[HN Gopher] Oregon decriminalized hard drugs - it isn't working
___________________________________________________________________
Oregon decriminalized hard drugs - it isn't working
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 127 points
Date : 2023-11-12 03:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| anonym29 wrote:
| https://archive.is/K41lT
| Nursie wrote:
| These always just result in perpetual "I am not a robot"
| checking for me :/
| solardev wrote:
| Works for me in an incognito window for some reason. Oh, and
| you have to be on Chrome and not use Cloudflare DNS, I think
| anonym29 wrote:
| You don't need Chrome. Haven't touched it in half a decade
| and these work fine for me.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Might be a DNS over HTTPS issue. Try whitelisting archive.is
| if you're using Firefox (Firefox > Settings > Privacy &
| Security > [Scroll to bottom] "DNS over HTTPS" > "Manage
| Exceptions...") or turn off secure DNS in Chrome (Settings >
| Privacy and security > Security > Advanced section).
| josephcsible wrote:
| Rather than switching back to insecure DNS, you could just
| change to a DoH provider other than Cloudflare, since
| they're basically the only one that archive.is's operator
| is intentionally returning wrong results to.
| criddell wrote:
| Why would they intentionally return wrong results?
| operator-name wrote:
| https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/
| hcnews wrote:
| For a lot of these changes, you need a motivated and engaged
| enforcer/system-owner who will work through these challenges. It
| takes time and effort to change the culture of a group. I can't
| imagine someone wanting to change unless they either gain a
| strong motivation (highly unlikely given that they have been in
| the current condition for a while themselves) or they are given
| the right framework/setup by someone else (govt. in this case).
| So, this is a hard problem and one shouldn't get disheartened due
| to no progress so far.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Decriminalizing drug usage is just a small but necessary part to
| mitigate this problem.
|
| As usual these people didn't learn or "forgot" all the other hard
| parts.
|
| This particular article doesn't mention it, but I'm getting sick
| of hearing "Portugal decriminalized drug usage in the 90s and
| solved the drug problem" - Really? that simple? Even Hollywood
| westerns were more deep than that.
|
| On of the key aspects to "solve" this problem is also culture,
| family support, personal responsibility and that's when you hear
| the tires screeching and nothing will get done or ever work.
| ip26 wrote:
| _culture, family support, personal responsibility_
|
| I have to agree, if the secret ingredient to making
| decriminalization work is enlisting timeless conservative
| values, we're toast. A more unlikely coalition has never been
| seen.
| mike_d wrote:
| I think presenting voters with "decriminalize drug use" was a
| deceptive play to start with. Most voters picture themselves
| smoking weed on the weekend or doing mushrooms at Coachella,
| not the people unescapably trapped by drugs.
|
| Habitual drug addicts don't have personal responsibility,
| family support, or a community of non-drug addicts to depend
| on. Forced incarceration in a treatment program is literally
| their only chance at breaking the cycle long enough to get them
| support for the underlying issues that led to addiction.
| bb88 wrote:
| I don't think anyone in Portland was being deceived. They
| have had a huge issue with homelessness and drug addicts for
| the better part of the last decade.
|
| Tents are everywhere. On the side streets, on the interstate
| right of ways. It's been that way for a decade.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Habitual drug addicts don't have personal responsibility,
| family support, or a community of non-drug addicts to depend
| on.
|
| survivorship_bias_plane.png
|
| There are millions of habitual hard drug users that do have
| _some_ personal responsibility, _some_ family support, _some_
| sober people around them encouraging them. They are holding
| down jobs and paying for their own housing, they 've already
| quit multiple times but have gotten pulled back in. For those
| people forced incarceration could _maybe_ solve their
| addiction at the cost of their housing and their job.
| lazide wrote:
| The forced incarceration is more about trying to tactically
| solve the specific pain point (people doing drugs on a
| doorstep), not solving the bigger problem.
|
| Which even trying to agree on what the bigger problem is,
| near as I can tell, is impossible.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| > culture, family support, personal responsibility
|
| Abstinence is not an inevitable consequence of a stable life -
| plenty of kids from comfortable backgrounds discover they
| really really like drugs. We need to accept that "getting high"
| is a basic human motivation that won't go away. The existential
| realities of the human condition is enough to seek escape. Some
| of us are born with dopamine regulation issues that doom us
| towards substance use. Despite being sober for a long time I
| still had bad cravings for alcohol and nicotine but an adult
| ADHD diagnosis and medication quieted that insatiable hunger
| for stimulation... by regular administration of stimulants! The
| hereditary aspects explained a lot about my family.
|
| IMHO the real solution should be to design better drugs.
| Consider it the "Steam" argument - we need to outcompete the
| damaging drugs with products along the lines proposed by David
| Nutt. e.g.
|
| - no overdose risk or organ damage
|
| - cheap and make available for free so no crime required to
| acquire
|
| - easy reversal of the effects e.g. with a common product like
| OJ
|
| - no dependence issues
|
| When you discuss investing in this research, you quickly
| discover that many of those who claim to be solving tragedies
| of addiction are actually trying to enforce an ideology that
| considers getting high to be a moral crime. Even if there were
| no personal or societal harms they still believe drugs should
| be violently prohibited. Their ideology actively seeks to cause
| harm. Of course they are hypocrites getting their stimulation
| from drink, food, sex, religion, abuse/control of others or
| whatever they manage to carve out as acceptable.
| ip26 wrote:
| So... coffee?
| orasis wrote:
| What's going on in the streets of Portland isn't happy
| healthy kids that like to get high.
| vkou wrote:
| No, it's just the natural consequence of an economic and
| medical system that is completely incapable of dealing with
| drugs.
| lazide wrote:
| Or the consequence of people who would rather take drugs
| than deal with life and it's often harsh and painful
| realities?
|
| That there are sharp edges economically and medically is
| _inevitable_. Making it less sharp helps, but requires a
| lot of time, energy, and focus /agreement that is rarely
| there. And there is no perfect.
| mech987987 wrote:
| As far as I can tell marijuana ticks all those marks but
| junkies still go for harder drugs anyway.
| Nursie wrote:
| Ah, personal responsibility. Declension, in my experience, is
| usually as follows - *They* deserve their fate
| because they are weak, stupid and bad. *You* have made
| some bad choices and may work to recover from them. *I*
| have merely made a small mistake and deserve a second chance.
| BirAdam wrote:
| The war on drugs hasn't worked either. Having an opioid epidemic
| in the USA should make that painfully obvious to everyone.
| ta988 wrote:
| The opioid epidemic has been mostly fueled by pharma companies,
| their consultants, doctors, pharmacists and the government that
| did nothing for decades despite knowing well something wasn't
| right. The war on drugs mostly criminalized people that
| couldn't afford the legal drugs or couldn't find a crooked
| doctor to prescribe them so they had to rely on street vendors
| and their low quality-high variability-high fraud products.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| The US has an opiod epidemic because it was easy to get
| fentanyl legally.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It was legal to get opioids like oxy legally, fentanyl was
| always pretty tightly controlled. I believe it was mostly
| used in surgeries alongside anesthesia.
| corethree wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/founder-and-former-
| chairm...
|
| Bro, there was a movie made about how wrong you are on this
| topic. It's called pain hustlers, it stars captain america
| and emily blunt. In the movie they renamed the drug to
| Lonafen, but the actual drug is called Subsys. The drug
| contains Fentanyl.
| kube-system wrote:
| That doesn't refute the parent's claim. Fentanyl is not
| prescribed very often, the primary use is for inpatient
| care.
|
| In fact, maybe a reluctance to prescribe the stuff is
| exactly why the guy resorted to bribing people.
|
| According to the CDC, 4% of fentanyl deaths come from
| prescription fentanyl.
| standapart wrote:
| Not really. There were things like Purdue, but that wasn't
| fentanyl.
|
| The fentanyl epidemic is the result of market developments in
| the illegal drug trade.
| peyton wrote:
| You can get high for less than a dollar. It's literally the
| cheapest form of recreation. That's why people are doing
| it.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And there is nothing fundamentally wrong with fentanyl
| itself. Just how it is currently used in uncontrolled way.
| davidw wrote:
| Places like West Virginia have more opioid deaths than Oregon
| does.
|
| Measure 110 has some flaws, but the sensible approach is to see
| what can be done to course correct rather than just go back to
| the thing that wasn't working.
| mike_d wrote:
| In a Boston University study they found that 81% of
| prescription drug abuse and 79% of high alcohol abuse was to
| self manage pain. There is no humane approach to furthering
| addictions as a band-aid for our lack of medical care and
| failure to address mental illness.
|
| Scrap the free use drugs laws and invest in clinics for
| underserved populations with chronic pain management programs
| and mandatory rehab programs for people who have lost the
| battle.
