hard
| narcotics and it was the same people, repeatedly in our clinics.
| Then new drugs would emerge on the street and it seemed a never
| ending cycle of drug addiction, poor health, homelessness, and
| death. It wore me down because the tide of addicts never slowed,
| and I questioned if such legalization is beneficial.
|
| Prison is not the answer but decriminalization removes incentives
| against powerful narcotics.
| frandroid wrote:
| ...Do you have evidence that the disincentives worked before?
| calibas wrote:
| There's already powerful incentives against narcotics, you
| mentioned three of them: "poor health, homelessness, and
| death." If that's not enough to dissuade someone, laws aren't
| going to make much difference.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| on the other hand. the very 'late' results of criminalizing drugs
| are also really terrible.... e.g. latin america
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| From what is written here in the article it sounds to me that
| unlike the Portugal jurisdiction they are trying to emulate,
| Oregon really hasn't followed through on building out the
| required health measures, that is treatment, that is required to
| go hand in hand with decriminalization for the entire concept to
| be a success.
|
| It's very easy to change legislation and deregulate. A lot harder
| to actually spend the money to build out a robust system of
| healthcare.
|
| Deregulation is a necessary step in order to treat addiction as a
| disease best fixed with healthcare, but it can't be the single
| only step.
|
| It's dispiriting that people are looking at Oregon struggling
| through the implementation details and thinking that the whole
| idea was a mistake and we need to go back to decades old drug war
| tactics. Not clear at all how those approaches would succeed in
| this moment as the new problem of fentanyl and toxic drugs has
| made things worse than it has ever been.
|
| The notion that we need to give up and go back to the old ways
| seems more like a knee jerk reaction and flight to safety of what
| we've always done.
| tlogan wrote:
| I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is
| a free country, you should be able to do what you want.
|
| But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think
| differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not
| being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes
| to get help or treatment.
|
| The problem will stick around because politicians care more about
| how things look. They'll say the numbers are wrong, or focus on
| wedge issues like transgender, guns, but they're not going to do
| anything on hard issues like this one.
|
| Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make drugs
| illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug
| tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP
| payments?
| kouru225 wrote:
| How does this compare to Portugal's wild success when it comes
| to decriminalizing hard drugs? Seems like SF is a way less
| useful example.
| tlogan wrote:
| Portugal is disaster. I went there but here is a link [1] :(
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I suspect there may be a network effects / regulatory
| arbitrage problem. If only a small number of places
| decriminalize drugs, that will attract lots of drug addicts
| without being able to support them. The policies need to be
| more universal in order for them to bear fruit... Though I
| realize this sounds like doubling down on failure. It would
| explain why a country wide program like Portugal could be
| more successful.
| epolanski wrote:
| It backlashed in Portugal in recent years actually.
| patrickmay wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| Got a cite for that? I doubt it's true.
|
| We're seeing the same problems with drug prohibition that we
| saw with alcohol prohibition. It's time for the government to
| stop destroying people's lives.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It was clear that making drugs legal wouldn't solve all
| problems. What needs to happen is that the budgets that got
| spent on prosecuting and imprisoning drug users now gets spent
| on treatment options.
| buttercraft wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| Maybe you just don't notice the ones who live like normal
| adults because... they live like normal adults.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| keep them legal. but also invest in social workers. finally a
| model like the Portugal approach won't yield results if the
| basics aren't there (healthcare, housing, etc)
| sircastor wrote:
| > Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into
| rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to
| receive government help like SF CAAP payments?
|
| I think this is dealing with the problem far too late for it to
| be effective. Rehab treats the drug as though it's the problem.
| The drug is not the problem. The person using the drug is
| trying to manage some sort of stress or situation that they
| otherwise can't deal with. If you get a person off drugs but
| don't address their health, home-security, childhood trauma,
| abusive relationships, etc. At best they're simply going to
| shift to dealing with that issue through some other way: Food
| addiction, sex addiction, video games, abusing a loved-one,
| etc. And if it's not obvious, this is a repeating cycle.
|
| We need to do a better job of taking care of people in our
| communities. Before they end up using drugs (or other types of
| dangerous coping mechanisms). If we can't get to them before,
| we need to pick them up and start taking care of them. The
| trouble is (at least in the US), our approach to community
| support is contrary to our sense of individual freedoms - we
| don't want the government to support struggling individuals at
| the cost of individual freedoms (see healthcare, food and
| housing subsidy, etc)
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Part of the problem frankly is that not all drugs are created
| equal.
|
| There's very little reason for opioids to be freely available.
|
| But weed, psychadelics, mdma, etc. why not?
| rvcdbn wrote:
| We have built a society where the best options for these people
| are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they
| have a great life but they're just curious what a bit of meth
| feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because
| there's no better life path open to them. It's really a form of
| suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and
| less visible to you. It won't stop anyone from using but it
| will make using more dangerous. There is no easy solution. We
| need societal change. Making it illegal would be like
| criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.
| kljasdlkjfsd wrote:
| That's an interesting take but I think it's mostly reasoned
| from flawed first principles, as if everyone is a rational
| actor. For starters, some people do meth just because their
| friends are doing it. Some people aren't able to see the
| consequences clearly.
|
| And even if you assume it's only people having a bad go at
| life, every life includes bad parts, despair, etc. We're all
| vulnerable to irrational acts in those times.
|
| Legalizing drugs just makes access a little bit easier during
| those times. Once they're addicted, though, no rational
| amount of jail time will dissuade anybody.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Yes, once they're addicted no amount of prohibition will
| dissuade them. And we already have lots of addicts so the
| prevention ship has sailed. It's time to address the
| negative effects of black markets and drug impurity. During
| alcohol prohibition people used to die from the adjuncts or
| improper distillation. Now you can still become an
| alcoholic but at least can rely on the quality. And no
| gangsters make a living from rum running.
| rvcdbn wrote:
| All I know is that if I were born into their circumstances
| I would probably do the same thing. Some lives are way
| worse than others due purely to accident of birth and the
| really uncomfortable truth is that we have built a society
| where some lives are not even worth living. We need to face
| up to that, not pretend like everyone suffers to anything
| like the same degree. Life in the USA is very unequal. I've
| suffered terrible events in my life but I also have hope
| that my future will be worth living. If I didn't have that
| hope, I'd be doing exactly what these folks are.
| serf wrote:
| >Nobody starts using because they have a great life but
| they're just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then
| accidentally get hooked. They do it because there's no better
| life path open to them.
|
| that's pretty obviously wrong. Look at the demographic sample
| of meth users; it's not just down-and-out on-the-street
| folks.[0]
|
| it's not some "i'm going to try heroin on my deathbed" drug;
| affluent people try/use it routinely and it's fairly common
| in vacation destinations/sex-clubs/bars/'adult-venues' across
| the U.S.
|
| Some 100k+ salary earner who frequents sex clubs every
| weekend while on meth isn't doing it because 'there's no
| better life path open to them'; they're doing it because
| they're bored and it is entertaining, which is essentially
| the raison d'etre of all recreational drugs.
|
| One could also note that the existence of such casual users
| belittles the idea that it forms such addictive bonds as to
| guarantee a ruined life.. but personally I think that's a
| person-to-person thing; some people don't get addicted to
| things like others.
|
| [0]: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/trends-...
| rvcdbn wrote:
| I think these are not the same people we're talking about
| here (the people on the streets in SF).
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| I had a friend who had tried several substances and thought
| they were above addiction... until they were eventually
| hooked on heroin. It's anecdotal, but having watched people
| (more than him) get addicted, I don't have much doubt that
| even people with a good life get hooked on bad drugs.
|
| Hopefully, as society becomes more honest about drugs and
| stops scheduling every drug as equally dangerous or criminal,
| friends like that will be able to better trust that dangerous
| drugs do exist and know which ones to avoid.
|
| You'll never find disagreement on the need for societal
| change. My impression is that the U.S. doesn't really have
| tools in place to help people caught in the grip addiction
| back from the brink. Best case, it seems like something that
| that is being dealt with city by city without a national
| framework. Therefore, addicts largely end up on the street,
| hurting others, and/or in a prison system that's not designed
| to help them.
| tlogan wrote:
| I understand. But what is the solution? Just wait for them to
| all die? Here in San fransciso we have 3 overdose death per
| day. That is 40% spike from last years. In 2017 we had 222
| overdose death for entire year and we reached that number by
| march 15h this year.
|
| [1] https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/2021%2005_OCME
| %20...
| rvcdbn wrote:
| The solution that seems most likely to work IMO seems to be
| a European-style welfare state. All drugs have long been
| decriminalized in Portugal and you don't see that kind of
| thing on the streets of Lisbon. But I don't see that
| happening any time soon in the USA.
| cyberax wrote:
| Portugal has not yet been fully hit with dirt-cheap
| fentanyl.
|
| It IS different from other drugs.
| tlogan wrote:
| It seems it got hit this year ( visiting as tourist).
| Rome and Milan too (visiting family).
| tlogan wrote:
| > you don't see that kind of thing
|
| > on the streets of Lisbon.
|
| Actually that is exactly what I saw on the streets of
| Lisbon. Please do visit by yourself.
| rvcdbn wrote:
| I visited before the pandemic when last did you visit SF
| because I think it's a totally different scale.
|
| EDIT: just googled the stats and the number of homeless
| in SF is roughly the same as the whole of Portugal
| rvcdbn wrote:
| Actually one thing I would be curious to try is to
| substitute ketamine for opiates. It might work out that
| some people prefer it and it's far less harmful on the
| body. Problem is it's super expensive compared to
| opiates.
| z0r wrote:
| I think you're oversimplifying things a little bit. Some
| people will try e.g. heroin and get hooked due to curiosity.
| Some people do derail otherwise promising lives with drug and
| alcohol use.
| rvcdbn wrote:
| How many people do you know who work in harm reduction? How
| many of your friends are regular drug users? I'm speaking
| from direct experience are you? or are you just making
| assumptions that make you feel more comfortable?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Heroin is one of the few drugs where "once is enough". Many
| people go through phases experimenting with drugs in
| specific party contexts (e.g. raves) but that doesn't carry
| over to daily life. The people who carry it over are the
| ones looking for an escape as parent describes.
|
| Edit: And of course it doesn't require that they have
| obviously impoverished hopeless lives. Part of the illness
| of our society is the huge numbers of depressed/lonely/etc
| middle class people who otherwise seem to have a life "on
| track"
| lm28469 wrote:
| > you should be able to do what you want.
|
| I'm still baffled at how this argument makes it anywhere paste
| high school. Living a single second makes it plain obvious that
| no, you don't do what you want. Living in any type of society
| or even the most basic and smallest community will tell you
| that
| havblue wrote:
| I've heard that this is a generational difference: xers
| thought of free speech as being an essential value and to
| hell with the sanctimonious totalitarians who are telling you
| that you can't listen to rap music.
|
| This gave way to accepting any and all behavior, social
| contact be damned. So social stigmas themselves are
| repressive and it doesn't matter if you're hurting your
| heath, that's your choice as an individual. La vie boheme!
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| With a more controlled supply, softer drug options, and social
| supports, it's not a stretch to say there's are important
| options being neglected.
|
| Lots of people get pushed into harder options, when it becomes
| a race to the bottom. Meth and hard opioids are massive
| problems in the US.
|
| AFAIK most similar counties have lower usage of meth, and fent,
| though I'm sure opioids are in the picture. Don't underestimate
| how many of these cases are deaths of despair, due to our
| cultural issues, not just poverty. I suspect we're seeing the
| costs of our toxic culture, income inequality, and lack of
| safety nets.
|
| Oregon IMO was set up for failure. Decrime is overrated. In
| some ways it may be the worst of both worlds. Even moreso when
| you do it during a drug poisoning pandemic... that's a really
| good time to start distributing verified product.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Is it really 'most people' that end up that way though?
|
| Or are those people simply the most visible?
|
| I mean, how can you tell if someone is a functional user - you
| can't, they look just everybody else, you know?
|
| It's not about the substances themselves, it's the way that
| they're used - and abused. It's helplessness in the face of
| addiction that's the problem - addiction will drive the
| afflicted to trade the rest of their life to get a fix.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| I think the main problem is that we lack the other side of
| this equation. Namely that we don't have an avenue for
| addicts or even "functional users" to go to when things get
| tough. No way to prevent their addiction. No way to take
| these people in and actually really rehabilitate them into
| society.
|
| Instead we throw these people into jail. And if even that
| gets too burdensome we let people rot in the streets. So yes.
| Decriminalize addiction because addiction is NOT a crime. It
| is an illness.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| Yes. Claiming people can use these things without consequences
| is just wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never
| dealt with addicts. The only possible argument for drug
| decriminalization is getting rid of all the violent crime
| surrounding it. That's a worthy reason but must certainly be
| weighed against the significant risks presented by drugs. Lots
| of people out there have literally never witnessed the extent
| an opioid addict's drug seeking behavior.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| I have a close family member who has been addicted to heroin
| for most of their life and they are in their late 60's. They go
| to a clinic and receive methadone which they can then go
| outside and trade for whatever else. Basically a flea market of
| intoxicants and they are found around every major rehab clinic.
|
| The problem is they are so used to being in a stupor most of
| the day that reality is something they cant handle anymore.
| When they become sober they are faced with a loud, bright world
| of sensory overload along with physical discomfort, pain and
| headaches (I had addiction issues so this is my perception).
| You want to go back to lala land and forget about all the
| bullshit seemingly clawing at you.
|
| These extreme cases become hollowed out vessels - the person
| becomes a kind of animal that knows only one thing: defend the
| mind against reality. They don't care about family, friends,
| jobs, hobbies, ad nauseam. They need SERIOUS help - help that I
| don't think we can provide as how do you rebuild a human mind
| and life?
| happytiger wrote:
| I think the lessons are there in what Portugal has done with
| their insane heroin wave (it was reported that _1 entire
| percent of the population_ was reported to have an addiction to
| hard drugs).
|
| The parallels in Van, SF and Portland are striking, except now
| it's not Heroin it's Fentanyl.
|
| Here's a good primer:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/portugal-heroin-decrim...
| antihero wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| Most people who use drugs function like completely normal
| adults or eventually get bored or reduce usage as they age. You
| are seeing the fringes.
| laverya wrote:
| The Singapore (and rest of Southeast Asia) solution set might
| work here, but there's no way we have the political will for
| it. If we won't execute the vast majority of murderers, there's
| no way we'll do it for people just running a kilo of coke or
| weed.
|
| Not to mention "works" and "worth it" are not quite the same
| thing.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I used to strongly support people getting fat. I thought: this
| is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.
|
| But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently.
| Most people who get fat eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help
| or treatment.
|
| The problem will stick around because politicians care more
| about how things look. They'll say the numbers are wrong, or
| focus on wedge issues like transgender, guns, but they're not
| going to do anything on hard issues like this one.
|
| Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make
| fast food illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we
| require weight tests for homeless people to receive government
| help like CAAP payments?
| [deleted]
| styren wrote:
| Not sure what point you're trying to make here? Policymaking
| to limit access to unhealthy food isn't particularly
| controversial and if there weren't more pressing issues were
| I live I'd love for politicians to push it further.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It very much is. My city, Chicago, instituted a sugar tax.
| It was so unpopular that it didn't even last a couple
| months. I'd say it's not just controversial but outright
| deeply unpopular.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Limiting access to any kind of food AFAIK is extremely
| controversial!
|
| For starters there are the massive astro-turf campaigns
| that make a lot of noise. Beyond this, food regulation is
| catnip for the culture wars.
|
| > Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages reduce consumption,
| but a strong public backlash holds that they compromise
| consumers' liberty, freedom, and autonomy.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6916313/#:~:te
| x....
|
| Recall when there was a hint that Biden would limit
| hamburgers? (This idea was a bad extrapolation, nobody was
| proposing it as law - but nonetheless the mere mentioned
| brewed a holy-shit storm of foaming at the mouth outrage):
| - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/conservatives-beef-
| with-bi... - https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/
| politifact/202... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2
| 021/04/26/republicans...
| photonerd wrote:
| > Limiting access to any kind of food AFAIK is extremely
| controversial!
|
| Where? Not in the US it's not & it's much more common to
| do so in the rest of the world too.
|
| Try buying proper raw milk cheese in the US for example.
| seadan83 wrote:
| > Where? Not in the US it's not & it's much more common
| to do so in the rest of the world too.
|
| I can't find personally any examples in the US where
| regulations that limited access to certain foods was not
| met with an unholy backlash. Here are examples: -
| https://crosscut.com/equity/2022/08/study-finds-seattles-
| con... (the point there is that the ordinance was very
| controversial) - https://thefern.org/2022/12/how-food-
| became-a-weapon-in-amer... (this resource describes
| how/where food is controversial and has become part of
| the culture war; which means everything related to it is
| unnecessarily controversial)
|
| Trying to find such examples, even lead in food is not
| regulated! [1] The FDA only has guidelines around lead
| and does sporadic testing. Fail those tests and the FDA
| only shames you, no jail, no required testing, no
| required compliance.
|
| The example of the raw-milk-cheese is actually (according
| to this resourced) a poster-child of limiting access to
| certain foods as being contentious:
|
| > There are many laws and regulations affecting the
| cheese and dairy industry in the United States. However,
| none is more contentious than the FDA-mandated
| pasteurization of all milk products for human consumption
| that was instituted in 1987. [2]
|
| To be clear, food safety guidelines are very different
| from limiting access to food. This is a case though where
| access to certain foods was restricted and the cited
| resources states that as an example of the most
| contentious regulation.
|
| I wondered as well what regulations have actually come
| from the FDA in the last 20 years and how were those
| received? It seems like the answer to that is the FDA has
| long been unpopular and structurely castrated to not be
| able to do anything regarding food [3]. Why that is the
| case, how it came to be - I could only speculate. My bets
| would be that it is easy to use the FDA as a punching
| bag, gutting it from the inside is certainly part and
| parcel to the 'small government' push that has been
| advocated of late [6]. It could also be part that the
| agency has fallen pray to corruption and is in the pocket
| of those it is there to regulate [4][7].
|
| Looking at the list of 'milestones' from the FDA,
| published by the FDA itself, the list seems very
| underwhelming to me regarding anything food related going
| back 20 years, even 40 years (nutrition labels are one of
| the biggest items on that list; very underwhelming to me)
| [5]
|
| Do you have examples where access to a given food was
| limited that was _not_ super contentious? I'm honestly
| not aware of any examples.
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-
| food/lea....
|
| [2] https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/why-americans-
| dont-get...
|
| [3] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/fda-fails-
| regulat...
|
| [4] https://time.com/4130043/lobbying-politics-dietary-
| guideline...
|
| [5] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history/milestones-
| us-food...
|
| [6] https://www.news-
| journalonline.com/story/news/2012/04/05/bud...
|
| [7] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/05/fda-
| food-safe...