|
| https://www.bumc.bu.edu/camed/2016/05/10/many-patients-
| abusi...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It isn't that simple though. Say you have an encampment set
| up next to a public bus stop used by high schoolers, and
| they start selling to kids to support their own habits, and
| kids start dropping dead from bad fentanyl trips. So...how
| do those clinics for underserved populations really help in
| that case?
| davidw wrote:
| Dealing drugs is still illegal here in Oregon.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It doesn't matter. If you can't go after buyers, you have
| almost no leverage to go after dealers either. Those high
| school students are going to start dying in increasing
| numbers.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Wait are you saying that the problem is that you can't
| throw the high schoolers in prison?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Yeah. The gateway drug here is chronic and intractable
| pain. I am reminded of _Blade Runner_ : "You were made as
| well as we could make you." "But not to last."
|
| After a kid or two, you've done what evolution has selected
| for, and if walloping amounts of suffering and disability
| appear after that, well, there's always the next batch.
| Nobody wants to look too hard at that. People's
| squeamishness about genetic engineering has always had a
| whiff of the ignorable about it. It's pretty fun to pat
| yourself on the back about avoiding "eugenics" when you're
| healthy and young.
|
| I suppose we could go the animal husbandry approach and
| just license reproductive age, pushing it steadily up and
| creating an artificial evolutionary pressure to keep people
| healthy at greater and greater ages.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The war on rain hasn't worked. Many houses have leaky roofs and
| people get wet. This is painfully obvious to anyone. We should
| destroy all forms of shelter and we will finally be free.
| solardev wrote:
| Might help dilute the opiates
| arcticbull wrote:
| Your analogy would make more sense if roofs didn't actually
| keep people dry, and instead caused several other forms of
| harm. And people kept insisting we have them anyways based on
| fundamentalist moralizations.
|
| Without belaboring the analogy, the truth is anyone who wants
| drugs can get them, right now. So we're not stopping that -
| but instead we're creating several new kinds of harm. Around
| marking people as felons, social stigma, loss of income
| sending people to prison, arrest, and that's before we even
| talk about how shit the US penal system is. Prison by the
| way? Full of drugs, and reason for people to want an escape.
|
| Of course making it illegal _also_ creates a black market
| which is basically the only reason cartels exist.
|
| The reality is it's a mental health issue, and a particularly
| interesting one - for instance, American GIs addicted to
| heroin in Vietnam came home and the vast majority of them
| just stopped using it cold turkey. Fascinating right? [1]
|
| Decriminalization and treating it as a mental health issue --
| and sentencing addicts to rehab makes infinitely more sense.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2012/01/02/1444317...
| corethree wrote:
| Analogy doesn't make sense for people who use drugs
| recreationally because they need some sort of logic that
| justifies their own behavior and fits with their morals as
| well. That is the only time the analogy doesn't make sense.
|
| The logic is pretty straightforward: You eliminate the
| source of drugs you eliminate drugs. The problem is the
| complexities surrounding the word "eliminate".
|
| I think the most effective way to win the drug war is to
| initiate vicious man hunts and executions on people who
| sell highly addictive and dangerous drugs. See Singapore.
| They did it effectively.
|
| That being said there are other places that legalized drugs
| and that helped with the drug problem but the logic here
| isn't as straightforward. It's the complexities that make
| it work and dealing with complexities is next to
| impossible. We can't even fully articulate why it worked in
| these places and replicating it will be hard if not
| impossible.
|
| The drug war largely didn't work because of complexities.
| There's so much bureaucracy surrounding getting to the root
| of the problem and putting someone in jail. Singapore just
| executes you if you sell hard drugs. You're done. That's an
| effective deterrent and it is PROVEN to work.
|
| Whether that method is moral or justified is a different
| story, but in terms of easiest, most effective and most
| practical method this is the best possible way. The path
| forward is right there, we know how to do it.
|
| The blocker here is morality and people like you. You
| likely use drugs and you don't want to be executed. You
| want to use these things recreationally and straddle the
| line between abuse and responsible use. Nothing wrong with
| your viewpoint, but personally speaking, I would completely
| eliminate recreational/responsible drug use if it meant
| saving lives and improving society.
|
| I mean it's your right to use drugs, but at the same time I
| don't want to walk through SF smelling shit, piss and
| avoiding junkies. So when you're rights infringe on public
| spaces then that's a problem.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Analogy doesn't make sense for people who use drugs
| recreationally because they need some sort of logic that
| justifies their own behavior and fits with their morals
| as well. That is the only time the analogy doesn't make
| sense.
|
| Fun ad hominem.
|
| > I think the most effective way to win the drug war is
| to initiate vicious man hunts and executions on people
| who sell highly addictive and dangerous drugs. See
| Singapore. They did it effectively.
|
| No they didn't haha.
|
| All of the countries in east Asia have huge drug
| problems. Japan has incredibly strict drug laws and a
| horrible meth problem. In the last major outbreak, 2% of
| Japan was injecting meth _intravenously_. Drugs are
| available in Japan, [1] Singapore [2] and China [3].
| Exacerbated by the criminalization.
|
| All aggressive prosecution does is push problems
| underground.
|
| We've tried it your way for like 52 years. Your way has
| filed. Time to try something new.
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8q7k/how-stigma-
| created-ja...
|
| [2] https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-
| tough-pena...
|
| [3] https://time.com/5530597/trump-china-drug-problem/
| corethree wrote:
| I only said Singapore. I didn't mention Japan or China.
| In Japan, China and the US drug use is "illegal" not
| illegal. Note the quotation marks.
|
| In Singapore, drug use is illegal, not "illegal." Note,
| again, the quotation marks.
| arcticbull wrote:
| And drugs are available all over Singapore, what's your
| point? Here's another article. Just google for it,
| there's a lot of content. [1, 2]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-drugs-
| idUSSIN13...
|
| [2] https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/drug-abuse-
| starts-youn...
| corethree wrote:
| BS your information is just looking at relative change
| annually. Singapore's drug policies have plateaued. It's
| been in effect for decades you can't expect a drug policy
| that's been in place for decades have continues upward
| trends of lower and lower drug use, they will hit a
| limit.
|
| Any change you see now is just noise as they're basically
| at the peak of the amplitude for maximal change. And
| that's what you're basically googling.
|
| You need to look at relative illicit drug use by
| population percentage by country:
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-
| use-...
|
| Also think critically. You will be killed if you attempt
| to sell drugs there. Does it make sense that the policy
| is not effective? What the hell is going on?
|
| Don't be just a blind data scientist trying to scaffold
| the data to fit your view point. If the data doesn't fit
| the common sense then perhaps you're unconsciously
| manipulating the data to fit your view.
|
| Also one of your articles shows 0.7% of youths in
| Singapore have used drugs in the past year. Is that
| suppose to support your argument? Look up the amount of
| youths that use drugs in the US. I think the reported
| number is like 40%. Actual number is likely 70%.
| arcticbull wrote:
| So what I'm hearing is the executions haven't stopped
| drug use.
|
| > Also think critically. You will be killed if you
| attempt to sell drugs there. Does it make sense that the
| policy is not effective? What the hell is going on?
|
| Finally, we're on the same page.
| corethree wrote:
| >So what I'm hearing is the executions haven't stopped
| drug use.
|
| Did you not look at the data I sent you? Singapore has
| the lowest drug use among almost all countries. Not just
| a little low, but massively lower. The only countries
| better off then Singapore tend to be countries where the
| citizens can't afford drugs.
|
| What you heard is wrong. And the google results you sent
| me is cherry-picked data in service of the articles
| agenda. Did drug usage increase in Singapore in the last
| year? Is that a 0.1% increase to 0.7% from the year
| before while the US sits at 40% usage rate? Come on bro.
|
| >Finally, we're on the same page.
|
| No we're not on the same page at all. Or at least you're
| just not admitting it.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Singapore is an authoritarian city-state with full
| control over its borders, and also a very unique society.
|
| Many other countries have similarly draconian drug laws,
| up to and including execution, but do not have the same
| results. So that alone certainly isn't it. Malaysia and
| Indonesia for instance. China ranks first in the world
| for number of executions related to drug trafficking.
| List here. [1]
|
| They also have full control over their border because
| it's a tiny island city-state, and their government leans
| heavily authoritarian. With the illegal gum and the
| caning. They also have strong social cohesion and lots of
| government support and social programs for individuals.
|
| What I would say is:
|
| 1. Given other countries have similar drug laws and
| significantly more drug use than Singapore, this is
| likely correlation not causation.
|
| 2. The social programs in Singapore and the strong social
| cohesion are likely far more responsible for lower drug
| use.
|
| 3. Given the choice to lower drug harm by liberalizing
| like Portugal or cracking down like Singapore, I would
| suggest that the former is far more in line with
| canonical Western values and maximizes individual liberty
| -- and should be applied even if it leads to slightly
| worse outcomes overall because there is never a perfect
| solution.
|
| I would caution you also that there's a long history of
| unsuccessfully attempting to replicate the 'Singapore
| model.' Most famously in China after Deng Xiaoping
| visited in the 70s.
|
| > The only countries better off then Singapore tend to be
| countries where the citizens can't afford drugs.
|
| Citation very needed.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_
| drug_tr...
| corethree wrote:
| >Citation very needed
|
| Look at the data source I posted then look at the
| countries below Singapore. The citation is there you just
| didn't look.
|
| >Singapore is an authoritarian city-state with full
| control over its borders, and also a very unique society.
|
| Yes only an authoritarian society can pull off executions
| like this. Additionally such a society would be unique.
| Nothing supports your argument in this sentence.
|
| >Many other countries have similarly draconian drug laws,
| up to and including execution, but do not have the same
| results. So that alone certainly isn't it. Malaysia and
| Indonesia for instance. China ranks first in the world
| for number of executions related to drug trafficking.
| List here. [1]
|
| And you will see all counties with draconian drug laws
| and actual enforcement of the drug laws such that drug
| use policies that are illegal rather the "illegal" have
| drug use that is significantly lower then countries that
| don't have draconian laws. Again all of this is in my
| source which I already cited.
|
| >Given other countries have similar drug laws and
| significantly more drug use than Singapore, this is
| likely correlation not causation.
|
| Wishful thinking. There are many factors which blur the
| outcome of drug usage. It is not only draconian drug laws
| that influence it thus you will see all kinds of numbers
| everywhere.
|
| What you must do is identify an overall generality. This
| generality is easily and I mean easily identifiable by
| the source I listed which ranks countries by drug use.
| You will clearly see that countries with more freedom to
| use drugs cluster at the top and countries with less
| freedom cluster on the bottom.
|
| Also your argument is clearly flawed. Correlation does
| not prove causation but correlation is still a
| prerequisite to causation. Additionally minor exceptions
| to an overall correlation isn't evidence for no
| causation. That's just false.
|
| >2. The social programs in Singapore and the strong
| social cohesion are likely far more responsible for lower
| drug use.
|
| Nice. You just state this out of nowhere. How about I
| demand the same level of citation you demand? Where is
| your source and your source needs to establish
| "causation".
|
| >Given the choice to lower drug harm by liberalizing like
| Portugal or cracking down like Singapore, I would suggest
| that the former is far more in line with canonical
| Western values and maximizes individual liberty -- and
| should be applied even if it leads to slightly worse
| outcomes overall because there is never a perfect
| solution.
|
| As we see with the topic of this thread applying it to
| Portugal has good outcomes, applying it to Oregon had
| horrible outcomes. It's not clear if it works. Unless you
| can find evidence to the same level as the source I cited
| where countries with draconian drug laws are clearly
| clustered with lower drug usage, your arguments will
| remain inferior.
|
| Additionally, Maximizing western values leads
| concentration of power in the business sector rather then
| the government sector. To even the modern day citizen
| it's not so clear cut which is better. Western values or
| Singapore?
|
| >I would caution you also that there's a long history of
| unsuccessfully attempting to replicate the 'Singapore
| model.' Most famously in China after Deng Xiaoping
| visited in the 70s.
|
| Sure maybe they can't implement something as effective as
| Singapore. But certainly the source I cited clearly shows
| a correlation.
|
| Causation is more or less unestablishable for your or my
| argument. No point in bringing it up.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Causation is more or less unestablishable for your or
| my argument. No point in bringing it up.
|
| I would argue that it's pretty clearly uncorrelated
| because countries all over the world have varying degrees
| of draconian drug laws and have achieved nothing. You
| have an outlier, that's all.
|
| Of course you're trying to establish causation because
| you're arguing this is the basis for similar laws
| elsewhere.
|
| > To even the modern day citizen it's not so clear cut
| which is better. Western values or Singapore?
|
| It's hard to say. One is better in some ways, the other
| in other ways.
|
| Thanks for sharing your perspective! I think we can agree
| to disagree but this was an interesting conversation.
| corethree wrote:
| >I would argue that it's pretty clearly uncorrelated
| because countries all over the world have varying degrees
| of draconian drug laws and have achieved nothing.
|
| The same source I cited illustrates a correlation that
| contradicts your argument. Go look at it again. Countries
| with draconian laws quantitatively correlate with lower
| drug use in the one source I cited.
|
| You said drugs were everywhere in Singapore. You were
| proven wrong via sources. Now this argument is wrong
| again, also contradicted with the Same source.
|
| >Thanks for sharing your perspective! I think we can
| agree to disagree but this was an interesting
| conversation.
|
| No problem. But to be honest this sentence makes it look
| like we are on even ground and ending the argument
| amicably because neither can move forward with more
| evidence.
|
| This is not what occured. You made several statements and
| those statements are categorically wrong. Your overall
| argument is definitively wrong. This is not about whether
| you agree or disagree with me as the sources directly
| contradict your claims.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I read your links, fear not.
|
| > The same source I cited illustrates a correlation that
| contradicts your argument. Go look at it again. Countries
| with draconian laws quantitatively correlate with lower
| drug use in the one source I cited.
|
| Again, there's 1 country with draconian laws and good
| results, and a whole armada of countries with draconian
| laws and bad results. That tells me it's correlation not
| causation. Even if it were causative, it's not a model
| that aligns with Western values.
|
| You're fixated on a single data point that aligns with
| your preconceptions despite a whole lot of data that
| doesn't.
|
| > You said drugs were everywhere in Singapore. You were
| proven wrong via sources. Now this argument is wrong
| again, also contradicted with the Same source.
|
| Tons of articles disagree with you. Not to mention, I
| think the data is likely very suspect - after all, who
| would admit in surveys or studies to consuming drugs if
| it would get the executed? That's exactly the problem
| Japan has.
|
| > This is not what occured. You made several statements
| and those statements are categorically wrong.
|
| Respectfully disagree.
|
| 94% of people on death row in Singapore are there for
| non-violent drug offenses lol. That's not something I'm
| going to advocate for even if I believed you'd found a
| causative system in Singapore that could ever be
| willingly reproduced abroad, and I really don't. I see a
| correlation as evidenced by the myriad other countries
| who try this approach and fail miserably.
|
| Here I'll support your unpopular Singaporean idea if you
| support mine - have 80% of people in the US live in
| government housing. The Singapore HDB is a fantastic
| model we should reproduce! It materially improved
| affordability of housing in SG.
|
| Have a good one man.
| corethree wrote:
| >Again, there's 1 country with draconian laws and good
| results, and a whole armada of countries with draconian
| laws and bad results. That tells me it's correlation not
| causation. Even if it were causative, it's not a model
| that aligns with Western values.
|
| Bro you did not read the source. Fear not my ass. It's
| obvious you didn't read it. Look at it again it lists all
| countries in the world.
|
| It's not one country with draconian laws it's all
| countries with the most draconian laws are Below the
| other countries with less draconian laws. Singapore is
| the LOWEST on that list in terms of drug usage. The only
| countries below it are 3rd world countries that can't
| afford drugs. This is literally what's on that data
| source.
|
| Bro the evidence is right in front of your eyes. You
| claim to have read it but you talk as if you haven't.
|
| >Tons of articles disagree with you. Not to mention, I
| think the data is likely very suspect - after all, who
| would admit in surveys or studies to consuming drugs if
| it would get the executed? That's exactly the problem
| Japan has.
|
| You posted an article that said 0.7 percent of youths did
| drugs in the last year. Like you realize 40 percent is
| the amount of youths who have done drugs in the US right?
|
| Every single article you posted either was blowing up
| some stupidly unbalanced statistic or it was saying drug
| usage "increased" which is laughably true. It "increased"
| from 0.1 percent to 0.7.
|
| These are your sources. And your sources are biased and
| agenda based.
|
| > Not to mention, I think the data is likely very
| suspect.
|
| Not only is there no other better data source, but there
| isnt anything that states the source was obtained by
| asking people whether they do drugs.
|
| Two things here. You have no data source to support your
| arguments. none. You claim my data source compiled from
| several data sets of data including the UN is bad because
| it's asking people about their drug usage is a false
| claim.
|
| Wake up.
|
| >94% of people on death row in Singapore are there for
| non-violent drug offenses lol.
|
| Nice "lol". I'm glad you find execution funny and then in
| your next sentence here:
|
| >That's not something I'm going to advocate
|
| Tells me you likely aren't serious about "not advocating"
| it. You're just grasping for straws to support your
| invalid point.