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| But nobody would propose making sugar illegal and putting
| people that eat sugar in jail.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > But nobody would propose making sugar illegal and
| putting people that eat sugar in jail.
|
| Michael Bloomberg has entered the chat.
|
| As an almost absolute rule, "nobody is saying" is false.
| Lots of crazies are saying it. Sometimes they're well
| respected politicians.
|
| "But Bloomberg never did that!" Right, he did the first
| _step_ by targeting the sale of "large" sodas. But if you
| look at his actions on tobacco for ADULTS and the larger
| War On Drugs, it starts with selling, then buying, then
| possessing.
|
| There are authoritarians who want to ban anything and
| everything you can imagine (plus many more). They start
| with what's popular and then move on to what is, crying
| "What about the children?!?!" and "Do you just want
| people to die?!?!" the whole time.
| Apes wrote:
| Of course such an extreme proposal is going to seem silly
| - but what about outlawing any advertisement for sugary
| goods towards children, coupled with a heavy tax on
| sugary goods? Now that not only seems possible, but seems
| like only a matter of time.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| It wouldn't be 1-to-1, but I wouldn't mind a war on
| sugar. Letting your kids be fat should be treated as
| child abuse, and you should lose access to
| medicare/medicaid if you've been fat for too long. People
| have gotten too soft(pun intended) about the right to do
| whatever you want.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| >you should lose access to medicare/medicaid if you've
| been fat for too long.
|
| Right, so you want to compound the problem, not actually
| solve it.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| If we don't have to pay for their healthcare their not a
| problem anymore.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I think you should be responsible for other peoples poor
| life decisions.
|
| These decisions are part of the equation for health. eg
| people exercise poor judgement with their health as a
| result of another condition and genetics. Those decisions
| also lead to further health problems.
|
| They've found multiple genes tied to obesity. It's
| striking how poorly these conditions respond to attempts
| to get better. At a certain point you either blame the
| patient, or accept that this is an incurable disease. (by
| incurable I mean we're not very effective at curing it).
|
| Why just lash out at someone with a disease, when for the
| majority of people this isn't really tough? They just
| don't struggle with these issues.
| tomp wrote:
| People should be allowed to be fat. But if you're so fat you
| need 2 airline seats, you should pay for 2 seats, just like a
| non-fat person who wants 2 seats.
|
| People should be allowed to use drugs and be drug addicts.
| But if you're so drugged up that you shit in the street and
| attack other people, you should go to jail, just like a non-
| drug user who shits in the street or attacks people.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And how about payment for surgery for coronary artery
| disease/type 2 diabetes medications/etc?
| Apes wrote:
| I guess for you that might be an upside of the American
| Healthcare system - fat people pay more for health
| insurance, and have to pay money out of pocket for their
| surgery and medications.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No, they do not. After age 65, the federal government
| picks up the hospital tab via Medicare, and depending on
| how many qualified assets you have, Medicaid helps with
| the rest.
|
| Before 65, health insurance can only use a few factors to
| determine premiums, but none are related to one's health.
|
| https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/
|
| >Factors that can't affect premiums
|
| >They also can't take your current health or medical
| history into account. All health plans must cover
| treatment for pre-existing conditions from the day
| coverage starts.
| Apes wrote:
| The ACA changed the insurance cost, but it doesn't change
| having to pay for the surgery and medication.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Out of pocket maximums are a drop in the bucket compared
| to the cost of open heart surgery and other emergency
| healthcare related to bad eating and exercising habits.
| And those events mostly happen after age 65, after which
| Medicare takes over.
|
| Yes, those with assets do have to pay a bit out of
| pocket, even after age 65, but nowhere near the costs of
| the healthcare they receive.
| pas wrote:
| good thing their life expectancy will soon be below 65,
| no?
| downvotetruth wrote:
| I used to strongly support people getting guns. I thought:
| this is a free country, you should be able to do what you
| want.
|
| But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently.
| Most people who get guns eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get
| help or treatment.
|
| The problem will stick around because politicians care more
| about how things look. They'll say the numbers are wrong, or
| focus on wedge issues like LBGTQ or drugs, but they're not
| going to do anything on hard issues like this one.
|
| Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make
| guns illegal and force people into rehab? Should we require
| background checks for homeless people to receive government
| help?
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Legal guns do way less damage than drugs by a long shot.
| Even illegal guns kill less people, and you don't solve
| illegal guns by banning guns, the millions of illegal guns
| aren't going to turn in themselves
|
| We do need gun control but it is an absurdly tiny issue
| compared to drugs. Barely anyone dies in mass shootings
| with legally purchased guns, it's up there with lightning
| strikes
| downvotetruth wrote:
| Drugs do way less damage than cancer by a long shot. Even
| illegal drugs kill less people, and you don't solve
| illegal drugs by banning drugs, the millions of illegal
| drugs aren't going to turn in themselves
|
| We do need drug control but it is an absurdly tiny issue
| compared to cancer. Barely anyone dies in mass overdoses
| with legally purchased drugs, it's up there with
| lightning strikes
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| There is a difference between things that only affect me
| (or my body) and things that affect other people. Guns
| heavily skew towards the latter.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Funny how my closet full of guns is just randomly killing
| people who walk outside my apartment. I should get better
| lead shielding.
|
| From a less snarky perspective, something absurd like
| 2/3rds of all gun deaths are suicide*. Which pretty
| definitively skews towards affecting one's own body over
| others.
|
| EDIT: 54% in 2021, according to Pew Research [1]
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Is your attempt at satire trying to say "being against legal
| hard drugs is like being against legal obesity"? Are you
| saying that trying to curb hard drug use is as immoral in a
| free society as trying to curb unhealthy eating?
| cmilton wrote:
| I interpreted it as:
|
| We shouldn't treat the addictions all that differently.
| basicoperation wrote:
| This but unironically
| epolanski wrote:
| > Does anyone have ideas on what we should do?
|
| Tackle the issue at the root: mental health.
|
| It's an error to focus too much on the substance (illegal
| drugs) when alcohol, legal drugs, food and many other forms of
| abuse and dependency can lead to similar or worse outcomes.
| stouset wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults.
|
| This isn't even remotely true. The number of people in SF who
| use marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ketamine, MDMA, GHB, 2-CB and/or a
| laundry list of other substances would astonish you.
|
| The majority of them successfully hold jobs: many of them
| highly paid ones as tech company engineers and execs.
|
| What you associate with "not living like normal adults" is
| poverty plus opiates.
| causality0 wrote:
| It's principles vs pragmatism. We have an example of one
| approach that works: Singapore. Mandatory execution of drug
| dealers, carried out three years after conviction, not three
| decades. That obliterates drug addiction as a societal ill.
|
| On the other hand, the philosophical stance I agree with is
| that one human being does not have the right to dictate what
| another human being does with their own body, so long as they
| are an informed adult.
|
| Our unwillingness to truly commit to our beliefs and values,
| whatever they are, gives us the worst of both approaches.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| It is clear that the need/desire for drugs will not disappear.
| Not only that, but drug usage seems to be on quite the incline.
|
| One of the biggest problems with drugs is the paraeconomy that
| is created, funnelling millions to the wrong hands, and ending
| up with fentanyl spiked dope on the market. If we accept that
| the need for drugs will not go away, then they need to be
| legalized, controlled, taxed, and regulated so that not only
| the cartels aren't funded, but the state receives their profit
| and turns it into measures for controlling drug abuse, for
| offering help, etc.
|
| Now how do we handle the general lack of meaning that the west
| is experiencing which is turning people into mice hitting the
| dopamine level forever running on the hedonistic treadmill,
| that's a different question.
| glonq wrote:
| I fully support decriminalization of all drugs, as long as it's
| far away from me and from anybody else who is just trying to
| live their best life.
|
| Let's go build a 10-acre island that is full of free housing
| and free drugs for anybody who wants it.
| terminatornet wrote:
| I assume you're being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd bet giving
| drug addicts stable housing would probably help at least some
| people with rehab.
| [deleted]
| StimDeck wrote:
| [dead]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A robust public health system that includes treatment for drug
| and alcohol addiction as part of the services offered to the
| public would be helpful. It's true that many people won't use
| such services because of distrust, however (would you want a
| medical record stating you were a recovering drug or alcohol
| addict, or mentally ill?).
|
| Legalizing and quality controlling drugs would also help - but
| the problem there is that we live in a advertising-driven
| consumer society. Alcohol, tobacco and sugar-laced soft drinks
| are all unhealthy, but that's a profitable enterprise, so
| people are incentivized to block public health campaigns,
| restrictions on sales, etc.
|
| At some point, the problems become so deeply entrenched and
| societal in nature that passing laws and setting up government
| programs doesn't really help. For some reason in the USA, a lot
| of people are really miserable and their only relief is to turn
| to drugs and alcohol. That's the more fundamental problem.
| brightlancer wrote:
| San Francisco doesn't have a problem with marijuana, it has a
| problem with store robbery, muggings, crazies smoking/ shooting
| "hard" drugs on the metro and on sidewalks, etc.
|
| For too long, San Francisco and California more broadly have
| rejected The Stick in favor of The Carrot -- and they didn't
| improve the balance, they just through it out of balance in a
| different direction.
|
| If folks want to fry their brain on whatever, I think that's
| their right. They don't have the right to do that on the
| sidewalk in front of my house, in the park where kids play, on
| the subway, etc. SF and CA lost the plot.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Exactly, some cities don't even allow smoking cigarettes in
| public parks, we can surely make it difficult to do hard
| drugs in public.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I'm not surprised. Since the market is still controlled by drug
| dealers. Legalise the whole supply chain and let people buy
| opium and cocaine at the apothecary, like they did in olden
| days, see how things are then.
| hmmokidk wrote:
| If drugs were legal, two of my friends would not be dead from
| fentanyl.
|
| That's already enough of a case to legalize. Make it safe.
|
| Then address the root of the issue.
| whycome wrote:
| I support making drugs legal. But, it also requires an
| extensive framework around that legalization. Social supports.
| Information. Safety nets/healthcare. Without that, it's gonna
| fails.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'll pick your comment out of the pack to pick on, though I
| think we agree.
|
| Yours, and dozens of others, talk about "drugs".
|
| That's like talking about banning "food" when there is a
| problem with people eating five cheeseburgers a day.
|
| ---
|
| The problem is not with cannabis, or mushrooms, or aspirin.
| It's with meth, heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioids.
|
| Drugs need to be *properly* ranked by government and
| restricted accordingly.
|
| * How easy is it to acutely overdose on a substance?
|
| * How chemically addictive is the substance?
|
| * How damaging is chronic use of the drug over time to the
| body and mind?
|
| * Is there any medical benefit?
|
| The fact that cannabis is federally ranked as the most
| controlled level of drug in the US shows we have a broken
| system.
|
| I support the legalization/decriminalization of many drugs
| too, but our Congress, the Biden administration and the DEA
| are too inept or corrupt to make reform a priority.
| barbs wrote:
| > _Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able
| to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get
| help or treatment._
|
| Citation needed.
|
| Seriously though, the amount of unsubstantiated opinions that
| get thrown around as facts on HN whenever drugs are discussed
| is ridiculous.
| pkulak wrote:
| The assumption behind your entire post is that temporarily
| putting people in prison for drug use limits their use. I'm
| pretty sure it just makes people do drugs where you can't see
| them. That's probably good enough for most folks though.
| runako wrote:
| > Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults
|
| Is this true? The US consumes a lot of hard drugs, but my
| perception is that most users not have their lives fall apart
| as a result. Curious if there are estimates on the % of e.g.
| cocaine users who are recreational vs those who eventually end
| up on the street as a result of their use.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I interpret that to mean, "people who use drugs habitually"
| not just those who dabbled in particular contexts.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| That's completely wrong too. Most people are habitual users
| of some drugs. I guess they mean people with serious
| underlying mental health issues who are self medicating
| with hard drugs and unable to keep a job
| brightlancer wrote:
| I think you're giving too much credit.
|
| It's more likely GP was talking BS than that they made an
| absolute statement where they really meant a very specific
| nuanced statement.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| I'm sure someone will turn up with evidence to support this
| any moment now
| yodog wrote:
| [dead]
| simonh wrote:
| What was done in Oregon, based on the successful policy in
| Portugal, was decriminalising use and possession of very small
| quantities. Distribution and sale are still just as illegal as
| before.
|
| Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low
| levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge
| swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically
| criminals. It ends up with grossly distorted demographic
| distributions of those that suffer legal consequences in deeply
| unfair ways. Criminalisation on use also aligns the interests
| of users with those of dealers, where differences in criminal
| liability help drive a wedge between them.
|
| The 3 year old policy in Oregon looks like it was fumbled. They
| didn't put in place essential social and health care support
| services that a policy like this relies on for 2 years.
| Portugal has a national health care service, so a co-ordinated
| approach seems like it was far easier to implement and co-
| ordinate. Still, Oregon seems to have made much needed
| improvements in this area.
|
| Policies like this are not silver bullets. Drug abuse is a
| severe issue with deep roots in individual lives and society,
| and manifests differently in different societies. I hope Oregon
| sticks with it and works on trying to get this policy to work,
| and tailor their response to their needs. 50 years of the war
| on drugs has failed utterly, let's give an alternative a
| chance.
| lossolo wrote:
| > based on the successful policy in Portugal
|
| There are doubts about success of that policy now. Article
| from a few weeks ago:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| jorvi wrote:
| Tolerating use but keeping sale / production illegal means
| you are creating a billion dollar market that by default can
| _only_ be serviced by criminal organizations.
|
| Legalize and harm reduction have been the tenets for so so
| long. No one does it.
| fooker wrote:
| It is always easy to blame the execution rather than the
| policy, if you are ideologically biased to believe in the
| policy.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Isn't the opposite also true?
| troutwine wrote:
| Sure, and if you're ideologically opposed to a policy you
| can make a comment like this. What's needed is data on many
| alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions
| taken as one promote better outcomes? Over what timeframes?
| Otherwise it's just all shouting into a windstorm.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The most heavily abused drugs are the legal ones.
|
| That is the primary argument against legalization /
| decriminalization. MJ legalization has led to a 20% increase in
| use already. It's a very good argument.
|
| The only argument I have for legalization is the current
| situation we have with Mexico (and Guatemala, etc). Our
| inability to not control/treat drug addiction has led to a
| fundamentally destabilized country in a de facto civil war
| (against cartels we trained in the School of the Americas, an
| entirely different nutso side). Those cartels are supported by
| the economics of illegal drugs.
|
| Not just that, with the fall of our puppet regime in
| Afghanistan, we will be enriching the Taliban regime by paying
| for the output of their poppy fields.
|
| What is mindblowing is listening to all my right leaning
| relatives scream at the top of their lungs about the illegal
| immigration flood, but they are the ones supporting the side
| that most opposes dealing with the drug problem in a
| constructive way.
|
| IMO the fundamental way to fight illegal drugs is to
| decriminalize, replace the supply / undermine the economics
| with medically or governmentally supply (at prices that
| undercut mafia economics), and make treatment zero-cost
| available as part of the drug availability.
|
| Of course that will probably lead to something like Purdue
| Pharma and painkillers / Medicaid fraud.
|
| But the War on Drugs has to end.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 1. Licenses or prescriptions should be required for all drugs;
| either can be taken away. Also, people need education.
|
| 2. Start a better public works program. Employment is good for
| mental health.
|
| 3. Maybe require a month of service or something, just to have
| a way to resocialize people when they break.
|
| 4. Have people pick up their benefits somewhere not in the
| city. Some reason to move.
|
| 5. Forced rehab to those engaged in harm; nature and nutrition.
|
| 6. Need to avoid cultures of homelessness. Need good policy.
| Look to Amsterdam, a city with virtually no homelessness.
|
| 7. Make better drugs available? Fentanyl seems like the worst.
| anotherhue wrote:
| I suggest the drug user equivalent of an insane asylum. If
| you've shown you're a danger to yourself and/or others you get
| a place in a retreat/monastery/rehab centre/prison island where
| you get the care you need.
|
| Fraught with opportunities for abuse but not arguably more than
| the current situation and at least the rest of us can have our
| public spaces back.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > I suggest the drug user equivalent of an insane asylum. If
| you've shown you're a danger to yourself and/or others you
| get a place in a retreat/monastery/rehab centre/prison island
| where you get the care you need.
|
| "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
| of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better
| to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
| busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
| his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who
| torment us for our own good will torment us without end for
| they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They
| may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time
| likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings
| with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and
| cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be
| put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of
| reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants,
| imbeciles, and domestic animals." - C.S. Lewis, "God in the
| Dock"
|
| To be fair, I used to think it would be best to use the
| courts to force medical treatment; the problem is that it
| invariably leads to labeling folks as "ill" and using courts
| to imprison them for their own safety.
| anotherhue wrote:
| It's a great quote, pity it came from a literal Christian
| apologist. Art/Artist etc. This was around the time of
| chemical castrations and other such 'cures' so it's quite
| meaningful.
|
| I'm personally much less interested in their care then the
| safety of our public spaces, but I think we can all agree
| one leads to the other.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Supporting legalization / decriminalization of hard drugs is a
| luxury belief. If you're in a nice rich circle it's easy to
| believe it doesn't harm anyone except yourself. If you are
| around people that become drug addicts, it becomes apparent
| that it drastically harms everyone around them, themselves
| probably not the most. You can only see so many addict parents
| throw away the money for kids food, or pawn of their kids
| PlayStation for drugs / gambling / etc before you see a lot of
| things aren't as simple as it's a free country.
|
| Personally: drugs should be illegal, but the punishment should
| be rehab and life stabilization not prison. Drug selling,
| production, and smuggling should have the harshest possible
| punishments.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Clearly the prohibition on drugs is not preventing those
| people from accessing them. Obviously rehabilitation would be
| ideal. But all else being equal, it would be better if the
| drugs were cheaper and safer.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The real root issue, is that we drastically underfund
| rehabilitation.
|
| There are generally just not enough rehab spots,
| therapists, psychiatrists, etc. to address the unmet need.
| There are not enough of them in the health system because
| we don't pay for them enough.
|
| There are also not really resources in the prison system
| either. A lot of the prison-reform movement was actually
| supported initially by conservatives, because low-tax
| governments cannot afford to lock large numbers of people
| up for petty crime.
|
| No matter what the solution is, it requires _spending
| money_.
| toomim wrote:
| That's not true. If that were true, then decriminalization
| wouldn't be making them easier to access. But since drugs
| have been decriminalized, they have gotten much easier to
| access. There are open-air drug markets in SF and Portland.
| You can walk through and say "fent?" and get offers to sell
| right there. You couldn't do that 10 years ago.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| 10 years ago you could do that in many places across the
| country.
| dan_mctree wrote:
| Can we all just be honest and just agree that prohibitions
| do in fact make access to the prohibited thing harder and
| reduce the prevalence of it. This is true whether your
| topic of choice is drugs, guns, abortions, alcohol, some
| form of sex, vpn access or whatever you want to talk about.
|
| Sometimes the prohibition can make obtaining illegal things
| more difficult and risky, and many of us are too lazy or
| risk avoidant to push through that. Sometimes accessing a
| prohibited things requires social contacts not everyone has
| access to. Sometimes people will just straight up respect
| the law and not obtain the illegal thing even if it is easy
| or avoid providing it. Prohibitions can be very effective
| in reducing the incidence of some thing, especially if
| enforcement is draconian
|
| Prohibitions can have negative effects, obviously
| especially for those who like the thing that is being
| prohibited, but it just seems dishonest to try to pretend
| like prohibitions don't change behavior whenever that
| happens to suit some political preference
| gochi wrote:
| Why do you want prohibitions to be viewed as very
| effective? Their side effects seem to always be far more
| disastrous than the core incident.
| pas wrote:
| well, drug use is on the rise in many places with
| prohibition. so maybe that general statement needs some
| serious qualifiers, no?
|
| prohibition as a concept works, and prohibition when
| implemented has an effect, but that effect might be small
| compared to society's overall demand changes.
|
| yes, of course, draconian measures have significant
| effects, usually the side-effects are bigger though
| kcb wrote:
| It's not so hard to believe that lack of access prevents
| some from getting hooked.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| The dangers of getting hooked are greatly exacerbated by
| current "treatment" modalities and the culture the black
| market breeds.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer.