|
| Either way whether you support it or not that 94 percent
| statistic is orthogonal to the topic we are discussing
| here. Whether you support something or not has little to
| do with how wrong you are.
|
| >Here I'll support your unpopular Singaporean idea if you
| support mine - have 80% of people in the US live in
| government housing. The Singapore HDB is a fantastic
| model we should reproduce! It materially improved
| affordability of housing in SG.
|
| It's not about support or no support. The discussion took
| a turn when you made claims that were categorically
| false. I am simply saying your claims are false. Those
| claims are still false and will remain false until you
| have data to back up your claim as right now the best
| data sources literally contradict your claim. Stop using
| news buzz as your sources. Find actual statistical data.
|
| I don't care about the Singaporean system. Whether they
| screw up in some places or succeed in others. I am simply
| commenting about how their drug laws are effective. I am
| commenting about how draconian drug laws are effective
| deterrents and as a method of darwinian culling.
| Singapore is one example out of multitudes of examples on
| a data source I have provided and you have repeatedly
| avoided looking at.
|
| Additionally this data source shows a correlation between
| lower drug use and draconian drug laws. You simply need
| to use your eyes to see what countries are on the top of
| that list and what countries are lower.
|
| Have a good one too. Just have it with the realization
| that you are categorically wrong and your disagreement
| with that fact doesn't change the reality of that fact.
| vkou wrote:
| Look, if you want to turn the United States into a utopia
| like Singapore, I'm all for it, but it's going to take a
| bit more than just making drugs illegal.
|
| Perhaps, we could start with nationalizing ~80% of the
| country's housing stock, requiring permits for which
| neighbourhood you are allowed to live in, having ethnic
| quotas for each region to enforce multiculturalism and
| harmony and common prosperity...
|
| Stable housing, and a stable, harmonous society, with
| many of your pressing concerns back-stopped by a
| benevolent autocracy are probably the reason Singapore
| has low rates of drug use.
|
| It's weird how the US right salivates over a very small,
| bloody subset of Singapore's social policies... While
| turning its nose at the ones that actually make it a
| successful state. It's almost like the cruelty, not the
| outcomes, are the point...
| lazide wrote:
| Singapore is a tiny island ruled by a defacto
| dictatorship. And they struggle to keep drugs out (and
| often fail).
|
| Who would be our 'strongman' here that could mobilize
| such a force, locking down the entire border, searching
| everyone, etc.?
|
| And is that really any better?
| kelsey9876543 wrote:
| Sorry get the hell out of here with that disingenuous
| argument.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > The war on rain hasn't worked. Many houses have leaky roofs
| and people get wet. This is painfully obvious to anyone. We
| should destroy all forms of shelter and we will finally be
| free.
|
| This is a great analogy. Rain is drugs and arresting people
| for drugs is patching roofs. When the government spends
| resources on anything other than arresting people with drugs
| (doing roofing jobs) then they are destroying people's homes
| (things that are affected by rain or drugs).
|
| It is so refreshing to see a simple and profound insight on
| this
| beej71 wrote:
| But the war on rain has actually worked. It's extremely rare
| that people get wet.
|
| If the war on drugs worked remotely as well as the war on
| rain, we wouldn't even be discussing it.
| justrealist wrote:
| The war on illegal drugs hasn't worked because... a lot of
| people died from other, legal prescription pharmaceuticals?
| corethree wrote:
| Opioid epidemic wasn't caused by the war on drugs.
|
| Opioid epidemic happened because doctors prescribed it as pain
| killers.
| somehnguy wrote:
| They are pain killers.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't think the US ever had a war on drugs. If any state in
| the US did the following three things, Singapore style:
| Announce that all drugs are illegal, users will be
| institutionalized and undergo mandatory rehab, traffickers will
| be executed you'd be rid of the drug problem pretty quickly.
|
| Every US state I've ever been in had people use drugs, smoke
| weed, completely openly, every club, every corner. Where's the
| war?
| orwin wrote:
| Alcohol is banned in Singapore too?
| standardUser wrote:
| The drug war is largely not happening in places you are
| visiting, my privileged friend.
|
| And your Singapore-style solution is antithetical to a free
| society.
| kube-system wrote:
| The US did implement mass incarceration for drug offenses. It
| happened mostly between 1980 and 2000:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_S.
| ..
| huytersd wrote:
| The problem is in Singapore they don't just institutionalize
| drug users, they are physically punished and jailed for very
| long terms.
| anon291 wrote:
| Prohibition of drugs has empirically been shown to reduce
| negative effects of drug use. For example, nationwide
| prohibition in the United states severely curtailed both
| domestic abuse and liver cirrhosis rates.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| At an extraordinary cost. Huge numbers of people imprisoned,
| violence related to the drug trade.
|
| The real question is if the costs are worse than the problem.
| We gave up on alcohol prohibition because it was clear it was
| a net negative.
| carllerche wrote:
| The issue here is that, after M110, there is little the police
| can do to prevent *public* usage of hard drugs like fentanyl.
| Drug addicts will be smoking fent in front of a K-5 school and
| all the police can do is fine them. There is more enforcement
| of public alcohol consumption than fent / meth.
| elil17 wrote:
| Isn't this preferable to forcing drug addicts into prison?
| Someone using fentanyl on the street isn't actually hurting
| anyone but themselves
| huytersd wrote:
| No, they are hurting both tangibles- because they steal and
| attack bystanders, and intangibles- like ruining
| neighborhoods, driving down prices, making drugs more
| accessible to young kids etc.
| elil17 wrote:
| > steal and attack bystanders
|
| That's a crime on it's own, and it's a crime that most
| drug users aren't committing.
|
| > ruining neighborhoods
|
| How?
|
| > driving down prices
|
| That's a good thing for people who need to buy homes.
|
| > making drugs more accessible to young kids
|
| Really? I have a hard time imagining someone using drugs
| on the street offering to share with a kid.
| retrac wrote:
| > Really? I have a hard time imagining someone using
| drugs on the street offering to share with a kid.
|
| These people have families. They may be parents
| themselves. They are living in a community, one which has
| children. Here in Canada, with how things are now going
| -- I now see young children in the tent camps with their
| parents.
|
| Public drug use almost certainly encourages children to
| uptake the behaviour themselves. Children are
| impressionable. They adopt the behaviours of their
| parents, of their older siblings, of their older
| siblings' friends, and yes, even just people they see on
| the street.
|
| Along with that, simple physical accessibility - the
| widespread presence of the substance in society - means
| children will have more access.
|
| When cannabis was legalized in Canada there was a sharp
| increase in the number of children showing up in the ER
| from cannabis poisoning. [1] Children steal their
| parents' drugs all the time, both by accident and by
| intention. The more proliferate and visible drugs are,
| the more people walking around with some fentanyl in one
| of their pockets, the more such exposure incidents will
| happen and the more such drugs will fall in the hands of
| children.
|
| I'm pro-legalization, for what it's worth. But this is
| one of those downsides I'm worried about.
|
| [1] https://www.sickkids.ca/en/news/archive/2022/hospital
| ization...
| elil17 wrote:
| I agree that kids getting access to their parents drugs
| is a problem (although I don't think that's what the
| person I was responding to was talking about). It sounds
| like you might agree that if a parent is using drugs but
| is still capable of caring for their children, the best
| thing to do would not be to arrest them but rather to
| either make sure that they're preventing their kids from
| getting access to those drugs (by providing them with a
| safe, for example).
| huytersd wrote:
| You can rationalize all you want but a bunch of junkies
| hanging around where you live ruin everything. They make
| everything dirty, they are themselves dirty, drop needles
| everywhere and shit on the sidewalk. One junkie jumped up
| and ran towards one of my buddies in Philadelphia once
| screaming "I have HIV". Get your head out of your ass.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Respectfully, have you ever lived next to an encampment? I
| have. Is your assertion "Someone using fentanyl on the
| street isn't actually hurting anyone but themselves" based
| on past experience, or how you imagine the world ought to
| be?
| elil17 wrote:
| I haven't but I've visited for a week with a friend who
| does. Of course it was sad to see people in so much pain,
| but beyond that I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
|
| Even if you have more specific issues with living next to
| homeless people, that doesn't mean they deserve to be in
| jail for drug crimes. They should be given housing.
|
| Even if you did want to throw people in jail for being
| homeless, only about half of chronically homeless people
| use drugs (https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/pro
| grams_campaign...), so outlawing drugs wouldn't even
| solve the issue you want it to solve.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| How about criminalizing public drug use only?
|
| Just for the sake of argument here, supposing someone is addicted
| to drugs in private, and legalization is at a stage where they
| can get quality product that they're not going to overdose on
| easily. Is that actually a problem for society? Like, if you
| prefer to live a lifestyle where you sleep under a bridge and
| spend the money you would've used for housing on drugs, maybe
| that's just a personal choice that's yours to make? The only
| problem I see here is -- how is it that these drug addicts are
| funding their habit? I'm thinking through criminal activity in
| many cases?
| Terr_ wrote:
| > How about criminalizing public drug use only?
|
| I'd be concerned about that falling extra-heavily on homeless
| people in some way. If someone were already stuck sleeping on a
| park bench, it'd be kind of unfair to ding them again for not
| being tipsy or high "back in their own home."