|
| Drugs are never going to be safer. If FDA approved
| painkillers can get you addicted, I am not sure how much
| safer can Fentanyl get. And making them cheaper is only
| going to create more problems.
|
| Prohibition doesn't prevent people from accessing drugs.
| But that doesn't mean we make it easily accessible. Theft
| is illegal, but it doesn't stop people from stealing. That
| doesn't mean we legalize it. Because if we do, we'll have a
| free for all like we have in SF and other parts of
| California.
| setr wrote:
| Safer drugs is usually referring to not getting drugs cut
| with other unknown shit. A common scenario is heroin from
| dealer A being mixed, then you switch to dealer B and get
| it pure (or at least more so) but not knowing that, you
| take the same dosage and overdose
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| That is never going to go away though. After weed was
| legalized in California, 2/3 purchases are still from the
| black market. [1] That market always will exist because
| cutting makes drugs cheaper and legal drugs will never be
| able to compete.
|
| [1] https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/06/california-
| illicit...
| vhlhvjcov wrote:
| How much moonshine do you drink?
|
| As another commenter pointed out, from the article you
| posted:
|
| > all of this is taking place in an industry without
| bankruptcy protections, where individuals carry personal
| liability for business taxes, and where businesses are
| barred from writing off normal expenses.
|
| So your argument is not backed up by your own link
|
| > That market always will exist because cutting makes
| drugs cheaper and legal drugs will never be able to
| compete.
| [deleted]
| rovolo wrote:
| >I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get
|
| Proper labeling/packaging would make it easier to know
| what dose you're taking. I believe many overdose deaths
| were blamed on fentanyl added to heroin, where the user
| was expecting just heroin.
|
| (I don't know how true my memory is of those initial news
| articles about fentanyl overdoses in the early 10s)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| People in less affluent communities also see the violence
| when criminalization drives this stuff underground.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| epolanski wrote:
| Delusional.
|
| The drug that kills and ruins most lives on the planet is
| alcohol followed by food (diabetes). And the abuse of alcohol
| and food has the same root that drug abuse does: mental
| health and education.
|
| And let's not even start talking about the damage of legal
| drugs (medicines) on society at all age tiers.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Great. Let's ban alcohol and sugar too. I am totally fine
| with taking the idea of something being harmful to society
| and it being banned. Though for sugar, I haven't personally
| seen people pawn off their childrens possession or rob
| people to get a fix, so it might not be as bad as drugs.
| But it's subsidization should stop.
| polski-g wrote:
| Per capita?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Interesting that junk food and alcohol are legal and the
| most heavily abused
| mike00632 wrote:
| Doesn't the same apply to alcohol?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Sure. I wouldn't be against a ban on alcohol also, with the
| same prohibitions.
| varjag wrote:
| Alcohol use exerts enormous tax on society which chose to
| tolerate it for historical adoption reasons. Adding hard
| drugs is going to exacerbate the situation, and a number of
| those are worse than alcohol by any metric imaginable.
| themitigating wrote:
| So then alcohol should be banned? Why the line if only
| historical?
| swexbe wrote:
| It's hard to get toothpaste back into the tube.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Rubbish.
|
| Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and
| marijuana. Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a
| treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for
| the mere _use_ of a substance. (Marijuana has very low risk
| and rates of addiction, physical or psychological.)
|
| If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be
| treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly
| regulated, sold only to adults in very limited stores, and
| folks can enter treatment without fear of arrest.
|
| The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-topias)
| made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking and shooting
| on BART, smoking and shooting in public parks, smoking and
| shooting on sidewalks in front of residences -- and taxing
| the legal pot industry so highly that it was miles cheaper to
| buy stuff illegally no the corner.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Legalizing pot didn't eliminate illegal markets. They're
| still going strong.
|
| Same with tobacco, but that's because of taxes.
| mech765 wrote:
| Let's take fentanyl for example. It kills so many people
| that there isn't any good reason for it to be a legal drug
| off prescription.
|
| The difference between fentanyl and other drugs is a matter
| of degree.
| paiute wrote:
| I think another big mistake was prescription painkillers
| and that whole story. Get everyone hooked on cheap low
| grade painkillers, it definitely caused problems but they
| were manageable if they got more pills. Then there was a
| huge crackdown on them, and the price shot up ending with
| fentanyl being the cheap and accessible option.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| It's amazing you can log onto this website and spout utter
| bullshit like "assault and theft have been decriminalized
| in California". It's a totally laughable thing to say and I
| don't know why no one else has called this poster out for
| this blatant lie.
| culopatin wrote:
| But you can't ignore the struggle to enforce in the Bay
| Area.
|
| Just moved here and I feel like an idiot paying for the
| Bart when most people just jump the gates in and out.
|
| Take your dick out and just pee while you walk. No
| worries. Cross the street naked throwing stuff around,
| normal. Dogs in parks? Leash optional, right under the
| sign that says "dogs must be on a leash". Break into
| cars, no one cares. Steal a Kia, doubt you'll get caught.
|
| Yet there are rules like no eating in the Bart. What?
| $250 fine if you drink something in the train? Who comes
| up with that crap?
|
| I come from a red state and I can tell you that the
| conservatives out there don't want "th government telling
| them what to do" but they are more tightly controlled
| than the people in the bay. People in the bay experience
| real freedom, almost to the point of anarchy by far.
|
| Red state: Back into your driveway? Tag can't be seen
| from the street = ticket. Look aggressive in the street
| or take your dick out? Arrested, if not shot. Break into
| a car in a public space? I wanna see that one go as
| smoothly as in the bay.
| xienze wrote:
| > Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a
| treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for
| the mere _use_ of a substance.
|
| Are you under the impression that cities like SF, Portland,
| Seattle etc. were arresting drug users who went to
| treatment centers at any point in the last 20 years or so?
| Ever heard of methadone clinics?
| fnord77 wrote:
| > The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-
| topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking
| and shooting on BART
|
| This is exactly it. The problem is letting the drug use
| impact other people's quality of life, access to common
| resources like parks, etc.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| I think you should contribute a valid source for the
| subjective claim of this statement.
|
| "Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction,
| physical or psychological."
|
| I would, and that is not based on subjective opinion, call
| your statement - rubbish.
|
| I will even throw you a bone.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Madness-Deepak-Cyril-
| DSouza...
| [deleted]
| gochi wrote:
| You did the exact same they did, but linked an
| inaccessible amazon book. Surely you can do better.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| To be fair though, you don't really hear much about people
| selling their bodies (or other similar behavior, I.e.
| stealing from friends and family, etc) in order to obtain
| marijuana or alcohol.
|
| This kind of behavior is primarily encountered when hard
| drugs are part of the equation.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I generally agree with the sentiment that drugs should be
| treated like we treat other addictions like alcohol. Drugs
| should be decriminalized, anti social criminal behavior
| should stay criminalized. If I'm drunk and pee in public or
| assault someone, I'll go to jail. That is what should
| happen if I do it under the influence of drugs.
|
| The one difference though between alcohol and some of the
| drugs is potency and how quickly one can be addicted to it.
| Therefore, treatment should be much more easily be
| available and it should be much easier to have an
| intervention.
| toomim wrote:
| Driving drunk is illegal because you're likely to kill
| someone, and then it'll be too late to say "let's just
| prosecute the crime of manslaughter, and not prevent
| future manslaughters by prosecuting drunkenness in the
| car."
|
| In the same way, we should make it illegal to do drugs in
| situations where you are likely to cause irreparable
| harm.
|
| If we legalize drugs, let's create safe situations to do
| so. Many drugs are being legalized under the supervision
| of a doctor. We could also allow drug use within a safe
| space where you can't OD, and where you won't leave
| needles on the ground for kids to step on.
| FredPret wrote:
| There's no safe way to consume a substance that rewires
| your lizard brain to seek more of it
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Yet somehow most people are not alcoholics. So evidently
| it can be done.
| fooker wrote:
| As long as your current economic/geopolitical situation
| is favorable, sure.
|
| Up to a third of the population of some of the east
| European countries are alcoholics.
|
| I'm not saying bans are the solution, but ignoring
| problems just because you aren't affected isn't a great
| idea either.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It can be done by a certain percentage of people.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Legalization and decriminalization are two different
| things. I am all for decriminalizing. From a personal
| viewpoint, I don't think drugs should be legalized.
|
| And as far as the legal administration etc., that already
| exists in SF and it has had a poor track record of
| helping people.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| Decriminalizing drugs doesn't fix the supply problem,
| which makes drug use such a budensome expense that there
| are all kinds of knock on effects (theft, poverty, etc).
| Someone commented on how rich people don't see drug use,
| but sure they do. Aside from the fact that most everyone
| here is pretty rich and complaining about addicts, I come
| from an upper middle class suburb with a ton of addicts.
| Lots of people I went to school with died of overdosed.
| But it's not immediately visible because people's
| families reluctantly take them in, they generally have
| enough money for drugs, etc.
|
| Not arguing for outright legalization--while I once did,
| I now think it's naive. And I'm not sure we could pull
| off a Portugal style system in the US. But
| descriminalizariam doesn't seem to be working that well.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Which is why I argue:
|
| > Therefore, treatment should be much more easily be
| available and it should be much easier to have an
| intervention.
|
| If drugs become burdensome enough that you have to commit
| crimes to feed your habit, then maybe the society should
| be able to intervene and help? If I have a drinking
| problem that I need to steal money for, the solution
| shouldn't be cheaper alcohol, but a way for me to stop
| drinking. Same applies for drugs. Part of the reason why
| families support (reluctantly) drug habits is because
| getting help is often not easy or cheap.
| samketchup wrote:
| More people are killed on the road in accidents caused by
| elderly folks than drunk drivers. I know this sounds
| insane, but drunk driving should be no harm no foul.
| whinenot wrote:
| My friend who was killed by a repeated drunk driver might
| have argued otherwise. If you can't drive responsibly,
| it's in society's interest to make sure you never do.
| jurassic wrote:
| This is whataboutism. Drunk driving kills and should be
| harshly punished. People who are unsafe drivers for other
| reasons (e.g. too old) should be handled separately, but
| their existence is not an excuse for irresponsible
| behavior.
| jakear wrote:
| In some sense, it is. Barring random sobriety checkpoints
| (which are _generally_ avoidable).
| pests wrote:
| We don't have checkpoints where I live near Detroit. Are
| these really a thing? I've seen them in movies and TV but
| never experienced it.
| jakear wrote:
| I've seen a handful in CA. Usually they're visible from a
| large distance, given the flashing lights and traffic
| backup. Sometimes they'll even have signs up a few blocks
| in advance warning about the upcoming stop.
| samketchup wrote:
| Arizona has very aggressive checkpoints by the lakes and
| rivers during the holiday's
| samketchup wrote:
| I guess I have some not so unique experience. I was given
| a DUI in 2011 during a routine traffic stop. They officer
| cited I cut the protected left turn too tightly. The
| officer then said he smelled marijuana, even though I was
| currently smoking a normal cigarette. I was arrested
| immediately, my blood was taken, and being an occasional
| pot smoker, THC was in my blood, I got a DUI while
| completely sober driving to work at 9 AM.
| jakear wrote:
| Sucks. Shoulda got a better lawyer. I know folks who have
| gotten out of full on crashes at 0.18 BAC thanks to
| lawyer shenanigans.
| samketchup wrote:
| Was fresh out of high school and grew up poor, I never
| had a chance of beating it. But hey, at least I got to
| visit tent city before it was shut down.
| snypher wrote:
| Elderly folks should be taken off the road as well?
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| For PCP that's basically everything. For weed that's
| basically nothing (although you shouldn't drive high)
| brightlancer wrote:
| > The one difference though between alcohol and some of
| the drugs is potency and how quickly one can be addicted
| to it.
|
| This is a good point.
|
| If I go to the liquor store, I can buy bottles that are
| 90% alcohol or bottles as low as 3% alcohol.
|
| If we legalize "hard" drugs like opiates, meth, etc. then
| we'll get a similar differentiation along with the
| benefit that the drugs will be checked by Trusted Sources
| (both government and industry) to effectively eliminate
| certain adulterants.
|
| And for the folks who become addicts (physically or
| psychologically), there's no legal risk in telling their
| doctor or therapist or anyone, and they can better enter
| treatment.
|
| There are folks who drink 750ml (~24oz) of 40% liquor
| every day. It's rare but they have an addiction. They can
| also get treatment, while the rest of us enjoy 5% beers
| and 13% wines more moderately.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I can buy bottles that are 90% alcohol or bottles as
| low as 3% alcohol
|
| Depends on the state. Some states banned 90%+ hard
| liquors (eg. Everclear) while other states allow it. Some
| other states have banned selling hard liquors and wines
| unless it's from a state run liquor store. Other states
| just allow open sale at any store. It's all state
| dependent as the US is federal.
| monkpit wrote:
| > there's no legal risk in telling their doctor or
| therapist
|
| Maybe no LEGAL risks, but if you live in the USA and want
| to have insurance and/or life insurance, you wouldn't
| want to disclose this info since they'll either deny you
| or charge you extra.
| brightlancer wrote:
| That's an interesting argument -- I don't know if/ how
| much it's true, but that was certainly the norm for
| decades for gay men.
|
| On that basis, I think it's better if we remove the legal
| risk even if there are still societal or economic risks.
| mcphage wrote:
| > The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-
| topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking
| and shooting on BART, smoking and shooting in public parks,
| smoking and shooting on sidewalks in front of residences
|
| Not being from California--when/how did they do that?
| stcroixx wrote:
| It was this way when I first came to the Bay Area around
| 2008. Police simply ignore all of these criminal
| behaviors. They know the DA is not interested in
| prosecuting. It's shocking at first. I came from a city
| where none of that is tolerated.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > They know the DA is not interested in prosecuting.
|
| I think this was the biggest issue.
|
| Cops have done (and will do) some abusive stuff, but IME
| the west coast was more driven by DAs refusing the
| prosecute.
| Volundr wrote:
| Also not from California; my understanding is some
| municipalities either don't enforce these laws, or don't
| do it to the extent people would like.
| svnt wrote:
| They didn't, but the police force stopped enforcing those
| laws, generally in response to defunding or threats of
| defunding.
|
| The police forces in these cities are in the majority
| comprised of individuals who live outside of the city and
| commute to perform enforcement in an area they don't want
| to live in.
|
| This is the difference that never translated between the
| Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter/Thin Blue Line
| groups: in one, in the majority the enforcers are not and
| have never been part of the community. In the other, the
| deputy's kids go to your elementary school and they
| volunteer at the pancake breakfast.
| ars wrote:
| > generally in response to defunding or threats of
| defunding.
|
| No, it's in response to the DA not prosecuting - what's
| the point of arresting if nothing happens afterward?
| etc-hosts wrote:
| > taxing the legal pot industry so highly that it was miles
| cheaper to buy stuff illegally no the corner
|
| the legal pot industry's problem is it's impossible for it
| to turn a profit. they can't deduct operating expenses from
| their tax liability like other businesses can, because of
| federal law. items like rent, payroll.
|
| they also can't use the same systems of credit management
| and bank accounts, because of federal law.
|
| state taxes are a very minor part of the story.
| bhewes wrote:
| As someone who runs four stores in the legal pot industry
| in Oklahoma and turns a profit yeah not true. You can
| make plenty of money playing by State rules. If a company
| has expansion plans that rely on the interstate commerce
| clause then yes the feds are your problem.
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| The bank accounts thing also makes them bigger targets
| for theft, because of all the extra cash that stores end
| up handling when they can't use standard payment methods.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| The legal pot industry's problem is that it's a legal no-
| man's-land because pot is actually illegal at a federal
| level but states just ignore it and the government
| ignores them ignoring it. It should be legalized at a
| federal level because that's already true de facto
|
| Incidentally, the second that happens Altria/BAT/whoever
| will swoop in and make it a consumer product. This will
| probably have a serious impact on mom and pop guys, but
| also cartels
| [deleted]
| dmode wrote:
| But doesn't alcohol trigger a wildly different reaction
| than hard drugs ? Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia,
| psychosis, hallucination and make you violent ? And these
| are triggered very very easily by using a small amount of
| meth or fentanyl. To get to a comparable state with
| alcohol, you would have to drink copious amount, but then
| you are more likely to be passed out than exhibit violent
| behavior.
|
| I agree with your other point though - permissiveness of
| use shouldn't come with ignoring all societal norms, just
| because you are a vulnerable drug user. In fact,
| permissiveness of use should be paired with stricter
| enforcement of quality of life laws
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > But doesn't alcohol trigger a wildly different reaction
| than hard drugs ? Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia,
| psychosis, hallucination and make you violent ?
|
| Every one of them does. Except triggering schizophrenia
| maybe, which is barely comforting.
|
| > And these are triggered very very easily by using a
| small amount of meth or fentanyl.
|
| But you're replying to a comment about pot, thereby
| shifting some goalposts.
| [deleted]
| stouset wrote:
| Are we just ignoring the whole thing about violent drunks
| right now? Alcohol and violence are _highly_ correlated.