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Maybe there could be a few parks in the city where public
| drug use is legal, and have it be illegal everywhere else?
|
| In practice, cops could just arrest for the sort of public
| drug use that causes problems
| twistedanimator wrote:
| Reminds me of Hamsterdam in the third season of The Wire.
| The purpose of Hamsterdam was to serve as an open air drug
| market where drugs could be purchased and consumed. It of
| course devolved into terrible conditions, but it was all
| concentrated in a single area that could be monitored and
| policed. Drug use outside of the area was not tolerated at
| all.
|
| The idea stills holds merit in my mind. Yes, it condones
| drug use and illegal activities, but it also cleans up the
| surrounding areas. I think it would also serve as a
| deterrent for the casual trying of a substance that could
| result in lifelong addiction. Who in their right mind would
| want to go to such a disgusting place to try something new?
|
| It turns a problem that is currently diffuse to a problem
| that is concentrated. Like the difference between coal
| power plants spewing CO2 into the air versus nuclear power
| plants that leave radioactive waste that can be contained
| in barrels. Not the greatest analogy, but the point stands.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| That would literally be the point. It is not acceptable to be
| strung out on a park bench. That bench is not "their home",
| it belongs to the public.
| jolmg wrote:
| > Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession
| and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab
| helpline. Most of the people smoking fentanyl or meth on this
| city's streets balled them up and tossed them onto the ground.
| "Those tickets frankly seemed like a waste of time," said Alvarez
|
| Maybe the drugs are fulfilling some need, so simply escaping the
| addiction is counter-productive to their lives. Maybe the rehab
| to escape the addiction needs to be packaged with other sorts of
| rehabs that help them obtain healthier alternatives to fulfill
| those needs that are being met by the drugs.
|
| Quick search online:
|
| > Addiction isn't as simple a concept as it may seem on the
| surface. From an outside perspective, addiction can be seen as a
| simple propensity for substance abuse. However, on mental,
| physical and emotional levels, there's a lot more to addiction.
| From a behavioral perspective, using drugs becomes a way of life.
| Most friends and social situations revolve around drugs,
| especially as drugs start to replace former social connections
| and hobbies. --- https://fherehab.com/learning/mind-motives-
| addicted-drugs/
|
| So, at least, rehab on building healthy social connections is
| also needed.
|
| Finding a better solution to the drug problem is unlikely to be
| as simple as just decriminalizing.
|
| I also wonder if the fact that decriminalization is done in a
| patch-work manner location-wise is also part of the problem. I
| wonder if it's easier or harder for homeless people to relocate
| to places where their activities aren't criminal. They likely
| have less material things tying them down to a location, but they
| may also rely more on the face-to-face social ties they already
| have.
| beej71 wrote:
| > Finding a better solution to the drug problem is unlikely to
| be as simple as just decriminalizing.
|
| There is funding in Oregon as part of 110 to do more than just
| decriminalize. Unfortunately that wasn't used for effect.
| henning wrote:
| What the fuck is making it a crime again going to fix? What is
| going to suddenly work that isn't working now?
| TylerE wrote:
| It's always struck me as sadly hilarious how the same crowd
| that's always shouting for drug laws is the exact same crowd
| that argues that stricter gun laws would increase crime and
| make the streets more dangerous.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The difference is that guns have some good uses.
| TylerE wrote:
| So do drugs.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Wasn't heroin one of the drugs they decriminalized? What
| good uses does it have?
| TylerE wrote:
| Strong opioids are the only option that works for many
| people with chronic pain. In some countries (but not the
| US), heroin (technical name: diamorphine) is used for
| extreme pain, like late stage cancers. It truly is one of
| the most effective painkillers that exist - and it isn't
| unimaginably strong like fentanyl, so it's much harder to
| accidentally OD on when used medically.
| vkou wrote:
| What good use does alcohol have?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Arresting people and putting them in jail makes them leave the
| neighbourhood for a while. It doesn't solve the drug addiction
| problem, but it solves the feeling of unease and safety risks
| associated with being near drug addicts.
|
| Being the only place in the region where drugs can be abused
| free from meddling influence can also pull in addicts from
| surrounding areas, only increasing the problem.
| mimikatz wrote:
| It also forces them to get clean and give them another shot
| at sobriety.
| Falmarri wrote:
| Yes, and now they have a criminal record AND a drug
| addiction. So much better and more likely they'll stay
| sober
| bregma wrote:
| Are you under the misapprehension that drugs use is not
| rampant inside prisons?
| standardUser wrote:
| Prison is not rehab. Do you want a massive tax increase? We
| would need one if we were to actually incarcerate drug
| users for the duration they need to become sober. And we
| would need to fund those prisons to a level wherein they
| don't make people _more_ likely to break the law once they
| get out. And what about re-entry? It would take a lot of
| money to _not_ dump former addicts back on the exact same
| street where they first became an addict. Their friends
| will be waiting!
|
| Besides, most states still jail people for petty drug
| crimes and they have been for 70 years. It doesn't work.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| People doing heroin and meth in public are annoying. They're
| commonly violent too/. Making those drugs and doing them in
| public illegal allows society to remove those nuisances, at
| least temporarily.
| sowbug wrote:
| Why not criminalize violent acts instead? I don't care if the
| guy who attacks me is high or not, same as I don't care if
| the guy who didn't attack or bother me was high or not.
| astrange wrote:
| Someone smoking next to you is doing a violent act.
| FlyingBears wrote:
| The horror of the current approach is the concentrated influx of
| drug users from other states that magnified the issue in
| California and Oregon. I am resigned to the fact that everyone
| waits around for the current wave of users to simply die off. If
| the decriminalization was distributed evenly among the states,
| there would be a chance for somewhat orderly transition.
| dminor wrote:
| Measure 110 did two things:
|
| - recreational drug possession became a ticketable offense,
| similar to traffic violations. You have the choice of fighting
| the ticket or going to treatment
|
| - funded treatment with $300mm from cannabis taxes
|
| The problem is Oregon took years to decide who to give the
| treatment money to. Only last year did they actually start
| funding treatment.
|
| In the meantime, police hadn't been writing tickets, since the
| treatment options didn't actually exist yet.
|
| Essentially drug use was entirely ignored for a couple years.
|
| So is measure 110 a failure? It's too soon to say. Certainly the
| rollout has been.
|
| One unintended consequence is that Oregon has no law against
| public drug use, leaving this issue to cities/counties. If they
| don't have such a law, public drug use is essentially legal,
| since police used to rely on possession to stop it.
|
| One thing that has gone right is the reduction of the burden on
| the court system. The state saved about $40mm over the first 3
| years.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| This thing where decisions are made too early, too polar-ly:
| this rush to judgement & condemnation feels like one of the
| most damned & sad trends, such a strong sap of societies good
| energies. There are some more known cases, but not being so
| sure to rush into negative judgement feels like such a
| relieving positive sign, is so much what I seek as a trust
| marker.
| corethree wrote:
| What is a failure is legalizing the use of drugs. You're
| getting into the technicalities.
|
| When you lower law enforcement surrounding addictive drugs to a
| state where it's basically equivalent to legalizing drugs and
| you take this action independent of other actions like
| treatment and other stuff, you get net bad effects to society.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Every time I read about how "decriminalization of X was a
| failure" it's because the governmental bodies responsible
| didn't properly set up the support structures and procedures
| that were meant to mitigate the problems that arise (or more
| accurately, already exist but are ignored). If I weren't so
| ready to lean on incompetence as the most likely reason, I
| would think it's sabotage.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Every time I read about how "decriminalization of X was a
| failure" it's because the governmental bodies responsible
| didn't properly set up the support structures and procedures
| that were meant to mitigate the problems that arise (or more
| accurately, already exist but are ignored).
|
| If we're ignoring them now, what's the problem with
| continuing to ignore them?