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| I thinking to stop drinking, but I still sway
| mattnewton wrote:
| > Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis,
| hallucination
|
| Sounds like acute ethanol withdrawal aka delirium tremens
| https://g.co/kgs/BHB6p9
|
| > and make you violent ?
|
| People getting violent with alcohol doesn't need a
| citation I trust?
|
| These are basically all the arguments for prohibition.
| Temperance movements work but legal prohibition doesn't
| seem to.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| The government must never, in good conscience, open up the
| use of extremely physically addictive substances.
| Decriminalisation for users, I can support, but legalising
| and selling is a terrible idea. Alcohol, tobacco and
| marijuana are not in the same league as heroin and other
| opiates. It's extremely dangerous to equate all drugs in
| this debate.
| darkclouds wrote:
| > And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.
|
| I trust health experts as much as the Nasa scientists who lost
| contact with voyager2 and the nasa scientists are working under
| much less pressure than an ER room!
| alphazard wrote:
| Why is there something to do? Your questions seem predicated on
| a false assumption that no one likes to say out loud: Drug
| users have a better life waiting for them after they stop
| using.
|
| Daily drug use may actually be the correct way for some people
| to maximize the integral of happiness over their lifetime.
| Especially for those at the bottom with limited prospects. I
| don't think most of HN can fathom what it's like to actually be
| completely useless. You're delusional if you think the homeless
| problem is a bunch of software engineers who tried heroin once,
| and left FAANG to get high every day.
|
| > Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive
| government help like SF CAAP payments?
|
| This is a great idea. If you want society to invest in you, you
| have to take basic steps to be a worthy investment. But even
| this is predicated on the idea that what these drugs users are
| doing is wrong, and that they should instead do something that
| lets the rest of us reap the benefits of their productivity.
| Who are we to demand someone be more productive for our own
| benefit? We're right to want something in exchange for our
| investment, but there's no place to stand and say a drug user
| is wrong for not taking the deal.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Okay, then build a camp for them out in the desert. There's
| no reason to have them shitting on the streets of downtown
| SF.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| They don't have the means to move. Why don't we just build
| a camp for low-empathy people instead? You are a far, far
| bigger strain on everyone else's lives, and then you can
| make your own sociopath paradise without the rest of us
| getting in your way.
| sniglom wrote:
| For other possibly dangerous things in society there are things
| like taking a license and renewing that license. Perhaps that
| should be a requirement for buying hard drugs where it's legal.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Exactly. You can buy pseudoephedrine or codeine at the
| pharmacy, but not too much or too frequently. Party sized
| amounts of safe drugs could be made available. People who go
| to far get directed to treatment.
| deepsun wrote:
| Can you make the same argument for children?
|
| Children don't know the world yet, cannot contain their urges,
| and can get their brain chemistry permanently altered after
| trying heroin.
|
| Now here's the trick -- all adults are children, just older.
| Some can contain the emotions better than others.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to
| live like normal adults."
|
| Many drugs are incredibly dangerous, addictive and harmful, but
| that's still a wild overstatement.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| The point is that putting them in prison doesn't solve the
| problem and giving power to police results in inconsistent
| enforcement harmful to communities.
|
| The point isn't that using some of these substances is "fine"
| but that it should be treated as a public health problem (like
| smoking) not a criminal problem.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Isn't prison one of the easiest places to get drugs??
| bsder wrote:
| > Does anyone have ideas on what we should do?
|
| Heathcare facilities for the mentally ill is a really good
| start.
|
| But, you know, that's, like, _expensive_.
| antisyzygy wrote:
| I think we're missing part of the equation there.
|
| Decriminalization isn't legalization. Legalization would mean
| controlling purity, and strength where the drug is licensed to
| be sold.
|
| Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems.
| People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore
| where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.
|
| Beyond that simply throwing people in prison doesn't mean that
| we reduced the number of drug addicts. It just means you don't
| see them anymore.
|
| Decriminalization actually would mean you see more of them out
| on the streets because they're not being locked away in prison.
|
| Drugs will always be a part of the human experience. People
| will continue to use them whether it's legal or not.
|
| The other side of it is most cities don't spend much money on
| harm reduction strategies or treatment options because of the
| stigma associated with drug users. Tax payers look at them as
| subhuman and don't do the math.
|
| It costs more to let a drug addict run around town stealing and
| breaking things, or getting sick and going to the ER, than it
| does to mandate they spend some time in a State funded mental
| hospital.
|
| Prisons also cost a lot. It costs a full time job's worth of
| money ~35k to imprison 1 person per year.
|
| Not only did you take a potential worker out of the work force,
| but now you're sinking a full time jobs worth of money into
| keeping them in prison.
|
| For a murderer, that seems worth it because they literally cost
| the world a full time worker and maybe more. But for a homeless
| drug addict it really doesn't seem worth it to me.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Your focus on monetary matters is well on par with how alarm-
| equipped hospital beds are marketed: "Consider the cost of a
| patient who had skin tissue compression due to wetting
| themselves. Use our calculator below!". Not kidding, seen
| almost the exact copy on a hospital bed vendor.
|
| While the numbers may be true, it's a very inhumane way to
| think about people.
| antisyzygy wrote:
| It's a tactic to convince a general audience, not meant to
| indicate how I feel about the addicted.
|
| Unfortunately about half the population doesn't have
| empathy for anyone they don't grow up with, and some of
| those have empathy for no one at all.
|
| I know a thing or two about these folks and they're all
| suffering before they started using. They often start by
| self medicating because they were traumatized or incredibly
| impoverished due to a series of unfortunate accidents.
|
| So, yes, I believe it's the right thing to do to treat
| rather than imprison.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems.
| People don't even bother getting it on the black market
| anymore where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.
|
| This is actually really not true at all, and it's important
| to be honest about the reality. First, in many places where
| weed is now legal, black markets have continued to thrive
| because there are high taxes on legal weed, and thus black
| market weed is considerably cheaper. Totally fine to argue
| that this is then a problem with implementation, but it is
| definitely not correct to say "People don't even bother
| getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal." -
| that's just wrong, and it's not hard to Google for lots of
| articles discussing this.
|
| Also, while I agree with legalization, I would state that I
| underestimated some of the downsides. A couple years ago I
| was in downtown Denver, along their 16th St pedestrian mall,
| and it's not really a nice thing to see tons of people stoned
| out of their minds walking around like zombies. Also not
| great when you get in an Uber and your driver seems totally
| baked.
|
| Can't emphasize enough that I think the alternative (throwing
| people in jail) is much worse. But I don't think it's honest
| to minimize the downsides.
|
| Edit: Save you a google search,
| https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/06/california-
| illicit...
| antisyzygy wrote:
| Eh I don't know. I would guess in some States that
| implemented dumb policies it could be the case.
|
| WA and CO are where my experience was. The product is more
| often than not cheaper than the black market prices were.
|
| It was pretty common for a black market eighth to cost
| 40-80 dollars, and you're looking at 20-60 dollars for
| legal stuff now even with taxes. It's a bit more expensive
| in WA but I'd say comparable to black market prices.
|
| That's not even to mention the convenience aspect. You can
| buy a joint that will last a moderate user all evening for
| like 5 dollars. No need to roll it yourself and all that.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| > People don't even bother getting it on the black market
| anymore where it is legal.
|
| The unlicensed weed bodegas popping up on every other block
| in NYC beg to differ. People might not text a delivery
| service anymore, but they're definitely not going to legal
| recreational dispensaries here in NYC.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| NYC had a very peculiar roll out where they made it very
| difficult to get a license to sell but then didn't do any
| enforcement for needing the license.
|
| In most places that rolled out legal pot that wasn't the
| case and people largely do use the legal places. The only
| time it's not true is if the taxes are so bad or if there
| are regulations that make the quality worse that it makes
| the legal pot extremely uncompetitive.
| antisyzygy wrote:
| My experience was Colorado and Washington. Nobody in either
| state will bother with black market weed. You can find a
| licensed dispensary with quality product within a 5 minute
| drive 20 hours a day.
|
| They both did it right, and took different approaches even.
| Colorado is a bit looser on the requirements for
| dispensaries and have cheaper product overall. There is a
| licensed dispensary just about every block in Denver,
| sometimes two, when I left. Not sure about now.
|
| In Colorado actually the legal product is cheaper than
| former black market prices too. In WA is about the same
| price but there are some cheaper options if you're OK with
| a lower quality product.
|
| By "Quality" here I don't mean that it's laced, but that
| it's a product with less high quality plant in it. More
| stems, less buds, that kind of thing.
|
| I don't know NY law or licensing, but I've heard that this
| sort of unlicensed pop-up pot shop problem occurred in some
| States where they didn't plan the roll out and licensing
| very well.
|
| Either couldn't get their shit together to regulate it
| properly, and dragged their feet for too long after
| legalization, or didn't issue nearly enough licenses to
| sell to meet the demand.
|
| WA had more issues than Colorado actually with meeting
| demand initially but they recovered pretty quick. It was
| because they had a different licensing scheme whereby you
| can't grow and also sell retail, you gotta pick one.
|
| In Colorado you can grow your own and sell it to retail
| customers. They also seemed to issue far more licenses than
| WA did.
|
| In any case, I'd look to Colorado for a good case study. WA
| for a mediocre one. And then CA and NY for what not to do.
| CA also had some of those pop up shops that were
| unlicensed.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| That's got to be some sort of policy failure. Perhaps they
| need to make it easier to run a legal dispensary, crack
| down on the illegal ones, or both.
|
| In California, the only people that still buy black market
| weed are kids that aren't old enough to go to a dispensary.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Part of the reason for that is they've been so slow to
| allow them to open. There's only like 8 stores at the
| moment (4 of those are very recent), and they're all in
| Manhattan except for one that's way out in Jamaica at the
| end of the JZ line. Because there's so few of them, they
| always have an hour long line of people waiting to enter,
| mostly tourists.
|
| The higher prices will still leave room for black market
| weed sales, but right now the biggest problem is buying
| weed legally is a 2 hour ordeal.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > Decriminalization actually would mean you see more of them
| out on the streets because they're not being locked away in
| prison.
|
| Decriminalization means the government cannot mandate people
| enter treatment. If people are out on the street and
| addicted, the government needs some teeth so they can treat
| even those that are in denial.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Mandating treatment gets people into treatment, it does not
| mean they are treated.
|
| Detox centers (AKA treatment) are myopic, they get you
| detoxed but kick you back out to your shitty life that made
| you do drugs in the first place. Follow up is needed to
| make sure people can re-establish connections with their
| community and not feel alone and trapped.
|
| > the government needs some teeth so they can treat even
| those that are in denial.
|
| You cannot 'treat' those people. Nobody can un-addict the
| drug addict except the drug-addict themselves. Others can
| support, but the hard work has to come from the person
| them-self.
|
| What's more, current day we have many prison sentences that
| are effectively "go to treatment, do 30 days of parole - or
| go to jail." The effectiveness of this kind of treatment
| AFAIK is tantamount to a joke. So, the mandated treatment
| is kinda already what is happening and it's ineffective.
| themitigating wrote:
| So is jail but there's a higher probability of success
| with treatment. Maybe they go in and during group hear
| someone that inspires them. It's a personal to choice to
| change of course but that can be influenced
| qawwads wrote:
| Everytime the subject come around, someone repeat this like
| it's a fact but nobody care to explain. Is criminalisation
| really the only hammer the gov has? What are the goods of
| saving people against their wishes? Are these goods higher
| than the damages caused by criminalisation?
| stavros wrote:
| Agreed. Let's criminalize smoking and alcoholism as well.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| >> Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems.
| People don't even bother getting it on the black market
| anymore where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.
|
| This is actually bigger than people realize.
|
| Fentanyl lacing is a MASSIVE problem. With purity, people can
| rely that there's no fentanyl.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html
|
| https://www.colorado.edu/health/blog/fentanyl
|
| https://wellbeing.missouri.edu/wellness-
| services/substance-u...
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/programs/opioid-and-
| fentan...
| antisyzygy wrote:
| Yeah for sure. That's pretty much what I was thinking
| about.
|
| There are a ton of accidental overdoses because of black
| market opiates being laced with fentanyl.
|
| If there were legal opiate shops, government regulated, you
| wouldn't have to worry about that. They could even control
| how much you can buy and what strength it is to ensure
| overdoses are rare.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The solution is simple: we treat Im drug addiction as a
| disease.
|
| This means using testing as to detect outbreaks. Schools should
| be allowed and encouraged to test students, as long as a
| positive test results in a trip to the doctor, not prison.
|
| We shouldn't force law abiding adults into treatment, but if
| they break the law, like vagrancy, treatment should be an
| alternative to gradually increasing prison time.
|
| Treat it like we treat COVID. Test and treat. Vaccinate and
| manage. But if you refuse testing and treatment, you're on your
| own.
| ecf wrote:
| I don't have any evidence to back this feeling up so take it
| with a grain of salt: San Francisco has a drug problem simply
| because it's one of few places in the country where it's safe
| to have a drug problem. Other states pay for addicts/homeless
| to be shipped off to California and all of a sudden it becomes
| our taxpayer problem.
|
| If drugs were legalized country-wide then SF wouldn't have the
| concentration it does and it would seem like a nice place.
| burkaman wrote:
| This is a common theory but it isn't true. There are a lot of
| homeless people in San Fransisco because there are a lot of
| people there and it's hard to afford a home.
|
| From a huge recent survey of homelessness in California:
|
| > Nine out of ten participants lost their last housing in
| California; 75% of participants lived in the same county as
| their last housing.
|
| https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CA.
| ..
| nvrmnd wrote:
| My understanding is that "living in the same county as your
| last housing" can mean that you moved to California with
| enough money to rent a room for a month before running out.
| Though, I have seen many other surveys that do indicate
| that most unhoused individuals have lived in the area for
| an extended period before factors forced them out
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-
| population.ht...).
|
| In any event, I feel that metric used by UCSF is really not
| a good one to the point where it's almost dishonest. It's
| not hard to come up with questions that do a better job at
| trying to answer whether CA is burdened by individuals
| moving from out-of-state to make use of more generous
| social programs and/or lax drug policy.
| cyberax wrote:
| This data is st00pid. It relies on self-reporting, and the
| questions are coached to get the "required" result.
|
| A while ago I did an experiment, I found the list of people
| convicted for typical "homeless" crimes in SF, and did a
| background search on them. About 90% had extensive crime
| records in other states, far away from CA.
|
| This is not a definitive result for sure, but it's
| suggestive.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > Other states pay for addicts/homeless to be shipped off to
| California
|
| This has happened but it's not substantial, most homeless in
| CA were living here and homed before becoming homeless[0]
|
| > San Francisco has a drug problem simply because it's one of
| few places in the country where it's safe to have a drug
| problem
|
| I've spent a lot of time volunteering with the homeless in
| SF. This doesn't match the data or anecdotal experience. Many
| drug addicts follow the path of _becoming_ homeless
| (overwhelmingly because of cost of living) and transitioning
| into hard drugs to cope with the pain of living on the
| street.
|
| [0] https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-
| studies/califor...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > If drugs were legalized country-wide
|
| No thank you. I don't want to catch what SF has. I'll vote
| against anyone who suggests we need to legalize in my area.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Then make sure you also vote for the people who want to
| build more housing.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| More single family homes? Sure. Low income housing? Nah
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. If someone is rich
| enough to have a 3 bedroom detached home, that's all fine
| and dandy, but it's a complete nonstarter to house 30
| poor people in the same space? I don't see how that
| solution reduces or solves homelessness for low-income
| individuals, who may not be able to afford much more than
| a single apartment. I suggest having more empathy for
| people in different circumstances; one day you might find
| yourself needing just a cheap roof over your head and I
| hope that you never do. If so, though, I hope that
| (against your stated preferences) you find shelter,
| because all humans should have that basic need.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| So you want more homelessness then? Got it.
| [deleted]
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I have suffered tremendously from the drug use of family and
| friends. Way too much attention and undeserved sympathy is
| given to drug users while basically nothing at all to the
| people around them whose lives they derail for no fault of
| their own.
|
| As far as what to do, half of this is cultural. People in the
| US need to grow up, we can't have a nation of people who
| require perpetual care of their community, there just aren't
| enough "adults" to go around anymore. The US is super rich
| compared even to other "first world"/G20 countries, even so-
| called poor people in the US have US dollars to get drugs
| smuggled to them, creating endless human misery outside the
| country as well as in.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| The opioid epidemic is at the heart of these issues. Maybe Oregon
| voters were naive, or maybe fentanyl is just too poisonous to
| really be considered a drug.
|
| If you grew up in the rust belt, none of this is new. Kids were
| ODing in middle school in the 90s. Tragic of course, but someone
| is getting rich so inevitably the root cause is not bothered
| with.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| Like with most things, I would strongly support decriminalizing
| all drugs on the condition that other people are not held
| responsible, financially or otherwise, for the actions of drug
| users. Your body your choice, my money my choice.
| alex_lav wrote:
| It's funny to me that governments (and citizens) aren't realizing
| you can't simply _do less_ and expect things to improve. As in,
| deciminalizing drugs could work if the effort that was formerly
| spent mindlessly arresting and prosecuting smalltime drug
| offenders was instead spent on increased efforts in community
| outreach and rehabilitation, but that's not what happened. What
| we got was a society in which drugs are no longer criminalized
| but no additional resources. Literally just a government and
| society _doing less_. Who thought this would work?
|
| Speaking as a person in Portland OR, it's not the decriminalizing
| that isn't working, it's the absolute dipshit of a mayor in Ted
| Wheeler and the total apathy from the local PD that are our
| largest failing.
| kelnos wrote:
| https://archive.is/rznQr
|
| We've plainly seen over the past several decades that the War on
| Drugs is an abject failure. All it's done is increase
| incarceration rates (without solving the problems of drug use and
| addiction), and many people caught in the system are just drug
| users, not distributors/traffickers. This really doesn't help
| much of anything.
|
| > _State leaders have acknowledged faults with the policy's
| implementation and enforcement measures._
|
| And there you go, right there in the second paragraph.
|
| > _As Morse put it, "If you take away the criminal-justice system
| as a pathway that gets people into treatment, you need to think
| about what is going to replace it."_
|
| And clearly they didn't do that well enough, or at least didn't
| follow through well enough on what needed to be done.
|
| It's good to see reporting on this, because clearly "just
| decriminalizing" doesn't help, and can make things worse on some
| dimensions. And some measures to replace prison sentences likely
| work better than others, and it's good to see the ones that don't
| work so we can refine policies like this.
|
| But let's not take this as failure of the idea of
| decriminalization.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is it possible the probability of success of treating the use
| of certain brain altering chemicals is untenably low, even if
| treatment was "properly" funded?
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think so. Portugal was famously very successful at
| drug decriminalization, at least until they slashed funding
| to rehabilitation programs.
|
| If you have data that suggests some drugs just make
| rehabilitation impossible or unlikely, I'd be interested to
| see it, though.
| anon291 wrote:
| I went to Portugal during this supposed 'golden' era and it
| was just as depressing then as Portland is now. I have no
| idea how anyone can say it was a success. The despair on
| the street was palpable.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Portugal was famously very successful at drug
| decriminalization
|
| It isn't that famously successful at all, at least in
| Portugal.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| chefandy wrote:
| Excerpt from that article:
|
| " _Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is
| still more harmful to society than decriminalization.
| While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of
| decriminalization's benefits, they point to how funding
| and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have
| ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug
| treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen,
| going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the
| most recent year available._ "
|
| It did work well. It doesn't now. What changed in between
| then and now is funding and commitment to getting addicts
| into treatment-- the founding principle of the program to
| begin with.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The interesting metric would be the percentage of addicts
| that were treated and went on to be "productive" or at
| least not using for at least x, y, and z years, and
| probabilities of relapse.
| chefandy wrote:
| It may well exist. The initial policy went into effect in
| 2001.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have never seen it advertised, and if it were
| impressive, I cannot imagine why it would not be
| advertised.
| chefandy wrote:
| Why do you need the statistic? You seem to have already
| reached a conclusion. Have you looked at related
| statistics to inform your perspective?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No, I have not seen related statistics. I need the
| statistic because I do not see any other way to evaluate
| whether or not treatment is cost effective.
|
| I have reached a conclusion that in order to evaluate the
| "success" of Portugal's policies and how they can
| translate to other places, then I would like to know what
| kind of addictions it succeeded for and for what
| proportion of people and for which addictions.
| chefandy wrote:
| Wikipedia is a good source for sources.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That is just one perspective from the article, not a
| consensus, and definitely nothing that could qualify as
| famous, and even then the argument is along the lines of
| "It was successful until we stop dumping lots of money
| into it."
|
| That reminds of how Salt Lake City recently found out the
| same thing with its success in curing homelessness. The
| problem never ends.
| chefandy wrote:
| "It was successful until we stop dumping lots of money
| into it."
|
| Generally, successful public programs often stop being
| successful when they stop recieving funding. That is a
| fact. The resources used to pay for the portugal program
| were redirected from enforcement. Perusing the wikipedia
| page, the stats seemed a lot more encouraging than any
| similar ones I've seen from a country with war-on-drugs
| type policies, but I'm not an expert.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > That reminds of how Salt Lake City recently found out
| the same thing with its success in curing homelessness.
| The problem never ends.
|
| It's funny that you mention Salt Lake City, because that
| example is commonly misunderstood and actually
| illustrates the exact opposite of what you're pointing
| out.
|
| Utah set out to solve _chronic_ homelessness. The causes
| and effects of chronic homelessness are completely
| different from transient or episodic homelessness, and
| the three require different approaches. Utah eliminated
| 91% of chronic homelessness within ten years, using a
| Housing First policy. After they ended the policy,
| _total_ (not chronic) homelessness increased. The
| majority of that increase was from non-chronic
| homelessness, which was not targeted by their policy and
| which was increasing even before that policy ended
| (because it was, well, independent of a policy that
| was... not aimed at addressing it). Chronic homelessness
| has increased in Utah since the end of the program in
| 2015, but the overwhelming majority of homelessness that
| 's reported on in Utah is still _not_ chronic
| homelessness, because chronic homelessness makes up less
| than 20% of the homeless population.
|
| It's odd to look at that as "the problem never ends",
| because the problem (chronic homelessness), _did_ very
| nearly end, until the state decided to end the program
| and go back to their own ways.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/6/29/23771556/report-
| incre...
|
| > 2023 report reflects a 96% increase in people
| experiencing chronic homelessness since 2019, but also
| indicates Utah is making headway in developing deeply
| affordable housing
|
| For however you define chronic, I guess.
| 310260 wrote:
| What are you trying to say here though? The money is more
| important than people being rehabilitated?
|
| Not everything scales well. Sometimes you just have to
| spend to fix.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Not everything scales well. Sometimes you just have to
| spend to fix.
|
| I don't get how we can be pushed to decriminalize drugs
| and then be asked for tremendous resources to treat the
| drug abuse we enabled? Those asks cannot coexist: if drug
| abuse is costing society billions or trillions of dollars
| in resources to fix, why do we allow it in the first
| place?
|
| > The money is more important than people being
| rehabilitated?
|
| I don't understand why we have to pay for other people's
| mistakes. Eventually, they have to take responsibility
| for their own choices, especially if we have allowed that
| choice (if you think drug crime is victimless so
| shouldn't be punished is true).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not have data, but did Portugal deal with fentanyl?
| And why did Portugal slash funding for treatment?
| Supermancho wrote:
| If there was a measure for success that was agreed upon, for
| a region, the probability of success would then be lowered to
| "untenably low". That isn't the case, when data collection is
| performed.
| [deleted]
| anon291 wrote:
| > We've plainly seen over the past several decades that the War
| on Drugs is an abject failure. All it's done is increase
| incarceration rates (without solving the problems of drug use
| and addiction), and many people caught in the system are just
| drug users, not distributors/traffickers. This really doesn't
| help much of anything.
|
| Given that Oregon stopped its war on drugs and has had a
| terrible experience, I don't see how anyone can honestly
| believe that the war on drugs did not reduce the rates of drug
| use and addiction. This is not a political issue. Come to
| Portland and see. It's not like any other city. People engage
| in drugs freely and with impugnity. Correspondingly, people
| overdose continuously.
|
| It seems obvious to me the war on drugs kept addiction rates
| and usage rates at a much more acceptable level. At least, it
| ensured the dangers of drug use didn't spill onto the streets
| (needles in public parks; drug users in public restrooms...
| places kids go).
|
| Thus, it correspondingly seems obvious to me that the higher
| incarceration rate is worth it.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Is the war on drugs a failure in Singapore too? I mean, it is
| self-evidently obvious that at some level of enforcement, you
| _can_ actually control the problem.
|
| The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the
| level of enforcement necessary. Is the cure worse than the
| disease? That is a real question and a worthy one, but
| pretending that no tradeoff exists is just silly.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the
| level of enforcement necessary.
|
| I think the question is how do we make prisons less cruel and
| dangerous, and lower recidivism. Of course there is a
| backlash against enforcement when the solution is locking
| people in cages.
| pas wrote:
| obviously by spending money on it. but the US in general is
| vehemently against doing that.
| pravus wrote:
| After the outrage I saw when a US citizen was caned in
| Singapore for a vandalism violation, I'd say no, the people
| here probably don't look to Singapore as a guide for
| enforcement.
| spamuel wrote:
| Minds have been changed on a lot of things that are pretty
| wild lately, in a short span of time. If this stuff
| continues, there might be further pretty wild changes of
| mind.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Is the war on drugs a failure in Singapore too?
|
| Considering that thousands of people are arrested for drug
| possession every year in Singapore, to say nothing of the
| number of people who use drugs in Singapore and avoid legal
| action, then yes.
|
| > The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the
| level of enforcement necessary.
|
| Drug use is rampant even inside prisons, which are literally
| the most surveilled and draconian environments on the planet.
| If a carceral approach to preventing drug use doesn't work
| _even within prisons_ , what makes anyone think it can work
| in society at large, even if people were willing to turn all
| of society into a police state?
| postmeta wrote:
| A few thousand arrests for possession in Singapore is
| nothing compared to the USA, NYC has that many people die
| of drug overdose every year: https://www.snpnyc.org/opioid-
| crisis/ vs Singapore arrests for possession or use:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007331/dug-abuser-
| numbe...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Singapore is a dictatorship, count me out.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Yeah, I see it as a failure in implementing a better road to
| recidivism for drug users that doesn't involve prison. It's a
| mental health issue after all. I think perhaps maybe even
| separate "mental" health from normal healthcare and make it
| free / universal might go a long way. Maybe insentivize it,
| like giving plasma. Go to therapy 4 weeks in a row get $100
| cash. That way it's not "forcing" people into something which
| is still a sort of "prison" mindset, but it's more like
| "encouraging" them to be there, and drug users will do almost
| anything for money, right? So why not have them do therapy?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why would mental health be separated from "normal"
| healthcare? Mental health involves chemical signals in the
| brain. Once a chemical dependency has been established, how
| possible is it to "talk" someone out of it in therapy?
| monknomo wrote:
| well, the thing with mental healthcare compared with
| regular healthcare is that the first bit of it is often
| kind of coercive?
|
| Like folks with chest pain want it fixed.
|
| But folks who hear voices/are addicted to something/suffer
| from crippling anxiety often don't want to fix it for a
| variety of reasons, some of which are even pretty good
| (such as nasty medication side effects). Crossing that
| hurdle is tough
|
| And you can talk someone out of a chemical dependency. Or
| rather, you can talk them into suffering through it, much
| the same way as you can talk someone into suffering through
| climbing a mountain or similar.
| agentofoblivion wrote:
| a.k.a., "that's not real communism".
| cyberax wrote:
| > We've plainly seen
|
| I have not seen that.
|
| > over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an
| abject failure.
|
| It was not. WoD helped to _control_ the amount of drugs. It
| certainly had not eradicated them, but it helped to reduce
| their prevalence.
| j_walter wrote:
| Clearly they had the best of intentions, but Oregon's
| politicians are terrible at implementing anything properly.
| Open drug markets, increased property and retail thefts and a
| homeless population explosion are what happened...when <1% of
| people actually seek the treatment if they can even find it it
| causes problems.
|
| They always claimed to follow other successful implementations
| like Portugal, but the law was no where near what they
| implemented as far as requiring treatment.
|
| Whats funny is the Governor is telling the Portland mayor to
| fix the drug issues...like it didn't stem from measure 110.
|
| https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/07/19/kotek-and-blumenauer-t...
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Ted Wheeler is a piece of shit, pushing policies that are
| completely ineffective. He's more interested in illegally
| gassing non-violent protestors than fixing issues. The police
| here are well-funded and by-and-large don't do anything,
| bringing up the real question "why are we funding them?" A
| family member of mine had someone ARMED and going through a
| very obviously psychotic episode enter their house and it was
| over week before the police showed up to remove them. The
| damage to the house was outstanding, and my family member
| obviously couldn't stay there during it, but the Portland
| Police couldn't fucking be bothered. For a fucking week. It's
| absolutely insane we pay for police in my opinion.
|
| The biggest issue in Portland that's been ignored since COVID
| started is that downtown Portland never recovered after the
| shutdown. It has nothing to do with safety, I know I live
| there, and it has everything to do with prices. The city is
| too expensive for what you get and what opportunities are
| here.
|
| I'm no fan of Kotek, but truly Ted Wheeler is among the most
| shit mayors the city has ever known.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's fair, and certainly a problem, but I don't think the
| solution is "let's just go back to throwing everyone in
| jail". We know from long experience that isn't working.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > but I don't think the solution is "let's just go back to
| throwing everyone in jail".
|
| As someone who lives in Oregon we need some way to force
| addicts into treatment. Jail worked in some cases because
| it meant that some addicts no longer had access to the
| drugs they were addicted to. But even better would be more
| of a therapeutic environment where they actually get
| treatment for addiction. However, it seems that most
| addicts aren't going into treatment willingly (big
| surprise) and this is why we're seeing so much trouble
| here. I voted for 110, but now I'm thinking that was a
| mistake. It either needs some major revisions to enable
| forcing drug users into treatment or it just needs to be
| repealed (the former would be better, I think).
| [deleted]
| brightlancer wrote:
| How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we
| enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of life"
| offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in public
| parks, on sidewalks, on transit?
|
| If someone wants to get high in their home, I don't care.
| If someone wants to get high in a bar or such, I don't
| care. If someone wants to get high in one of those places
| and then walk out in public _without harming anyone else_,
| I don't care.
|
| The thefts, the assaults, the zombies and crazies in
| public, that stuff I care about.
|
| There is a middle-ground between "criminalize USE" and
| "stop enforcing laws, particularly when drug abusers and
| homeless are involved".
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we
| enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of
| life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in
| public parks, on sidewalks, on transit?
|
| > If someone wants to get high in their home
|
| That doesn't work in a society in which housing is not
| guaranteed, and in which almost all "last-resort" housing
| options (such as shelters) require sobriety. Achieving
| and maintaining sobriety without stable housing is
| virtually impossible, and yet somehow society expects
| _everyone_ to be able to do it and then complains when
| this doesn 't magically happen.
|
| The "tough on crime" mentality says, "well, this should
| give you an incentive to stop using drugs", except that
| attitude is completely fantastical: it goes against all
| clinical evidence of how substance use disorders actually
| work, and all empirical evidence of what resources a
| person needs to stop using drugs (assuming that is even
| the end goal, which is not a given).
|
| To spell it out: if you don't provide housing options for
| people who use drugs, then you will wind up with homeless
| people using drugs in public. And criminalizing drug use
| doesn't change that; it just moves those people "out of
| sight" to jails and prisons, where they keep using drugs,
| at a monetary cost to society that is literally orders of
| magnitude greater than the straightforward option of just
| giving them housing.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > The "tough on crime" mentality says, "well, this should
| give you an incentive to stop using drugs",
|
| How many times did I have to say that I don't care if
| people use drugs?
|
| _I don't care if people use drugs._ I'm not interested in
| forcing folks into rehab.
|
| But this crap:
|
| > That doesn't work in a society in which housing is not
| guaranteed...
|
| > To spell it out: if you don't provide housing options
| for people who use drugs
|
| Is a BS excuse to let folks commit THEFT and ASSAULT
| because It's Really The System, or expose kids to fent
| smoke on the train because It's Really The System, or
| have kids step over zombies on the sidewalk because It's
| Really The System, or have children and women (and some
| men) harassed or threatened by crazies because It's
| Really The System, etc.
|
| I don't care about the drug use. I worked with homeless
| folks for years and most of them are not OD'ing in public
| parks or harassing folks on the sidewalk. Stop making
| excuses for criminal behavior.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Is a BS excuse to let folks commit THEFT and ASSAULT
| because It's Really The System, or expose kids to fent
| smoke on the train because It's Really The System, or
| have kids step over zombies on the sidewalk because It's
| Really The System, or have children and women (and some
| men) harassed or threatened by crazies because It's
| Really The System, etc. I don't care about the drug use.
| I worked with homeless folks for years and most of them
| are not OD'ing in public parks or harassing folks on the
| sidewalk. Stop making excuses for criminal behavior.
|
| Your original comment literally draws a false equivalence
| between "theft and assault" and "smoking and shooting up
| drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit".
|
| Here's your comment:
|
| > How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we
| enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of
| life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in
| public parks, on sidewalks, on transit?
|
| Since the article is only talking about decriminalization
| of drugs (theft and assault are still criminal offenses),
| the only relevant difference here regards people who are
| using drugs in public places.
|
| It's a pretty convenient bait-and-switch that allows you
| to complain about people using drugs (which is neither
| violent nor criminal behavior), and then when people call
| you out on it, revert back to complaining about violent
| and criminal behavior, which nobody in this entire
| comment chain except for you is talking about.
|
| > Stop making excuses for criminal behavior.
|
| Nobody's talking about criminal behavior. We're talking
| about drug use, which, as discussed in the article, is
| not a criminal offense in Oregon.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Since the article is only talking about
| decriminalization of drugs (theft and assault are still
| criminal offenses), the only relevant difference here
| regards people who are using drugs in public places.
|
| You should look up to the folks I was replying to:
|
| "Clearly they had the best of intentions, but Oregon's
| politicians are terrible at implementing anything
| properly. Open drug markets, increased property and
| retail thefts and a homeless population explosion are
| what happened...when <1% of people actually seek the
| treatment if they can even find it it causes problems."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36959984
|
| Even from the article:
|
| "Earlier this year, Portland business owners appeared
| before the Multnomah County Commission to ask for help
| with crime, drug-dealing, and other problems stemming
| from a behavioral-health resource center operated by a
| harm-reduction nonprofit that was awarded more than $4
| million in Measure 110 funding.
|
| ...
|
| "In a nonpartisan statewide poll earlier this year, more
| than 60 percent of respondents blamed Measure 110 for
| making drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse."
|
| https://archive.ph/rznQr
|
| The rest of your comment is just as full of
| misrepresentations.
| schnable wrote:
| I don't know the specifics in Oregon, but in many places
| (especially bigger cities) that stopped prosecuting drugs
| and prostitution, "throwing everyone in jail" was not the
| previous scenario. People were arrested then put into
| diversionary programs that were enforced by the courts. It
| worked much better than just letting people stay on the
| streets as the process acted as a wake up call for many (of
| course, not all).
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I don't know the specifics in Oregon, but in many
| places (especially bigger cities) that stopped
| prosecuting drugs and prostitution, "throwing everyone in
| jail" was not the previous scenario. People were arrested
| then put into diversionary programs that were enforced by
| the courts.
|
| The big difference between Oregon and the other
| cities/countries that tried this approach successfully is
| _not_ diversionary programs - it 's _housing_. In Oregon,
| housing is not guaranteed, which means any money spent on
| mandatory treatment programs for people without stable
| housing is essentially wasted.
|
| Diversionary programs and rehabilitation are a waste of
| time and money if the recipient does not have guaranteed
| access to stable housing. It's virtually impossible to
| achieve and maintain sobriety in those circumstances.
| j_walter wrote:
| Oregon basically made it a $100 fine or you could get
| treatment...<5% of the people arrested chose treatment.
| Portugal had more rules requiring treatment which is what
| made it effective...Oregon did not choose that route.
|
| https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2023/04/22/economist-
| magazi...
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Portugal had more rules requiring treatment which is
| what made it effective...Oregon did not choose that
| route.
|
| As I explained in a sibling comment, requiring treatment
| is not the difference. Very few people who use drugs in
| Portugal are subject to mandatory drug treatment.
|
| The key difference is that Portugal has a radically
| different housing policy than Oregon. As of 2019, housing
| is a formal legal right (and even before 2019, it was
| much closer to a _de facto_ right than it was to Oregon
| 's current model, which is "if you can't pay for a roof,
| pitch your tent over there, and hope we don't arrest you
| for vagrancy").
|
| Most people who use drugs do not meet clinical criteria
| for addiction, so drug treatment programs are irrelevant
| and a waste of money for them. For those who do, drug
| treatment programs are _still_ a waste of money unless
| they have stable housing, because it is essentially
| impossible to achieve and maintain sobriety without
| stable housing.
| EricDeb wrote:
| Yea not jail but supervised programs makes sense.
| [deleted]
| orangepurple wrote:
| I disagree that the implementation is terrible. Having seen
| several interviews on the matter I think its implemented
| exactly as the people of Portland wanted it. The major
| outstanding problem is a lot of the homeless people on drugs
| need someone to genuinely be there for them and care about
| them. That's the primary message you will hear from them if
| you care to listen to their stories on The Soft White
| Underbelly. It seems that you can't possibly spend enough
| money to make that happen at a policy level. There were
| horrible abuses in the institutions where it was tried here
| historically.
| j_walter wrote:
| They didn't spend any money on it...they didn't fund or
| push treatment programs at all. The implementation was 100%
| awful...just like every Oregon program that means well.
|
| https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2023/05/13/survey-shows-
| ore...
|
| https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-
| mea...
| orangepurple wrote:
| Why do legislatures keep passing half-baked drug-related
| measures? It's not like this was the first one.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Measure 110 was not introduced or passed by legislators,
| it was passed by the public via ballot measure.
| j_walter wrote:
| Yep, and it took effect 13 weeks after voting it through.
| No possible way to get things in order in only 13
| weeks...especially at the state level.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I was saddened to learn that Portugal slashed funding for their
| post decriminalization drug outreach programs. The shift from
| enforcement to treatment doesn't really work if you skip the
| treatment part.
|
| _After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug
| oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros
| ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced
| Portugal's main institution to outsource work previously done by
| the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that
| engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to
| create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug
| prevention programs._
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
| ConanRus wrote:
| [dead]
| dadjoker wrote:
| Uh, yeah "early results aren't encouraging" is the understatement
| of the century for those of us who live here.
| damnesian wrote:
| A sea change like this, especially when it comes to substances
| people take to feel some relief from the bullshit of our
| bullshit-heavy world- and involve physical dependance- isn't
| going to look awesome overnight. We have to wait until some of
| the dust shakes off. and this is a major problem with public
| initiatives in this polarized day and age. If they aren't
| immediately effective and amazing, we demonize them immediately.
|
| Slow down. Let's not just toss it out just yet.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If you legalize it, you need to have a system in place to get to
| that objective on why you wanted to legalize it in the first
| place.
| ttul wrote:
| Oregon decriminalizes drugs for a couple of years and we expect
| that the toxic drug crisis, homelessness, violence, poverty,
| petty crime, and child abuse will all magically disappear
| overnight. Yet the prohibition on drugs has been in force for
| decades and has accomplished none of its goals.
|
| It's fine to critique a new approach and work on improvements,
| but let's not be too hasty here. We are trying to undo decades of
| harm caused by ridiculous policy failures.
| counterpartyrsk wrote:
| Make prescription drugs legal, it's stupid that I need to get a
| prescription for asthma medicine for the rest of my life.
| tracker1 wrote:
| From the last time I drove through Oregon, it kind of felt like
| they had already done this.
| d35007 wrote:
| Oregon voted to decriminalize hard drugs in the 2020 election,
| according to the article.
| sharperguy wrote:
| I always thought decriminalization was in some ways the worst of
| both worlds. On one hand, keeping the production and trade side
| illegal continues to perpetuate the underground culture and fund
| international cartels. Meanwhile their market base increases due
| to fewer people being afraid of being caught, the product quality
| is still completely unregulated. Users still need to stay
| embedded in an an unscrupulous underworld in order to maintain
| the connections necessary to obtain the product, increasing the
| chances of abuse and reducing their chances of getting help if
| they need it. Of course, it's nice not to send people to jail for
| small quantities, but failing to fully legitimize the market in
| these ways could cause a lot of other issues.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Without legal sales, opiate users get trash street drugs that
| vary anywhere between unsafe and catastrophically dangerous.
| Furthermore, there's absolutely none of the benefits like being
| able to encourage them to keep their used needles in sharps
| containers like you might be able to do, if they had to drop
| off the full ones before they got their next fix.
|
| We don't get the reduction in violence we'd see from legal
| sales. None of it.
|
| Decrim is what you get from cowardly legislators and imbecilic
| activists worried that Tweaky the Copper Wiring Thief isn't
| getting a fair shake at life.
| morkalork wrote:
| Without legal sales, cartels will keep doing cartel things.