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Because that's just maintaining the status quo. Are you
| suggesting the status quo is acceptable?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm suggesting that it makes no sense to label
| maintaining the status quo a "failure". If you make a
| policy change, and the circumstance you were already fine
| with continues to obtain, your policy change has not
| thereby failed.
| nerdponx wrote:
| One negative consequence is that it becomes more of an
| open-air problem that you see in day to day life, not
| something that gets hidden away in the seedy side of town
| after hours.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| You should be worried that any system they required
| government intervention was a good idea.
|
| The entire idea is insane. Let's make drugs legal and provide
| treatment for the problem we created.
|
| It's the same of saying hey! Lawn darts are now legal, don't
| worry we will increase our EMS staff during the summer.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Should lawn darts be illegal? There's a good argument to
| say it shouldn't be sold as a toy for children, but in
| terms of it's danger to the public there's a whole host of
| adult activities that cause considerably more capacity for
| harm that are considered acceptable and legal.
| wombatpm wrote:
| My family plays horseshoes. 16 oz metal 'U' shapes being
| tossed through the air while drinking beer. One could
| argue that the problem with lawn darts was that they were
| too light, allowing children without proper sense to
| throw them too far.
| CraigRo wrote:
| Lawn darts used to be sharp and had fins. A horseshoe is
| blunt
| leetcrew wrote:
| so what? for one thing, children can legally play with
| (though not necessarily "own") guns, bows, model rockets,
| etc in most states. those all seem as dangerous, if not
| more so, than lawn darts.
|
| I don't think children should be going anywhere near such
| things without adult supervision, but completely banning
| sale seems like a wildly disproportionate response.
| jasonboyd wrote:
| I haven't touched a lawn dart since 1989.
|
| I was a nine years old and I tossed it as high and as far
| as I could. I realized it was coming dangerously close to
| a friend. Everybody had their backs to me. I yelled, but
| nobody heard me.
|
| In my memory it landed inches from them, but that could
| be because I was young and scared shitless. Maybe it
| landed fifteen feet behind them. All I know is it scared
| me enough that I have never touched a lawn dart after
| that.
| foota wrote:
| Does enforcing the law not require government intervention?
| beej71 wrote:
| > You should be worried that any system they required
| government intervention was a good idea.
|
| Like having drugs be illegal?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| You would be correct if we could simply declare drugs
| illegal and then they all just vanish. But that's not how
| it works unfortunately.
| jwestbury wrote:
| > You should be worried that any system they required
| government intervention was a good idea.
|
| You mean like providing basic infrastructure to ensure
| society and commerce can function?
|
| There are plenty of things which can and should require
| government intervention. Unless you're a hardline
| anarchist, there's not a lot of wiggle room on this one.
|
| As for drugs, let's be clear, they weren't _made legal_ ,
| they were made to function like traffic citations, with
| required treatment instead of prison time. Are you going to
| argue that we shouldn't have traffic citations, because
| they require traffic court and the necessary infrastructure
| to process the fines?
| lazide wrote:
| If not one issues the traffic tickets and just ignores it
| now because none of the actual mechanisms mentioned
| actually exist, then defacto it was made legal no?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Legal and unregulated maybe. Oh they were really legal
| they would have to be regulated, so when you bought them
| at the store you would know that the product was
| unadulterated and of a known dosage. Which is pretty
| important info for things you are putting in your body.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Drugs were already being used. Some of the drugs that were
| decriminalized are not causing issues. Some do cause
| issues.
|
| The "issue" drugs and their users existed no matter what,
| and decriminalization of them (I suspect) hasn't caused a
| spike in users of the bad drugs.
|
| I for one, will not try meth or heroin no matter how
| accessible it is.
|
| Decriminalization says "okay we don't want this stuff on
| the shelf at Walgreens, but trying to jail people for it
| isn't working, so let's try something else".
|
| Jailing costs money. Treatment costs money. The question is
| which tool is better for society and each citizen?
| lazide wrote:
| Using treatment as the option when there is no treatment
| available (let alone any with signs of real efficacy) is
| a bit odd though?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This the argument that the failure here is not the
| decriminalization as a concept, but the lack of a
| replacement for removing users of the "bad drugs" off the
| streets.
| lazide wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say, mind restating?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| That according to the article, it is a failure of
| implementation, not of concept.
| lazide wrote:
| Sure, but that can be said of pretty much anything?
|
| Communism works great on paper too, shame no one ever
| tried it, amirite?
|
| This does seem to be a particularly terrible
| 'implementation' though.
|
| The problem near as I can tell is that people are
| ignoring the very real needs of the majority to not be
| miserable, and actively guilting the majority (you're not
| allowed to not like these things because that would mean
| you're a bad person) and that is winding the spring for
| an authoritarian backlash which we've already seen get
| very scary.
|
| People care about their emotions, and when pressed will
| do almost anything to protect them. Including having
| people March 'bad people' off to ovens as long as they
| can pretend they're awesome in the process.
|
| Trump gets so much traction for this very reason, and
| it's going to get worse before it gets better.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >Sure, but that can be said of pretty much anything?
|
| No, it can't
|
| >Communism works great on paper too, shame no one ever
| tried it, amirite?
|
| That's a horrible example.
|
| I largely agree with the rest of the post.
| lazide wrote:
| A 'good idea' where it is impossible to implement well,
| but easy to pretend to implement - in terrible ways - is
| actually a really bad idea.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Isn't decriminalization of X simply a matter of not making it
| against the law anymore? If society is expected to also
| provide a huge amount of new resources to counteract damage
| that decriminalization of X enables, then maybe it just
| shouldn't decriminalize X in the first place?
| rainonmoon wrote:
| Sometimes it's worth doing things that are compassionate,
| moral, and expensive.
| gary_0 wrote:
| The Drug War is massively, massively expensive. You have to
| pay for all that policing, plus the massive resources
| needed to convict and incarcerate people. All that
| pointless, wasteful cat-and-mouse with addicts and dealers.
| Not to mention people in prison for drug offenses don't pay
| taxes, and a criminal record makes it even harder to find
| productive work.
|
| However, the staggering budgets and ridiculous
| inefficiencies of the Drug War won't all go away the minute
| the laws are changed. And in the meantime, you can't just
| leave diseases of despair untreated.
| Gud wrote:
| The decriminalization doesn't cause the damages from drug
| use, they were already there.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > damage that decriminalization of X enables,
|
| This is a pretty ignorant comment to see on HN. So far we
| have strong evidence to show delegalisation causes huge
| issues and legalization works as expected. Have a look at
| any country that went that route.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Such as Portugal. Although decriminilisation was part of
| a wider social shift towards treating drug use a health
| issue rather than a legal issue.
|
| https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-
| in-po...
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently it worked well for awhile, but WaPo now
| reports that people aren't as happy with it anymore:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-
| dru...
| clairegraham wrote:
| It sounds like a big part of the issue is that Portugal
| has substantially pulled back on funding after COVID...
|
| "Speaking more quantitatively, drug users in treatment
| declined from 1,150 to 352 (from 2015 to 2021) as funding
| dropped in 2012 from $82.7 million to $17.4 million. "
|
| Prior to that, the numbers seemed quite impressive:
|
| "By 2018, Portugal's number of heroin addicts had dropped
| from 100,000 to 25,000. Portugal had the lowest drug-
| related death rate in Western Europe, one-tenth of
| Britain and one-fiftieth of the U.S. HIV infections from
| drug use injection had declined 90%. The cost per citizen
| of the program amounted to less than $10/citizen/year
| while the U.S. had spent over $1 trillion over the same
| amount of time. Over the first decade, total societal
| cost savings (e.g., health costs, legal costs, lost
| individual income) came to 12% and then to 18%."
|
| Source: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-
| portugals-dru...
| Nursie wrote:
| a) It's cheaper to fund the new resources than it is to
| continue the pointless war
|
| b) You may be able to tax the activity too, further
| offsetting costs
|
| c) Ruining lives by attaching criminal charges to
| activities should not solely be a cost-benefit analysis
| anyway. Or if it is, it needs to take into account the lost
| opportunities and lost years of those who are caught up in
| the criminal system
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I get decriminalization, let people be responsible for
| their own choices that don't affect others. But I don't
| see why we are also expected to pony up billions,
| probably more like trillions of dollars to fix the
| consequences of those decisions. This isn't cheap at all,
| supporting an unhoused neighbor with a fent problem runs
| around $100k/year just to shelter (before treatment can
| even start, usually they just keep doing drugs because no
| incentive to stop), sucking the air, empathy, and
| resources out for the rest of our homelessness problem.
| And...fent is cheap, taxing it via legalization is a non-
| starter (the illicit questionable stuff would still exist
| because the users don't want to and cannot pay high
| prices).
|
| If we just decriminalize and let people reap the
| consequences of their actions, the problem also goes
| away. I can really admire countries like China that don't
| coddle their addicts and instead apply pure tough love.