| Also where will money for treatment programs come from? It
| will always be at risk of being cut by fiscally conservative
| governments, vs legal sales that can be taxed to fund
| amelioration efforts.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Perhaps guard the boarders so not nearly so much is
| crossing. Would also help stop human trafficking. Just a
| thought.
| morkalork wrote:
| Are they unguarded right now? Your casually sarcastic
| "just a thought" makes it sound like everyone else is an
| idiot for not doing something obvious. Or are you
| suggesting building a magnificant wall?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Thankfully our land and sea borders only total about 312
| yards or so, two squads of border control could keep eyes
| on it at all times, and shut that stuff down.
|
| Oops, my bad. Nope, it's 2000 miles or so.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Even with legal sales, there are still black markets for
| drugs, as is evident with marijuana:
| https://apnews.com/article/business-california-los-
| angeles-m...
| brightlancer wrote:
| The same thing is true for tobacco - while it is legally
| to sell and consume (by super-adults, 21+) in every US
| state, they've taxed it so highly that there is a
| fantastic black market.
|
| And Eric Garner is a great example of how the government
| with murder you on the _suspicion_ that you aren't paying
| your taxes. Garner commonly sold individual cigarettes
| ("loosies") which were usually untaxed; it does not
| appear he was selling on the day he was choked to death
| by the NYPD, but rather that he was targeted as a usual
| suspect.
|
| So we should legalize all of this stuff for adults AND
| keep the taxes low enough to avoid black markets. Sadly,
| the folks in favor of "legalization" are often wetting
| themselves at the thought of the tax revenue.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| What are the sizes of those black markets? They're tiny,
| and limit the violence they do (since customers are
| willing to pay a slight premium for peace).
|
| Hell, if it was legalized, we could limit the price by
| law... cost + 2% (or whatever margin the pharmaceutical
| companies would need to not refuse). They would out-
| compete the cartels in weeks.
|
| Pretending that the black markets would remain to any
| great degree is just disingenuous.
| patrickmay wrote:
| That demonstrates that California did a very bad job at
| legalization. The black market arises when the taxes on a
| good exceed the risk of getting caught. If California had
| legalized marijuana and treated it like liquor, there
| would be no black market.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| That's probably true. Decriminalization is an imperfect first
| step that can be taken unilaterally by the executive branch
| while the legislative is deadlocked. In time society grows
| accustomed to decriminalization and the true legalization is
| more feasible.
|
| In California the decriminalization of magic mushrooms has
| caused lots more people to start growing them, so price,
| quality, and diversity are better than ever. That probably
| wouldn't be the case with other drugs that aren't as easy to
| produce just anywhere. Although opium poppy field or coca
| greenhouses are definitely possible.
| willi59549879 wrote:
| i think the only way it would work is to make it completely
| legal (also selling and production) with a lot of control on
| sales. I am not sure what would be best to control sales, guess
| it would need to be stricter than the control for tobacco and
| alcohol. But that way the government could at least get taxes
| from the sales of the drugs.
|
| If only possession is legal then more people might try hard
| drugs that would have been scared away but drugs still have to
| be smuggled in. This also means that there is no quality
| control on the substances.
| randerson wrote:
| I wonder: would be better or worse if states started giving out
| medical-grade Heroin to those who seek it? Perhaps with a
| prescription where one has to pick up a 1 day supply each day
| (less likely to OD) and the prescription gradually tapers off
| down to zero. It would put a dent in the illicit markets and
| reduce deaths of existing addicts, but could be too tempting
| for new people to try it out.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| If you tried such a method people would probably be opposed
| to it because of concerns people would be tempted to obtain
| it and sell.
|
| One would probably model it off of methadone clinics. In most
| clinics the methadone has to be taken by the person on site
| and witnessed to prevent issues of diversion. However a lot
| of places allow people to graduate to be able to pick up a
| multiple day supply after they have shown stability, etc...
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| To prevent new people from doing heroin, just have them
| search for "Kensington Philadelphia" on YouTube and watch 1
| to 3 videos.
| classichasclass wrote:
| This is basically the methadone approach, but when I was in
| general practice, just try weaning people off anything they
| have a dependence on that they're not motivated to stop
| using.
|
| Plus, harm reduction like syringe services (i.e., needle
| exchange) is already hugely controversial for "encouraging
| drug use." That sentiment is at best arguable and at worst a
| reductionist distortion, but it becomes even harder to argue
| against when you're in the business of handing out better
| dope.
| alphazard wrote:
| As you mentioned, decriminalization is not enough. The effort
| that was spent on enforcement needs to be repurposed on quality
| control. It's much easier to enforce laws on businesses who
| want to sell their products openly than on individuals
| consuming substances in private.
|
| The FDA and DEA should be entirely repurposed to randomly
| testing all food and drug products and ensuring that the
| ingredients list is accurate to within a certain margin. Having
| a single arbiter of good and bad substances has proven to be a
| failure again and again (remember the Food Pyramid?). I would
| much rather have access to everything, and know that it is
| labeled correctly, than have some dysfunctional bureaucracy
| "looking out for me".
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some
| people will start using because they lose the fear of being
| caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as
| you might think it is.
|
| Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance
| abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the
| possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to
| more people getting into treatment programs.
| Alupis wrote:
| > though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you
| might think it is
|
| Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise,
| marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended).
| People who would have never tried it before now do so because
| the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get.
|
| This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd.
| While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are
| not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder
| drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a
| hole.
|
| We can see this in-action already. Places like California
| have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are
| part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's
| more drug use within that community than ever before. It's
| difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing
| overt drug use these-days.
|
| It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use
| - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while
| keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Personally I think marijuana is a bit unique, more similar
| to alcohol in how it can fit into daily life for some
| people. Sure the use has probably gone up but that's just
| social norms changing, not necessarily for better or worse.
| (If it displaces alcohol or other drug use it's probably
| for the better). Every culture has different ideas about
| what drugs are acceptable.
|
| Maybe legalizing cocaine would also see occasional
| recreational use go up - that's not necessarily a problem
| either.
| mcphage wrote:
| > People who would have never tried it before now do so
| because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This
| part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd.
| While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are
| not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder
| drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a
| hole.
|
| That doesn't entirely follow. Marijuana is widely known to
| be benign, and so it's not much of a surprise that usage
| rose with legalization. Other drugs are known to _not_ be
| benign, so you 're not going to find a ton of people going
| "hey, why not try some heroin?"
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| > Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise,
| marijuana usage is at an all-time high
|
| That may be a result of measurement. People that used prior
| to legalization kept it secret. The stereotypical "stoners"
| are a fraction of cannabis users. After legalization people
| tend to be more open about their cannabis use.
|
| If the measurement is based on surveys there will be an
| obvious increase after legalization as the legal
| consequences of admitting use have been removed.
|
| If the measurement is based on sales there will also be an
| obvious increase after legalization as the majority of
| sales are recorded. Prior to legalization the majority of
| sales were illegal and the only sampling of the actual
| market size is from police seizures.
|
| Yes, there will be a growth in the market when the legality
| is changed and stigma is reduced over time. That is people
| finding cannabis useful for themselves and no fear of being
| judged for that choice (same as alcohol is for many
| people).
|
| There will always be a portion of the population that use
| drugs in excess to the detriment of their health or will
| compromise their morals to use. There is also a larger
| portion of the population that uses drugs regardless of
| legality and participates in society. You would never know
| the second cohort.
|
| The problem with the first cohort is breaking other laws to
| satisfy their desire to use. Their drug use isn't the
| problem. Drugs didn't make them do anything. They should be
| punished for their other behavior not their consumption
| habits.
| akira2501 wrote:
| California didn't just decriminalize use, they
| decriminalized sales and open air drug markets. The two are
| technically different policy outcomes. The state was just
| exceptionally lazy in it's implementation, which was
| somewhat driven by the early response to COVID.
| [deleted]
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise,
| marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended).
|
| There is some evidence (not conclusive yet) that legal
| access to marijuana reduces abuse of opioids.
|
| I've never used marijuana, I don't like the smell of
| marijuana, and so I'm not keen on folks using it around me
| -- but in the grand scheme, pot smokers are not the ones
| breaking into cars and threatening folks on the train.
|
| > It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug
| use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something...
| while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.
|
| Are we going to do that for alcohol _use_? What about
| caffeine _USE_? Caffeine is the most widely abused drug in
| the US and thousands of auto fatalities every year are due
| to fatigue, which caffeine perpetuates.
|
| I don't care about drug use. I care about the assaults, the
| robberies, and the street people who block sidewalks and
| harass pedestrians and transit users. I'm not keen on
| excusing their behavior because of their substance _abuse_.
| Demotooodo wrote:
| It's a novelty right now.
|
| In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not
| see a lot of pod heads. I was one of the few and I'm a
| German!
|
| Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that
| country!
| vondur wrote:
| It looks like Portugal is having some serious issues with
| decriminalization.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized
| its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from
| 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros
| ($17.4 million) forced Portugal's main institution to
| outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit
| groups, including the street teams that engage with
| people who use drugs.
| jokowueu wrote:
| >cuts funding >Decriminalization doesn't work ! >not
| shocked
| Alupis wrote:
| And the US is immune to such problems?
|
| This, "but we'll do it better" argument seems to fall
| flat universally. Everybody thinks they can do it better,
| but nobody actually does...
| xienze wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of decriminalization that we won't
| have to spend as much money enforcing laws and locking
| people up? Funny how you never hear anyone sound the
| alarm about lack of funding in the early stages when
| everyone's talking about what a success decriminalization
| is, only when the dark side of such policies start
| showing. "We knew this would happen all along!"
| IX-103 wrote:
| Would you prefer to spend the money on arresting people
| and keeping a large prison population or would you rather
| spend money on rehabilitation programs? Either way you're
| going to spend money, but I think that the latter
| approach would help more people.
| jokowueu wrote:
| No that's not the whole point not even close ,
| decriminalization works in reducing human suffering by
| using the money spent of emprisioning humans and spending
| it on programs etc .
| chefandy wrote:
| The problem here isn't with decriminalization-- it's with
| lack of commitment to what they originally replaced
| enforcement with. From that article:
|
| " _Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is
| still more harmful to society than decriminalization.
| While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of
| decriminalization's benefits, they point to how funding
| and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have
| ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug
| treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen,
| going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the
| most recent year available.
|
| Joao Goulao -- head of Portugal's national institute on
| drug use and the architect of decriminalization --
| admitted to the local press in December that "what we
| have today no longer serves as an example to anyone."
| Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack
| of funding._"
|
| It was working great while they were committed to funding
| treatment programs and pushing users towards them.
| Alupis wrote:
| > In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will
| not see a lot of pod heads
|
| I could be wrong, but I don't believe marijuana is as-
| legal in Amsterdam as it is in California for example. In
| CA, there's very few enforced restrictions of where you
| can get it and where you can use it.
|
| > Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that
| country!
|
| It doesn't appear so[1]. It appears they are struggling
| with the same issues - dramatic rise in drug use.
|
| It's not really effective to just simply legalize all
| drugs. I agree with most, we shouldn't throw people in
| prison for drug use. No, instead we need to throw them
| into mandatory rehabilitation programs.
|
| The goals of a decriminalization program shouldn't be to
| increase average citizen's drug use. But that's what
| happens without some sort of rehab/treatment program.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| TylerE wrote:
| Disagree. Much more societal harm comes from the supply
| side (cartels, street gangs) than users, and much of the
| harm for/from users goes away if prices adjust to what
| they actually cost to produce (a tiny fraction of street
| price), and if the products are lab tested for potency
| and purity.
| vuln wrote:
| > if prices adjust to what they actually cost to produce
| (a tiny fraction of street price)
|
| Nothing. Absolutely nothing is priced at "actual costs to
| produce." Nothing. I wish it were the case though maybe
| one day.
| TylerE wrote:
| Sorry, I was imprecise in my wording... obviously there
| has to be profit, but not the 10,000%+ margins hard drugs
| "enjoy".
| Alupis wrote:
| This pitched scenario has played out in exactly zero
| markets around the world, including all of the legal-
| marijuana states right here in the US.
| TylerE wrote:
| Cartels aren't generally dealing in marijuana, it's small
| potatoes.
| Alupis wrote:
| It's not just cartels in the classical sense.
|
| In CA, it's cheaper to buy illegal marijuana than going
| to one of the licensed stores, for a whole variety of
| reasons.
|
| That "market arbitrage" opens the door for a lot of
| things to occur - all things proponents of legalization
| promised would go away.
| TylerE wrote:
| The market for hard drugs and marijuana are totally
| different.
| Alupis wrote:
| Little bit of a straw man there. Nobody said they weren't
| different things.
|
| The promises of the legalize-marijuana crowd have not
| become true. There is still crime revolving around
| marijuana in CA, it's more expensive than it was before
| legalization, and the tax revenue is a drop in the bucket
| for CA.
|
| So all we "gained" was a bunch more people using
| marijuana...
| TylerE wrote:
| You kinda did by talking about marijuana exclusively
| while I was talking about hard drugs.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| I am not a consumer of marijuana but in my observations
| of habitual users is nowhere near the same as someone
| addicted to heroin, and the severe physical and mental
| impact it has on their bodies. One could say alcohol and
| nicotine have such harmful effects, but not as dramatic
| and sudden as harder narcotics.
| TylerE wrote:
| How do you see wether someone has eaten edibles?
| Demotooodo wrote:
| That's not common in Amsterdam
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > drug use if you are part of the homeless population.
|
| Maybe. homeless are the main issue, rather than drugs?
|
| Like if I had to choose between regular cocaine habbit, and
| bein homeless, i'd rather be a cokehead.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Meet people that have have done a lot of drugs? Some can
| still function. Others, just can't. Had an owner of a
| successful tech company see it fall apart because he
| couldn't make decisions anymore.
|
| Was a really nice guy, but by the end I might hire him to
| sweep the floors, but only with supervision. Not sure how
| he's doing now, but I imagine he'll be homeless by some
| point.
|
| He enjoyed going to burning man a lot.
| S_A_P wrote:
| Legalize everything!= Everyone should be using drugs. This
| is just one step in what should be a public health approach
| to drug use/abuse. Take away the lock them up because they
| are weak minded degenerates approach to drug use. I don't
| see any dissonance in saying that drugs should be
| decriminalized and or legal in some cases but I also don't
| think most people should use drugs regularly. If someone is
| abusing drugs it should certainly be cheaper to provide
| them with mental health care than locking them up in jail.
| Hard drugs like heroin and cocaine would be safer if they
| were not sold on the black market. I think that is a net
| positive vs the status quo- which is a game of "Is It
| Fentanyl?!?"(tm) currently. Should people be using those
| drugs? I don't know. I personally wouldn't want to even if
| I could buy them from a store. As for cannabis, I'm
| convinced that for 90+% of the populous* it's safer than
| alcohol.
|
| *I think anyone with family history of schizophrenia should
| avoid weed and probably all intoxicants.
| patrickmay wrote:
| It would be very hard for the effects of allowing people to
| choose what they consume to be worse than the effects of
| prohibition.
|
| The homeless issue is multidimensional and, surprise,
| people were already getting drugs before they were
| decriminalized.
|
| Legalization is morally correct and eliminates the gangs,
| violence, and high costs of prohibition.
| chronofar wrote:
| > This part is always lost on the "legalize everything"
| crowd.
|
| These types of generalizations are usually built of straw
| and mud, but I'll go ahead and respond as someone in said
| crowd with a "no it's not." There's an implicit assumption
| here that increased usage is worse than the effects of
| prohibition, but that's at minimum highly debatable. I tend
| to think increased usage of a regulated and taxable
| substance by a well educated and supported populous is
| significantly preferable to prohibition and scare tactics,
| to say nothing of the wide swath of wide reaching knock on
| effects the latter has like powerful cartels/gangs,
| militarized police actions in response, people being
| groomed as convicts for their use, etc.
|
| I'm not at all inclined to sweep the dangers of hard drugs
| under the rug, I'm all for looking at their effects and
| impacts head on, and indeed I think the legalization route
| is the best route to do so. I think individuals should be
| given sole stewardship of their own conscious experience,
| by endogenous or exogenous means, and society's best chance
| of maximizing those individual choices is through well
| thought education, regulation, and support (which is likely
| to all be cheaper and more tractable than prohibition is).
| andybak wrote:
| I can think of few things likely to befall a drug user
| that are more devastating and costly to society than a
| long period of incarceration.
| [deleted]
| ozim wrote:
| Example 20 year old experimenting with drugs:
|
| Going to jail for a year breaks any career chances or
| most of the job opportunities plus messes up his mind by
| staying with other convicts.
|
| Letting him experiment with drugs, he might mess up his
| health but also he has still a chance to continue rather
| normal life.
| culopatin wrote:
| If he manages to get out. Gets addicted to meth, can't
| work, needs more meth, what does he do?
| araes wrote:
| One point people don't tend to know, is that a lot of
| folks actually get drugs in jail, and often prefer them.
| There's quite a few opioid replacements that get offered
| to anyone who can show addiction withdrawl, and many
| folks say they're actually a better, longer high than the
| street stuff.
|
| There's also some revolving door, and 'Shawshank' style
| issues, where folks rotate out for a couple months in the
| spring / summer, do whatever on the street, and then
| rotate back in the fall / winter with some dumb crime.
| Eat, rest, stay warm, get the opioid replacements, then
| head back out. Kind of a homeless shelter where you just
| have to do some 3-month misdemeanor stint to get room /
| board.
|
| Although long incarceration can definitely be an issue,
| there are also some folks who've made it a lifestyle.
| bostonsre wrote:
| > I tend to think increased usage of a regulated and
| taxable substance by a well educated and supported
| populous is significantly preferable to prohibition and
| scare tactics
|
| The problem is opioids and other hard drugs aren't
| regulated, they are just made legal.
|
| Human thought when addicted to hard drugs is not logical.
| Giving people the freedom to consume them has the effect
| of allowing them to forfeit their freedom from choice
| when they become addicted. Making them even more widely
| available will just cause more to become ensnared in
| their web.
|
| We are organic machines developed without the influence
| of hard drugs over millions of years. We don't have
| complete control over our actions or thoughts. Why do you
| like sex? Why do you like men or women? Our programming
| controls this and drug addiction is a similar irrational
| control loop.
| ska wrote:
| (most) Opiods are already legal and regulate - they are
| mostly medical useful drugs.
|
| The current opiod crisis was largely created by over-
| prescription of legal, regulated opiods and subsequent
| rejection of further prescription; something that led
| many addicts to search out alternative sources, which
| grew a market for gray and black market opiods, which
| grew into whatever you want to call what we have now -
| tons of unregulated and often 'dirty' fentanyl and
| carfentanil flooding the system and ending up in
| everything.
|
| I guess I'm saying I know where you are coming from, and
| increasing usage isn't going to be a great idea. On the
| other hand, felonization of it and the halo effect of
| street crime etc. absolutely is causing massive harm,
| arguably worse than the scenario you describe. It's not
| an easy problem to make real progress with.
| chronofar wrote:
| > The problem is opioids and other hard drugs aren't
| regulated, they are just made legal.
|
| So let's regulate them! (though as someone else pointed
| out they are indeed currently regulated, just not well)
|
| > Human thought when addicted to hard drugs is not
| logical. Giving people the freedom to consume them has
| the effect of allowing them to forfeit their freedom from
| choice when they become addicted. Making them even more
| widely available will just cause more to become ensnared
| in their web.
|
| I frankly find it bizarre when people venture down this
| train of thought. Should we eliminate all potential
| sources of illogical behavior? You mentioned sex, should
| we regulate that? Sugar? Groups (which inspire
| groupthink)? What even is the threshold for you for
| "logical?"
|
| If we assume consenting adults are capable of making
| decisions and we value their freedom in doing so, drug
| prohibition is directly counter to that value.
|
| Now if you truly want to venture down the road of
| restricting freedom to what is "logical" or some such
| thing, that actually is a road I think you could
| reasonably trod down (it's not a popular argument and I
| think it's pretty hard to make work but I can see a
| possible world with very little individual freedom but
| high degrees of flourishing, the problem is it's much
| more likely when you remove freedom flourishing also
| suffers b/c the possibilities narrow towards the needs of
| whomever still holds freedom, ie those in power), but I
| doubt that actually is where you were headed, drugs just
| tends to get this kind of double speak for historical
| reasons.
| bostonsre wrote:
| > Should we eliminate all potential sources of illogical
| behavior?
|
| How about we try to avoid the really harmful stuff that
| ruins lives and kills people like drug addiction? We
| place plenty of limits on stuff that can kill people.
| This is not some slippery slope thing, allowing it to
| flourish in our society is not in the long term best
| interest of literally anyone.
|
| > If we assume consenting adults are capable of making
| decisions and we value their freedom in doing so, drug
| prohibition is directly counter to that value
|
| That is the problem, we cannot assume that adults in the
| throws of addiction are capable of making decisions that
| are in their best interests. Your thought process is not
| logical when addicted and maximizes getting high at the
| cost of everything else.
| antisyzygy wrote:
| Alcohol is one of the most harmful drugs ever. It leads to
| all sorts of societal problems like early deaths, domestic
| abuse, traffic accidents, workplace accidents, even murder
| because it reduces inhibitions.
|
| But somehow we're ok with selling unlimited quantities to
| people.
|
| Most opiates are downright docile by comparison. A person
| passes out and can't harm anyone anymore.
|
| Legalization would mean opiates are regulated. You can only
| get a certain strength. You can only buy so much per visit.
| Purity is regulated so you wouldn't accidentally get
| Fentanyl laced stuff and die.
|
| There should be treatment options, of course, because it's
| the right thing to do, and it's also much cheaper than
| fixing the damage addicts can do, and also cheaper than the
| cost throwing them in prison.
|
| Generally speaking drug addicts are actually self-
| medicating something anyway, it's like a slow suicide
| attempt due to some mental trauma or other mental illness
| like schizophrenia.
|
| The OP is right. Decriminalization is the worst of both
| worlds.
|
| For a long time we got use to not seeing as many drug
| addicts because a lot of them were thrown in prison where
| you don't see them anymore. Each one costing tax payers a
| full time wage, 35k per year per prisoner.
|
| Decriminalization means you see more addicts out on the
| streets, but they're still getting overly strong, even
| laced stuff on the black market and are taken advantage of
| by predators.
|
| Where marijuana legalization occurred there are purity
| limits on things like edibles. And you can only buy so much
| at once. It hasn't lead to really any problems but of
| course marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs out
| there. It's far less harmful than alcohol, so it might not
| be the best example.
|
| I'd say alcohol is a better comparison to opiates and other
| hard drugs.
|
| Legalization is the better path. We already should know
| better via our exercise in alcohol prohibition.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Is the stigma going away because it's legal or is it being
| legalized because the stigma is going away?
| treeman79 wrote:
| I have yet to meet a person. Whose personality didn't
| completely changed after being on marijuana for a while.
|
| Every single one of them said it didn't affect them.
| mrbabbage wrote:
| > We can see this in-action already. Places like California
| have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you
| are part of the homeless population. Surprise again -
| there's more drug use within that community than ever
| before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area
| without seeing overt drug use these-days.
|
| Is this unique to CA? The street level suffering you see in
| CA cities is overwhelmingly related to fentanyl, an opioid.
| Infamously, the US is in the midst of the opioid crisis,
| with deaths continuing to rise unabated [1]. Places with
| harsher drug policing are also seeing rises in opioid
| deaths.
|
| And while San Francisco is a top location for opioid
| deaths, the other top counties by death rates (Mendocino,
| Trinity, Alpine, Lake, Inyo, Humboldt, Nevada) are all very
| rural [2].
|
| [1] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-
| statistics/overd...
|
| [2] https://skylab.cdph.ca.gov/ODdash/?tab=CA
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with
| substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to
| the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead
| to more people getting into treatment programs.
|
| There are also people that only get help due to the threat of
| incarceration (e.g. the judge says go to drug treatment or go
| to jail). Removing that fear can lead to more people not
| getting into treatment programs.
| akira2501 wrote:
| "We might have to operate in a cruel and unusual fashion,
| otherwise, some users might not actually be afraid enough
| of violence from the state to get help."
|
| This is an unfortunate binary we've backed ourselves into.
| I can imagine tons of other methods the state could use to
| drive compliance other than outright incarceration and the
| threat of entirely destroying your life.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > the threat of entirely destroying your life.
|
| What do you mean? Since this is fentanyl, they are
| already destroying their lives, they will be lucky to
| still be alive a couple of years if something drastic
| isn't done.
| mulmen wrote:
| Would we expect early results to be encouraging? There's a lot of
| inertia in something like this. The damage is already done for
| anyone locked up on a drug charge. And reallocating resources
| from prisons to diversionary programs will take at least a
| generation.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| The thing that's craziest to me is that the people who believe in
| decriminalization are typically _totally against_ deregulating
| pharmaceutical drugs, but all the arguments in favor of one are
| in favor of the other as well! My body, my choice? Applies
| equally to experimental cancer therapies and to crack. You might
| say "oh well the pharma companies are manipulative, they're
| liars, they can't be trusted" - dear reader, do we really think
| the street dealers _are better_?
| porkbeer wrote:
| Legalizing theft was the problem. So much actual crime is
| happening, the drugs are not the primary issue here.
| Thoeu388 wrote:
| > the first of its kind in any state, are now coming into view
|
| Lets hope Oregon will be shining beacon of inclusivity for all
| drug users, anywhere in US! We should not rush into any
| conslusions for at least 30 years!!!
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments.
|
| Can you please not create accounts to break HN's rules with?
| It's not in your interest to vandalize this place, for the same
| reason one doesn't throw trash in a city park, or leave fires
| burning in dry forests, or pee in swimming pools: it destroys
| what makes the place worth visiting in the first place.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| schnable wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to
| Hacker News.
| jeffrom wrote:
| Is Oregon leading the US fentanyl crisis? At a glance, it doesn't
| look like it. Has West Virginia decriminalized as well?
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...
| 71a54xd wrote:
| I recently visited Portland and is was shocking. Sad because
| aside from stunning homelessness and crime out in the open it's
| actually a beautiful quirky city. 1br luxury apts / condos are
| well designed and reasonably priced. Restaraunts and culture are
| incredible and feel deeply grounded in community - a far cry from
| what Austin (my home town) now considers "weird" or cool.
|
| I'd live there in a second if the state / city cleared up the
| nutty violent "activists" and homeless all over the place.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| The activists make a living on it though. There are massive
| funds allocated for these programs that don't solve the
| problems but rather manage them. In fact, a larger customer
| base will only increase their funding.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Decriminalization is mostly pointless step and won't work to fix
| the "drug" issue. It only solves one piece of the puzzle, jailing
| non-violent people. You still have black markets, you still have
| stigmatization, you still have unknown and mystery substances
| (users don't know what they are actually getting).
|
| To "solve" the drug issue we need full legalization and
| regulation of all drugs, and safe centers/locations where drugs
| can be used under medical supervision.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I partially agree with this. Not all drugs should be legalized,
| but rather, handled differently. In Seattle, the latest "drug
| enforcement" failed because the judicial system knew they
| didn't have the people-power to process the inflow of repeat
| offenders, who are cycled through the system and let go, only
| to repeat again. It may keep them off the streets for a bit,
| but it doesn't solve anything.
|
| Police should be able to enforce drug abuse, but it's a
| different path.
|
| https://www.kuow.org/stories/what-s-next-for-seattle-drug-la...
| code_runner wrote:
| There will always be black markets for the people who don't
| trust the government and certainly for people who don't want to
| go to some supervised location.
|
| Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good etc, but some of it
| feels like just make the gov't complicit in people absolutely
| ruining their own lives. Its a tough nut to crack.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| If you decriminalize hard drugs, all that happens is that addicts
| stay addicts, have a higher likely hood of becoming homeless and
| higher chance of dying. Hard drugs for the most part outside of
| controlled environments have almost no positive qualities. Drugs
| like cannabis have medical attributes and can provide benefits.
|
| People addicted to hard drugs require treatment, leaving them to
| their own devices is likely to have negative results. Problem is,
| who is going to pay for that treatment and for how long? On top
| of that, is it ok for Bob the local heroine addict to shoot up in
| front of peoples homes in a local residential community or
| school? Do we really want to worry about Bob dropping his needles
| on the ground?
|
| I'm not a fan of sending people to jail for drug use but when
| balanced against the very real repercussions to peoples lives
| regarding hard drug use and the affect on communities, not sure
| what the alternative is. Rendering down town areas unwalkable due
| to an infestation of addicts, and the associated uptick in
| property crime and robbery is not acceptable either.
|
| Plus once drugs are legal, its very likely the first thing to be
| chopped in a budget crunch is going to be treatment programs as
| illustrated in Portugal.
|
| Not sure what the answer is but just waving a wand and making
| hard drugs legal is not it.
| taeric wrote:
| Referencing Portugal feels weird. Most reports I see are still
| very favorable to the outcomes they are seeing, is that
| changing?
|
| Decriminalizing doesn't change people with a drug problem into
| not having a drug problem, true. It does, at least, free them
| from also having a legal problem. Idea being that they can seek
| and get treatment for their drug problem, now. Something they
| can't do when it is criminal. (Indeed, reading the Wikipedia
| page for Portugal shows increased treatments as their first
| bullet in favor.)
|
| I'd also guess that it makes it easier for treatments to be
| offered. As, right now, offering help there is basically aiding
| illegal activity.
| fragmede wrote:
| Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having
| doubts
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
|
| discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36638752
| taeric wrote:
| Thanks for the link, I'll try and take a deeper dive later.
| Cursory read is not favorable to the article, though.
| Problems include, * Having to concede that
| Portugal is still doing better than most of Europe. *
| Leaning on pandemic years for a lot of the excess growth.
| * A passing discussion of funding and other costs.
|
| I see most of this was covered in the discussion here. Will
| see what else is mentioned.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I hate to be that HN guy who nitpicks an otherwise spot-on
| comment, but anyway...
|
| One correction: many opiate users, yes, even heroin users, can
| be functional members of society. There are many folks you
| would never know use H, at least until they accidentally get
| some fentanyl and die.
|
| Same thing with meth(which is actually a prescription
| medication). I'll say that there is always a very high
| probability that some life stress transforms a casual usage
| pattern into full-blown addiction though. I've seen it first
| hand with a family member who used meth for years "on the
| weekends, to get things done" until some stress in their
| mid-40s turned them into a hallucinating IV meth user.
|
| More or less though, I think we should maintain criminalization
| of public usage of most drugs, but I'm open to whatever
| pragmatic approach maximizes public health and safety while
| lowering crime.
| goatlover wrote:
| You're ignoring the right of someone to do with their body as
| they see fit, in favor of giving power to governments over
| people's bodies. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol
| despite's its negative effects. Doesn't work for prostitution
| or gambling either.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Sure, as long as those people don't negatively affect
| others. Who cleans up after the addict? Who pays for their
| property crimes or aggression? Who has to clean up their
| body after an OD or discover it?
|
| I'm open to decriminalizing everything, start with
| steroids. As long as there are harsh punishments for public
| intoxication, property damage, theft and all the adjacent
| crimes that addiction causes, have at it. It can't result
| in a wasteland of addicts in every down town though
| brightlancer wrote:
| To add, I've known many folks who were infrequent users of
| cocaine, about once or twice a year during holidays or
| parties or the like.
|
| I also knew one person who worked in finance and EVERYONE did
| coke; he wasn't addicted and stopped using when he switched
| fields (he hated the 80h weeks).
|
| These anecdotes contrasted heavily with my experience in the
| Bronx in the 80s, where drug users were overwhelmingly drug
| abusers and generally awful people. I still won't use
| recreational drugs (other than caffeine and alcohol) but I
| don't judge people who do.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| It is very possible to use hard drugs and not be addicted .
| I used to use cocaine socially before kids but I think back
| and really no positives. Going to bars and in and out of
| bathrooms in groups. Was really just asking to get arrested
| for possession. Problem with drugs like that is you think
| you are invincible but really at least in my case I was
| just being stupid and lucky.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Fair point. This I think goes along with the idea of a
| functional alcoholic. People can be functional and fine for a
| very long time, until they aren't. This likely has less
| affect on the community during their 'functional' phase. I am
| for the most part against public use and intoxication.
| chronofar wrote:
| > Not sure what the answer is but just waving a wand and making
| hard drugs legal is not it.
|
| Make them actually legal (and thus more safe), tax them
| heavily, use a portion of said taxation to educate properly and
| then support and rehabilitate those who need it. Don't allow
| unsafe activities in public places that cause an unsafe
| environment.
|
| This really isn't that complicated, we've just been under the
| spell of prohibition for so long waking up can be a bit
| disorienting.
| hcks wrote:
| Yeah, it's not complicated when you can make up stuff with 0
| evidence and have no responsability anyway.
| chronofar wrote:
| What did I make up and what did I say that requires
| evidence? And what responsibility do you imagine I'd
| require to have the opinion I relayed?
|
| Of course nothing is simple if given a close enough look,
| but there are also rather straightforward solutions here
| such that we shouldn't feel just totally stumped about what
| to do.
| ikrenji wrote:
| problem with this kind of reasoning is that there is very
| little real data on a world where drugs are decriminalised /
| legal. while the things you listed could all be negative
| consequences of such a world, since it was never tried we don't
| know and its just a conjecture...
| wonderwonder wrote:
| There's also a genie out of the bottle problem. Once you
| decriminalize drugs and people start using them it's very
| hard to flip a switch and make them stop. To get the data
| could very well require a massive sacrifice if it turns out
| to be a very bad idea
| ikrenji wrote:
| Possibly. On the other hand - all drugs started out
| decriminalised and the reasons for the criminalisation were
| not always or even usually out of concern for the well
| being of the user, but racism against the chinese (opium)
| and black people (marijuana)
| api wrote:
| My take is that we're going from a criminalization based "screw
| them, warehouse them in jail and ruin their lives with felony
| convictions" policy to a laissez-faire "screw them, let them
| die on the street" policy.
|
| The part that hasn't changed is "screw them." Nobody really
| cares about these people. They're viewed as an inconvenience
| and the debate is over the least costly way to either warehouse
| them or shove them aside somewhere. Most people view addiction
| as a moral failing and think addicts deserve whatever they get.
|
| I've never been in favor of drug criminalization except
| _possibly_ in the case of the most addictive and deadly hard
| drugs (crystal meth, fentanyl, concentrated opiates), but I
| always hoped that legalization would come with a redirection of
| funding from prisons and police into treatment. The latter part
| just isn 't happening, or isn't happening with any
| effectiveness. My take is that nobody gives a damn and
| decriminalization is more about saving money than freedom or
| better treatment approaches.
| collaborative wrote:
| The problem as I see it is that any "treatment" requires the
| addict wanting to be treated
|
| You could argue that the Taliban are the government that
| cares the most about addicts, because they are actually
| making addicts change the way a parent corrects a child
|
| But addicts are grown ups with free will
| ddingus wrote:
| Truth and I would change that statement just a bit:
|
| Any * successful * treatment requires the patient to want
| treatment.
|
| In addition, the triggers for it all need to be addressed.
|
| Those can be:
|
| Simple pain, trauma
|
| More complex financial issues, housing, etc...
|
| PTSD of various kinds, war, abuse and the like.
|
| Without a plan to address triggers and desire to be done
| with it all, treatment success is extremely unlikely.
| collaborative wrote:
| I agree but I find it is actually harder to recover when
| the focus is on finding the reasons for addiction
|
| We are fallen creatures and simply accepting our fallen
| nature might be more productive
| foobarian wrote:
| The movie Traffic already said it. "Treatment of addiction?
| Addicts treat themselves. They overdose and then there's one
| less to worry about."
| soligern wrote:
| They should couple decriminalization with stringent arrests for
| public use and public intoxication. It's so damn simple, why
| won't they do it. Set a limit above which you're not allowed to
| be loitering on the streets like they do with alcohol.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| That's one of the interesting things I noticed about
| Amsterdam. It is notorious for the availability of cannabis,
| but it's very clear that you don't consume in public or
| around the neighborhood. (Modulo a group of teens I saw
| passing a joint around in the park). The coffeeshops are
| clearly intended to contain the drug use. Unlike California
| where you smell weed everywhere.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| There is so much absurd regulation of marijuana in
| California, that the gray and black markets are still
| thriving. There is too much demand and not enough legal
| supply because of bullshit red tape. Making it easier to
| grow legally is the path to taking organized crime and
| violence out of it.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| This is definitely part of the answer. Walking through the
| streets of San Francisco a while ago with my kids I was
| shocked to see people just lying on the side walk in pools of
| their own vomit. Also was very protective of my kids walking
| past people that were obviously on drugs and out of their
| minds. These people became not so much people but just a
| threat. It seemed inhumane to just leave them like that. With
| that said, I would not want the job of dealing with them for
| what I am sure is a relatively low salary with the reward of
| seeing most people you help back on drugs the next week.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| What did you do to help these people who were suffering?
| Did you just glare and step over them?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Yes. What would you like me to do? Walk up to each one I
| came across, my little kids in tow and try to have an
| intelligent conversation with them? Give them all my
| money? Invite them back with me to my hotel like the pied
| Piper of addicts?
|
| I want them out of the way and far away from my kids. I
| was pretty clear that I perceived them as a threat.
| barbs wrote:
| How are they a threat? They're lying in a pool of vomit,
| it's pretty clear they need help. Maybe teach your kids a
| bit of compassion?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Again, I refer you to my parent comment, how should I
| provide help & compassion? Which option should I select?
|
| As far as how are they a threat, really?
|
| The internet is overflowing with articles like this.
| https://www.foxla.com/news/lapd-woman-stabbed-in-head-
| scisso...
| skyyler wrote:
| >These people became not so much people but just a threat.
|
| This is part of the problem. They are a threat, but they're
| also still people.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Sure but I very much value my kids over strangers
| engaging in destructive behavior on the street. Why risk
| myself and my family for them?
| skyyler wrote:
| Don't value them over your family.
|
| Just don't think of them as less than human.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Thats the thing, I don't. With that said, there is almost
| nothing more dangerous to a human than another human. I
| wish them nothing but happiness in life but I am also not
| going to ignore the fact that they are on drugs and
| potentially mentally compromised. A danger to themselves
| and others.
| richardanaya wrote:
| Oregon enabled public drug use is the problem, just like drunk
| driving and public intoxication, it should be made illegal.
| jiggyjace wrote:
| > "We're building the plane as we fly it," Haven Wheelock, a
| program supervisor at a homeless-services provider in Portland
| who helped put Measure 110 on the ballot, told me. "We tried the
| War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn't work ... It hurts my
| heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we
| even give it a chance."
|
| Saying this is not the logical conclusion one might think it is.
| It's not a problem where there are only two solutions.