| Anticlockwise wrote:
| If you're going to make this argument, I really wish
| you'd make it more explicit. I think what you're
| suggesting makes cities unlivable. The homeless drug
| users have to exist in space somewhere. What do you
| propose to do with these people? There's nowhere to ship
| them to that's not owned by someone who objects to their
| presence.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is just really expensive, it would be better if they
| didn't do drugs rather than just letting them do it and
| having society responsible for picking up the pieces. If
| society has to be responsible for paying for these
| problems, then its no longer a personal decision with
| personal effect. We as a society have to decide whether
| we are going to allow hard drug abuse and "pay the bill
| for that decision" or not.
| electricmonk wrote:
| The point others are making is that it appears to be a
| zero-sum game, i.e., we're paying one way or the other,
| so the more compassionate option with better outcomes
| should win out. As I have seen it stated, the options
| appear to be to pay for: (i) criminalization and its
| effects/expenses, e.g., court system burden,
| incarceration, etc.; (ii) de-criminalization (potentially
| with legalization/taxation) to offset the cost of keeping
| cities livable by mitigating its effects/expenses, e.g.,
| treatment and housing for addicts that may become
| homeless; or (iii) de-criminalization without paying for
| mitigations, leading to unlivable cities. Your comment
| reads like you see some way of simply not paying to deal
| with addicts, while also not having the consequences of a
| bunch of (potentially homeless) addicts living in
| society. If that's an accurate description of your point,
| how does that work? If it's not, then what do you mean?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| You can't get addicted to a substance that you don't have
| the ability to obtain in the first place, or that you
| could obtain but choose not to because you're afraid of
| punishment. That's the whole theory behind
| criminalization: that it's not a zero sum game!
|
| I think you're probably right that the criminal justice
| system isn't the most effective way of dealing with
| people who are already addicted, but how do you propose
| we stop people from getting addicted in the first place
| if hard drugs are perfectly legal, and the government is
| actively working to minimize the personal downsides of
| being addicted to them? Why not become an addict if the
| only consequence is that it means you get free food and
| housing for the rest of your life?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| So is your theory is that the drug war was a success, and
| nobody could get drugs when they were illegal? How do you
| propose to make them go away? That way was tried, and
| failed.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| A success relative to what? Criminalization of homicide
| hasn't eliminated homicide either; that's not an argument
| for legalizing it.
| electricmonk wrote:
| Honestly you're making my point. We (as in civilization)
| tried criminalization, and it is more expensive (and has
| other added downsides) compared with
| decriminalization/legalization + taxation and treatment.
| How do I propose to get people not to think drugs are
| their best option? Ha. Okay sure, in response to that
| straw man here's my stab at fixing human society to help
| reduce the number of people that go that route (since
| that's what it would take). UBI + free healthcare
| (including all procedures that may be used to either
| assisting with a miscarriage or causing an abortion) +
| free contraceptives + free childcare + additional
| assistance for parents + free school lunches + free
| higher ed + strong labor protections / unions (+ -- US
| specific -- constitutional amendments to allow for
| regulation of firearms, getting monied interests out of
| politics, lessening the influence of extremists in
| politics including ranked choice voting or similar,
| making public money available to third-parties, I'm sure
| there's more). I'm sure what I've missed could fill an
| encyclopedia. My point is that the problem isn't simple,
| so if you're going to try to "solve" it, you're wasting
| time debating whether incarceration is better than
| legalization.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > My point is that the problem isn't simple, so if you're
| going to try to "solve" it, you're wasting time debating
| whether incarceration is better than legalization.
|
| Okay, but that debate is what this entire thread is
| about. I don't think it's a waste of time. We don't have
| to fix all the world's problems at once.
|
| > We (as in civilization) tried criminalization, and it
| is more expensive (and has other added downsides)
| compared with decriminalization/legalization + taxation
| and treatment
|
| Personally I think the jury's still out on that one,
| particularly once you ask yourself whether legalization
| is likely to result in less drug addiction overall, or
| more. But time will tell.
| etchalon wrote:
| We've tried to stop them from doing drugs through years
| of state action and penalties. It hasn't worked.
|
| Turns out, drugs are both fun AND addictive and it's hard
| to combat that with threats of jail time.
| truckerbill wrote:
| You need to think of it as a system of feedback loops. If
| you don't stem the input of the cycle of drug abuse by
| investing a little, your problem gets worse.
|
| It seems people take a moral or 'fairness' based attitude
| to these social phenomena and that's what causes things
| like the war on drugs as a form of justice. The idea that
| everyone is self determined, which in a small way is true
| of the individual. But if you look at people in aggregate
| things are more clear, the universe doesn't play by those
| rules...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I wonder how the societal costs of tobacco, alcohol, and
| gambling compare to those of "hard" drugs in this regard.
| Nursie wrote:
| > But I don't see why we are also expected to pony up
| billions
|
| You already are ponying up billions. What's more, what
| you're ponying up for is making things worse. Doing
| nothing at all is hardly likely to be an economically
| optimal strategy either, but at least we wouldn't be
| sinking billions in actually making it worse, as we are
| now.
|
| The argument that we should take some or all of the
| enforcement money and spend it on services can be a
| utilitarian one. Think about why we educate children
| whose parents couldn't afford to pay for it otherwise,
| why we have social security programs. It benefits us all
| to have a functional, productive population.
|
| > usually they just keep doing drugs because no incentive
| to stop
|
| Firstly, no, oddly enough a most people don't want to
| spend their entire lives addicted to opioids. When given
| access to things like a stable supply and clean places to
| satisfy their addiction, many are able to hold down jobs,
| take steps to get clean and become productive members of
| society. The constant need for money and the insecurity
| of the supply seem to ensure that addicts are in a state
| of perpetual turmoil and instability, which makes their
| situation worse and their chances of recovery slimmer.
|
| Second - you'd rather that addicts still commit petty
| crime to support their habits, when we know better _and
| cheaper_ ways for both them and us?
|
| > If we just decriminalize and let people reap the
| consequences of their actions, the problem also goes
| away.
|
| No, it really doesn't. You'll end up with a different set
| of social problems. Not _as_ bad without the legal
| consequences attached, but not simply "gone away"
| either.
|
| > I can really admire countries like China...
|
| That don't value human life? That dictate what people can
| do, how many kids they can have, that sort of thing? By
| all means, go live in an authoritarian paradise.
|
| And from your other comment -
|
| > it would be better if they didn't do drugs
|
| Yes, and it would be better if people didn't drink, or
| smoke, or hurt each other, or steal stuff, or crash cars,
| or rape each other, or...
|
| But we don't live in that world, and we never will. We
| have to deal with the world we live in and the human race
| as it is, and try to figure out how to get the best
| outcomes.
|
| And that includes messy things like addiction and the
| fallout of that. You know what really cuts down on the
| number of young people getting addicted to opioids?
| Seeing a load of middle-aged addicts queuing up for their
| morning hit at the local clinic. Knocks the glamour right
| out of it, and has worked very well in Switzerland.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Addiction is also a symptom of other social issues.
|
| The problem isn't that some people are weak willed. It's
| more that there are many cultural elements that covertly
| value antagonism and hostility, and the poor bear the
| brunt of that.
|
| The rich bear the brunt in other ways. No one much cares
| if $billionaire is clearly off his head on coke, because
| he/she has the protective support system that makes
| prosecution unlikely - even though their decision-making
| can be ridiculous, self-harming, and catastrophic for
| millions.
|
| That aside - wealth really doesn't mean they're models of
| mental and emotional health.
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/poverty-homelessness-
| and...
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's important to point out that the framing of drug
| addiction as a weakness of will _has_ an important
| function - to unburden people from guilt and a
| responsibility to others.
|
| To be in the position of recognizing a problem and then
| being relatively powerless to enact change is a powerful
| motivator in disavowing the problem or responsibility to
| fix it. It's an adaptive response to avoiding mental
| discomfort.
|
| And it works - people who don't feel responsibility to
| others avoid an entire class of mental discomforts.
| Taking away that adaptive mechanism exposes folks to a
| level of pain they likely aren't equipped to handle - a
| reason they developed it in the first place.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _oddly enough a most people don 't want to spend their
| entire lives addicted to opioids. When given access to
| things like a stable supply and clean places to satisfy
| their addiction, many are able to hold down jobs, take
| steps to get clean and become productive members of
| society._
|
| There are plenty of people who really do want to spend
| their entire lives addicted to opioids. LA's homeless
| "crisis" is proof of that; there are literally thousands
| of shelter beds that go unused each night because almost
| all of LA's homeless shelters are sober facilities which
| do not allow alcohol, drugs, or related contraband, and
| the addicts would rather be on the streets using drugs
| than have shelter, food, and stability.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| You are leaving a few things out of your discussion.
| Shelters won't allow you to bring your pets either. And
| they separate families. And the statistics I've seen show
| about a third of homeless are addicts, and a third have
| untreated mental health issues. There are lots of reasons
| people don't go to shelters.