| Thoeu388 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| richardanaya wrote:
| Oregon enabled public use of drugs is the problem without
| consequence, just like drunk driving and public intoxication, it
| should be made illegal.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Decriminalization has nothing to do with limiting the use of
| drugs. The main purpose is to bring down costs so that criminal
| cartels will see their profits eroded through competition. This
| will also reduce _other_ crimes, especially violent ones, because
| less people will need for example to rob a shop to buy drugs. Of
| course more easy drugs around mean that initially more people
| will use them, however that is just the immediate result of
| having at hand something that once was harder to find. Give it
| time. We all know that whoever is on drugs won 't stop searching
| for them, no matter the cost, and no matter if that cost is on
| someone else's life; the choice is between prohibiting something
| that can't be prohibited effectively, or destroying profits for
| criminals, which can be very effective.
|
| And then there's the stance by some politicians furiously in
| favor of prohibition, which smells of conflict of interests to
| say the least, but that's another story.
| bozhark wrote:
| That only happens when the source becomes cheaper than black
| market.
|
| The only way that happens is gov. Subsidies.
|
| It's why CO and WA and others still have such a large black
| market for weed.
| rationalfaith wrote:
| [dead]
| kepler1 wrote:
| I maintain now (as I did when Measure 110 passed in Oregon, and
| in the discussions here in HN) that decriminalizing drugs would
| lead the state, and especially Portland of course, to a terrible
| and predictable outcome. Many supporters of the measure believed
| that it was the objectively right choice. Decriminalize, and get
| people to treatment instead of locking them up.
|
| The sad thing is that you can make all the piecewise-correct A/B
| choices yet still end up having destroyed your city.
|
| Yes, giving someone a ticket for using drugs and offering them
| treatment instead of locking them up might be temporarily more
| productive / more sensible. Yes, maybe it makes sense to put more
| resources to mental health.
|
| Yet one day, you wake up and your city is unlivable and your
| block is terrorized by drug addicts.
|
| Somehow, people forgot that once in a while there is a legitimate
| role for hard authority to punish people for doing things you
| don't want them to do. Lest your society go down some lawless
| path which step by step looked like the kind and charitable
| course to follow.
| local_issues wrote:
| The people I fear the most are people who are 100% sure they're
| doing the right thing. This comment section is full of that -
| "no, this is a good policy and it's just the implementation
| that's wrong."
|
| Sure, maybe? But maybe it's just a bad policy? Maybe we could
| adjust the implementation? Maybe we can look at other places
| were things are better?
|
| Maybe a bit of shame could be helpful, too. SF and Portland
| have turned into a national punch line. That's shameful.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| If a policy requires nearly perfect implementation, and
| follow through, and good behavior of the people, in order to
| succeed, and you rarely achieve / sustain the follow through
| by the community or police, etc. _then it is not a good
| policy_. Even though the concept was nice.
|
| A policy is everything, start to finish. You can't just say a
| policy was good except for the implementation. No matter how
| good it makes you feel that you got the idea right, it just
| wasn't carried out the way you thought.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug
| addicts
|
| This is hyperbole, I live in one of the rougher neighborhoods.
| The city gov especially the mayor and his cronies have done
| nothing to actually fix problems, they just do expensive sweeps
| and cleanup without addressing root causes.
| retrac wrote:
| I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada,
| we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city
| is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite
| that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase
| in the number of homeless and the number of publicly
| intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a
| consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A
| relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is
| dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells,
| smashing the first and second floor windows regularly,
| pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly.
| All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-
| middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so
| insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware
| there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on
| my street.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| > I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in
| Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad"
| neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together
| economically.
|
| This is a joke, right? Like, either you live in a small
| town not large enough to _have_ distinct neighbourhoods, or
| you are so isolated as to not see the abject poverty that
| many live here. Take Toronto, for example. Right on Mt.
| Pleasant Rd. and St. Clair you have Rosedale, one of the
| wealthiest neighbourhoods in all of Canada. If you walk
| down a street there, you won 't find a person making less
| than $100K. You'll have perfectly maintained roads, bike
| lanes, and very good private schools (like Upper Canada
| College), where every kid there pays $50K a year. Go down
| Mt. Pleasant until it becomes Jarvis St., and continue
| going down until you hit Dundas St., where the average
| person makes minimum wage and can barely afford their
| apartment. And that's just a 2km difference!
|
| Ask anyone whether they would rather live in Forest Hill
| (again, Toronto) or on Jane and Finch, and you'll get the
| same answer any time. For Montreal, ask anyone whether they
| would live in Westmount, or in Sainte-Marie, and again,
| you'll get the same answer. There absolutely are "good" and
| "bad" neighbourhoods in Canada, and in some cases, they're
| just as bad as in the United States (speaking from
| experience here).
| retrac wrote:
| You are forgetting that it's a 10 minute walk from Forest
| Hill to one of Toronto's poorest communities. They are
| part of the same community geographically. Same with
| Jane/Finch -- within walking distance of very wealthy
| detached suburban homes. It's even more jutted up against
| each other south of Bloor/Yonge, with some of the
| wealthiest high-rise condos directly against some of the
| poorest public housing and tent cities. I am not denying
| the existence of the divide -- it's very real and very
| stark -- I am however fascinated that it occurs _on the
| same block_. It 's not a different part of town. It's the
| same geographic area sliced differently. That the two
| worlds are so separate, when literally next to each
| other, is what I was trying to point out.
| anon291 wrote:
| Oh goodness... you can't be serious? Have you been to
| vancouver?
|
| As for being insulated in your upper middle class
| community. I mean... every country has that. my
| neighborhood which is a mile and a half from downtown
| Portland had private security during the entirety of the
| riots of 2020. These are far left people (which I know
| based on conversations with my neighbors, yard signs, and
| who they vocally proclaim they're voting for) and they all
| collectively decided to hire private companies to ensure
| the rif-raf doesn't get in. It's exactly like that now. In
| my own neighborhood, there's nothing, but if you cross the
| street to the 'wrong side of the tracks' so to speak, it's
| like an apocalypse (getting better thankfully, due to the
| recent increase in policing)
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| A lot of these drugs are used to get people into the sex trade;
| once you get someone on drugs to do things with/to their body
| they otherwise wouldn't the cycle of shame begins that often
| traps these people in the escape through drug induced pleasure.
| Just the sad truth.
| gspencley wrote:
| It's working just fine.
|
| I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc.
| if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else
| matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those
| standards.
|
| But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people
| put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a
| broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my
| opinion. Regardless of drug use statistics, no one belongs in
| jail or with a criminal record for no reason other than
| possessing and/or consuming an intoxicant. I don't even care if
| drug use goes up with decrminalization or legalization. In my
| opinion it is simply outside of the proper moral scope of a
| government to concern itself with such matters. Feel free to
| disagree. This is my personal political view.
| davorak wrote:
| > Feel free to disagree. This is my personal political view.
|
| How do you address the argument that drug users go on to be a
| burden to society?
|
| > But I don't want a government having any opinion on what
| people put into their own bodies.
|
| It seems like it should if the result is a burden on society,
| though there are many potential solution to ameliorate the
| problem other than outlawing or restricting substances.
| Rapzid wrote:
| > How do you address the argument that drug users go on to be
| a burden to society?
|
| I think there are point of views that are a much larger
| burden on society, and yet people are free to have them.
| davorak wrote:
| > I think there are point of views that are a much larger
| burden on society, and yet people are free to have them.
|
| I claim this is an apples to oranges comparison.
| Controlling peoples views is an attempt at mind control vs
| regulating substances directly or indirectly which is a
| common practice, not putting lead into gas for example. Or
| indirectly regulated, eating of highly radioactive
| substances.
| urmish wrote:
| Why do you think everyone should get voting rights if there is
| a section of the society who want to actively harm themselves.
| What are their votes reflective of?
| ikrenji wrote:
| why do you want to create a policy for everyone based on
| actions of the few? the tails should be disregarded. so what
| if 5-10% of the people abuse a system that otherwise benefits
| the other 80-90% ? cost of doing business
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Anyone who consumes sugar, trans fat or smokes cigarettes
| should be unable to vote as well?
| brightlancer wrote:
| Anyone who disagrees with me should be unable to vote.
|
| The paradox of tolerance says I should not tolerate anyone
| who is intolerant, and if they disagree with me then they
| are intolerant and we should not tolerate them.
|
| Checkmate, fascists.
| gspencley wrote:
| Why are you assuming what I think about voting rights? I
| never brought that up.
| andybak wrote:
| This is quite frankly, a bizarre take that shows little
| understanding of drug use or society.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| i agree with no criminal penalties for drugs, but your
| justification seems ignorant of the negative externalities. i
| think a better justification is simply that the tradeoffs from
| legalization are worth it
| fragmede wrote:
| I _absolutely_ want my government to have an opinion on what
| people put into their bodies. If I go to the store and buy a
| loaf of bread, and instead I get a loaf with a high
| concentration of bleach, used to clean the machines at the
| factory, and it kills me, I think the government should have an
| opinion on it. I think they should do what it can to prevent
| that from happening. I do want a government that regulates
| drugs so that if I buy Tylenol, I 'm going to get Tylenol and
| not melamine pills. If someone is selling a pill and says it
| makes me lose weight or regrow hair, I want the government to
| have the opinion that if they make that claim, they must have
| scientifically run studies to back that up. I'm not saying the
| FDA is perfect, far from it! But the government's duty is to
| its people, so I, personally, think that government should play
| _some_ role in what goes into people 's bodies, to make sure
| people know what they're getting, and they're getting what they
| paid for.
|
| That the government has extended their reach to criminalize
| things people choose to put into their bodies, and the
| resulting problems that's caused and causing, is a travesty,
| but I think saying the government should have _no_ opinion on
| that is going too far.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > But I don't want a government having any opinion on what
| people put into their own bodies.
|
| I agree with this in principle, but only to an extent. It's not
| the government's business to intervene when people fill their
| bodies with, say, ice cream, which makes them happy but has
| some health consequences borne by the individual. But on the
| other hand, the government should certainly not permit people
| to fill their bodies full of explosive substances like
| nitroglycerin, which might detonate when they are outside
| walking around public spaces, taking out innocent bystanders.
|
| Hard drugs fall somewhere in between these extremes, because in
| addition to their first-order effects on the user's health and
| happiness, they also seem to cause second-order consequences on
| innocent bystanders. Under the influence of drugs, some users
| can become aggressive and violent, and lose control of and --
| importantly -- responsibility for their actions. Under the
| influence of addiction, some users also resort to robbery or
| theft to fund their habits. Many also end up unable to care for
| themselves. Statistically, this occurs with enough likelihood
| that it's a predictable, although not inevitable, consequence
| of substance abuse. Punishing the crimes committed under the
| influence of drugs does not act as an effective deterrent. Much
| of the harm from hard drugs does fall on people with no direct
| relationship to the drug users themselves, and they will have a
| strong and legitimate self-interest in having these substances
| banned.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > But I don't want a government having any opinion on what
| people put into their own bodies.
|
| Because we invest in people. We pay money to educate them, in
| many cases feed, shelter, and clothe them and in a variety of
| other ways. We expect citizens to contribute back into society.
| Having millions of zombies interested in nothing else than
| getting high is self destructive not only for the individuals
| we have invested in but also to our societies general longterm
| health.
|
| So yes, government does have an active interest in having a
| healthy populace.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| By that same logic more people are dying or ruining their
| lives from poor diet and lack of exercise. Should the
| government be mandating diet and enforcing exercise quotas?
| nemo44x wrote:
| That doesn't follow at all. People who eat poorly and/or
| don't exercise are not a drain on society like drug addicts
| sleeping on the street, stealing to fund their addiction,
| and contributing nothing. There's big differences and it's
| not even really nuanced. It's obvious these are different
| things.
|
| Saying that we should encourage healthy lifestyles.
| fragmede wrote:
| A food addict doesn't hold up a corner store to get their
| fix in a pack of candy, but their costs to the healthcare
| system are significant. The estimated annual medical cost
| of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion
| in 2019 dollars. Medical costs for adults who had obesity
| were $1,861 higher than medical costs for people with
| healthy weight*. High functioning drug addicts contribute
| plenty to society, much like there are high functioning
| obese people. What about the obese who don't contribute
| to society and sit around and play video games all day?
| The stereotype of a homeless drug addict is a very
| visible type of addict, but what of the wall street
| investment banker hooked on cocaine? 41.9% of Americans
| were obese (as of March 2020, same cdc link as above).
| They _are_ a drain on society, and it 's a bigger problem
| than you think. It's more insidious because it's less in
| your face than being mugged at gunpoint so it seems more
| benign, but it's causing massive issues.
|
| * https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
| nemo44x wrote:
| When you're passed out in the streets laying in your own
| shit then your business has become my business and we
| shouldn't encourage that. You just keep comparing
| unrelated things.
|
| You support the government encouraging (via incentives)
| drug addicts in the streets.
| fragmede wrote:
| Don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that obesity
| is a bigger problem than you think.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| A thought experiment I think about is along the lines of: what
| would society look like, say, 10,000 years in the future, if
| everybody somehow magically had an Einstein-level of
| intelligence and rationality. In such a society, sure, the
| government probably wouldn't need to step in; the vast, vast
| majority of the population would either have little interest in
| the drugs in the first place, or, if they did, could be trusted
| to partake responsibly.
|
| However, that's not the world we live in. We share our cities
| with fairly unintelligent, irrational people, that have no
| interest in higher ideals. Our cities are being destroyed and
| made unsafe by these people that are just out of their minds on
| drugs / mental issues, completely disconnected from society,
| vandalizing, breaking and entering, hurting other people. They
| obviously, demonstrably, can't be trusted to partake
| responsibly.
|
| I guess the debate is to what level the government needs to
| step in to control such people and the actions they take. I'd
| say that since they've already demonstrated they can't be
| trusted to coexist with peaceful society, that some level of
| action needs to be taken. But it's tough because in an _ideal_
| society I 'd say the correct thing is for the government to
| stay out of it. But we live in a far from ideal society.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Regulate the anti-social behavior, not the substance.
|
| The problem is the places which legalized drugs also
| legalized anti-social behavior.
| Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote:
| The substance is causing the anti-social behavior though,
| it's putting people in a state where they're not able to
| control their behavior or reason rationally about how it
| affects them and the people around them. In such a
| situation, you cannot just focus on the outcomes, you need
| to control the inputs as well.
| joefigura wrote:
| A person who becomes addicted to opiods, methamphetamine, or
| other "hard" drugs will with some probability require medical
| treatment, and and some people who uses those drugs will cause
| other costs to society. I don't know what those percentages
| are, but for opiods it's definitely not negligible. Many people
| begin using opiods and become addicted without intending to,
| and later need medical assistance. So there is a public
| interest in how much these substances are used, and it's
| legitimate for government to regulate them.
|
| In other words, there's a tradeoff between the autonomy to do
| things to your body and the real costs that drug addiction
| imposes on others.
| runjake wrote:
| From the areas I live and work, Measure 110 has, at best, made no
| difference whatsoever.
|
| The current situation with hard drug use is that there are far
| more drugged out people in public, and far more open drug use in
| public since 2020. The exact causes, I'll leave to experts to
| determine. Measure 110 has certainly played a part, though.
| j_walter wrote:
| Don't forget that many of those people are fueling their drug
| habits with theft...theft that has gone largely unchecked.
| Oregon became a destination for addicts where they didn't have
| to worry about legal troubles that came along with drug use.
| All
| runjake wrote:
| This is an important point. While drugs are decriminalized,
| crimes such as theft are not.
|
| Pro-drug decriminalization people often argue that stuff like
| theft is still illegal. However, there are _so many_ drug-
| related thefts that our particular district attorney is
| unwilling to prosecute them.
|
| As a result, law enforcement won't even take them to jail,
| let alone show up, most of the time. Typically, you file a
| self-report on your LE's website and then never hear about it
| again. The thieves know this, of course. (For myself, n=3
| since 2020. Though, I did recover a stolen iPhone last week
| because I acquired enough evidence/telemetry/etc to warrant a
| response.)
| j_walter wrote:
| Every retail store with a 20 mile radius of Portland has
| put theft deterrent devices on even the most basic items.
| Home depot locks up almost everything other than lumber now
| because theft is so prolific. It's frustrating for your
| average joe trying to shop anymore.
|
| Multnomah DA is an a$$hole and moron...he doesn't care
| about the people he is supposed to serve.
| 9g3890fj2 wrote:
| https://archive.today/rznQr
| abotsis wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the bill and specifics, does anyone know if
| it improved access to rehabilitation if sought?
| [deleted]
| nicup12345689 wrote:
| [flagged]
| badlucklottery wrote:
| So Oregon started a two-pronged approach (reduced criminalization
| coupled with low-/no-cost treatment centers) and weren't able to
| actually get the treatment side of it working.
|
| Statistically jail is a very bad drug treatment center. But it's
| likely better than no treatment at all.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This article has severe methodological errors. It fails to
| consider the Oregon stats in the context of other states.
| Oregon's change in OD rates have not been exceptional, and have
| more or less followed the trend of other states, while being
| greatly better compared to states like W. Virginia.
|
| As always, states that are "tough on drugs" get a free pass
| regardless of how bad their outcomes are, and states that
| legalize it are scrutinized even when their outcomes are no
| worse.
| anon291 wrote:
| > while being greatly better compared to states like W.
| Virginia.
|
| Typical Oregon response comparing Oregon, a fairly rich state,
| with West Virginia, one of the poorest states. If you can't do
| better than a poor state with your high taxes and high median
| incomes... that's not a good reflection on the state. Yet, most
| Oregonians seem to get some satisfaction that they do better
| than Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia, even if they're
| #49 in the ranking. It's gross.
|
| I mean, Oregon has Intel, Nike, Adidas, a well-developed tech
| sector, etc, and West Virginia has coal mining, yet we're
| actually comparing ourselves to them.
|
| I really wish people in this state would strive for something
| actually better.
| jeffbee wrote:
| But see that is _exactly_ what I am talking about. You cannot
| -- _cannot_ -- attribute a change in overdose rate to state
| policy without examining and controlling for the factors that
| we know influence overdoses: personal income, homelessness,
| etc. This article completely fails to examine whether Oregon
| 's changes can be due to a shift in the income among its
| population.
| anon291 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure being on the streets as a drug addict also
| causes loss of income, so you really can't take that into
| account without taking in cyclic effects.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And yet you have for some reason assigned causality in
| the case of WV.
| mattzito wrote:
| The article seems to hit that straight on:
|
| "The consequences of Measure 110's shortcomings have fallen
| most heavily on Oregon's drug users. In the two years after the
| law took effect, the number of annual overdoses in the state
| rose by 61 percent, compared with a 13 percent increase
| nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention. In neighboring Idaho and California, where drug
| possession remains subject to prosecution, the rate of increase
| was significantly lower than Oregon's. (The spike in Washington
| State was similar to Oregon's, but that comparison is more
| complicated because Washington's drug policy has fluctuated
| since 2021.) Other states once notorious for drug deaths,
| including West Virginia, Indiana, and Arkansas, are now
| experiencing declines in overdose rates."
| jeffbee wrote:
| That is a highly misleading discussion though. The existing
| rate in WV is quadruple that in Oregon. Oregon was up a bit
| on a low denominator. WV was down slightly on a ludicrous
| prior rate. Fails to mention that other states with similar
| trends compared to Oregon are Wyoming, Maine, and Texas.
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
| seizethecheese wrote:
| misleading it what sense? The article is about the impact
| of a recent policy change.
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