| vidarh wrote:
| Have the overall societal costs of dealing with the
| consequences of drug use gone up due to
| decriminalization?
|
| Furthermore, you could use the same argument about the
| effects of a whole lot of other mental health and
| healthcare issues. It'd be cheaper to let a whole lot of
| people suffer or die. It'd also be grossly inhumane. Like
| China.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| people have to pony up to mitigate the consequences of
| alcohol being legal and many other things...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You seem to be pretending that the "pure tough love"
| option is somehow NOT billions of dollars?
|
| How much do you think we have spent on the DEA, ATF, and
| 2 million prisoners?
| vkou wrote:
| > If society is expected to also provide a huge amount of
| new resources to counteract damage that decriminalization
| of X enables, then maybe it just shouldn't decriminalize X
| in the first place?
|
| Just because drug use is illegal doesn't mean that the
| _damage_ of drugs is free.
|
| You either spend XYZ millions of dollars (in both direct
| costs _and_ wasted human potential) and inflict untold
| human suffering by 'treating' that damage through prisons.
|
| ... Or you decriminalize it, and spend QRS millions of
| dollars by treating it through other means.
|
| Society still pays, the difference is in _how_ and how much
| it pays.
| bnralt wrote:
| Right. The line we were being fed for a long time was that
| ending the drug war and decriminalizing possession was a
| good thing in its own right. Not that decriminalizing would
| make things worse if it wasn't also met by other policies.
| Sure, people suggested these other policies as well. But
| I've never heard anyone say that decriminalization is a bad
| idea if they're not in place (which is appearing more and
| more likely).
|
| We saw the same thing with drug use in Portugal. Lots of
| people for years were saying that the Portuguese
| decriminalized drugs and it was a tremendous success, so we
| should follow suit. But there was an article here recently
| talking about how it's a mess there, and the responses were
| "Well, of course, because the government didn't _also_ do
| XYZ."
|
| Also, the decriminalization movement seems to overlap
| mostly with the deincarceration movement. And if you have
| both, what incentives do you actually have? The above
| poster said to just threaten them with a fine. That's what
| they did with fare evasion here, now people just give false
| names or ignore the fine.
|
| Honestly, given we're now seeing things we were told we
| wouldn't see by the decriminalization advocates, a lot of
| this is sounding like "No True Scotsman" arguments. It
| seems like no matter the failure, someone is just going to
| come along and say that it's not a real failure because the
| government messed up.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It sounds like you are picking and choosing what
| information to accept. You heard it was good.. you didn't
| believe it and then an article came from somewhere saying
| the opposite and you believed it.
| bnralt wrote:
| > You heard it was good.. you didn't believe it and then
| an article came from somewhere saying the opposite and
| you believed it.
|
| I heard it was good and red articles saying as such and
| naively supported it. Then the results in my own city
| were nothing like what we were told - crime increased,
| number of addicts increased, tent cities and open air
| drug markets spread all over the place. When reality
| didn't match my assumptions, I went back and revisited my
| assumptions.
|
| A lot of this was I no longer relied on articles from
| sources I had earlier trusted, and instead started going
| to primary sources. I found that the anti-drug efforts in
| Portugal were nothing like they were presented in the
| U.S. They were pretty far from mere decriminalization,
| and included a good deal of state coercion to try to
| force addicts into treatment.
|
| This lead me not only to realize my assumptions were
| wrong, but that the people who I had previously thought
| were writing well informed evidence based articles were
| actually cherry-picking data to try to push their
| preferred policy. The fact that decriminalization hasn't
| gone the way we were told it would, and most of these
| people have made no effort to revisit their assumptions
| (only saying that they must still be right and that it
| must be someone else's fault), is a pretty good
| demonstration that they're not basing they're beliefs on
| actual evidence.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Isn't decriminalization of X simply a matter of not
| making it against the law anymore?
|
| It remains illegal. It's just that the penalties for it are
| removed. It means no legitimate, tax-paying business will
| get into it, leaving it for criminal black market
| operations.
|
| What it needs to be is _legalized_.
| api wrote:
| Governments aren't really great at anything except law,
| police, and military. All they have is a hammer.
|
| It's pretty clear that just decriminalizing very hard drugs
| doesn't work without something else, but governments lack
| institutional expertise in anything else.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| What you say is true, but mostly about the US government.
| Other governments seem to have much more state capacity.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Anglo governments are especially bad with this. In general
| Anglo governments have a huge problem with trying to run
| government on the cheap operationally but inflating their
| budgets for projects and tort defense. They try to keep
| taxes low to appease their citizens but when new
| infrastructure or systems need to be built, they hire
| contractors who are less efficient than on-site dedicated
| staff and can be paid for with a 10/20/30 year tax
| increase. Instead of relying on a large bureaucracy to
| create ministerial due process, they rely on tort reform
| and an army of expensive lawyers and unclear judicial
| processes instead. The end result is a lack of state
| capacity.
|
| In the end all of this probably ends up costing society
| _more_ , not to mention the eroding trust in the state, but
| it keeps getting politicians reelected because Anglo
| citizens hate paying taxes. I do activism for transit and
| pedestrian safety in the US and I see the desire for low
| taxes to cross almost all party and class lines (though I
| admit I live in a Blue area.)
| lazide wrote:
| Ok, but do you think that is going to get better anytime
| soon?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| As a community activist, I hope so. I certainly spend my
| time and energy talking to regular people and lawmakers
| about these issues. But my activism is only at the local
| level.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Is Quebec noticeably better? I'm intrigued at learning
| more about the deep cultural roots of this, dating back
| (I presume) to viking days.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yeah actually, Quebec is a lot better at building
| infrastructure and creating bureaucracy than the Anglo
| provinces. I'm not sure how _effective_ their bureaucracy
| is though. I don 't really know much about the cultural
| roots of this, but I will say it's sticky enough that
| immigrants to Anglo areas end up picking up the same
| attitudes toward taxation even if their families were not
| originally from an Anglo area/culture.
|
| I also want to emphasize that the tax increases and tort
| protections that Anglo governments have end up usually
| costing _individuals_ more than they would under a system
| that is willing to pay up front for a larger government,
| but that these costs are hidden in terms of tax
| garnishes, fees, and other things instead of upfront tax
| costs.
| 0xpgm wrote:
| The article says a police officer stopped arresting people and
| started handing out tickets to a drug rehab helpline once the
| measure went into effect. He stopped a few months later because
| it felt like a waste of time, as so few were following through.
|
| It doesn't seem to me that there are any who actually sought
| help but were held back by lack of available funding.
|
| The sense I get from the article is that very few addicts are
| in a state of mind to voluntarily seek help.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I don't know what percentage of addicts want treatment, but I
| understand that the treatment centers in Portland metro are
| very hard to get into because they are so busy.
|
| Edit: this is an interesting podcast episode with a
| Congresswoman from Colorado about the problem. Her own mother
| was addicted to opioids and she talks about how hard it was
| to get treatment for her mom's addiction. Her mom wanted
| treatment badly and despite her being a prominent politician
| it was extremely hard to get the treatment. Meanwhile
| insurance and the government kept paying huge amounts of
| money the many times her mom overdosed:
| https://cnliberalism.org/posts/podcast-fixing-the-opioid-
| cri...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't think cities have any control over felonies at all,
| they can just issue civil fines and misdemeanors, or is it
| different in Oregon?
| insanejudge wrote:
| fully agree on the failure of the rollout. There's also going
| to be issues with rolling anything out involving medical
| treatment into our gutted public health system and fragmented
| private system, so it has to be done through a lengthy (and
| apparently trivially abused) system of private organizations
| applying for the money, but the new treatment infrastructure
| should have been at least somewhat in place before changing the
| laws.
|
| Also agree on the unintended consequence, and that in
| retrospect a carefully worded law about the degree to how
| public of drug use would be decriminalized would have had a
| drastic impact on opinion.
|
| In contrast to the blame being assigned to Measure 110 (much
| before it was even implemented), and even with the problems
| rolling out treatment, by the numbers the impacts of
| decriminalization have been better than expected. 911 calls
| have not gone up, in terms of deviation from previous (and
| national) trends OD fatalities have not gone up, big
| administrative savings you pointed out, etc. So what did
| change? Visibility.
|
| The wider impacts of this are very real with hotel bookings,
| conferences, tourism, etc. down because of this perception, and
| that is causing harm to businesses and residents here.
|
| It's decently likely because of this that 110 will be rolled
| back rather than iterated on, and nothing substantial will
| change, but without the specific political focal point we'll
| likely hear about less it as its own issue but rather it will
| get rolled back into the general narrative funneling blame for
| the problems of urbanization.
|
| IMO the bigger thing the measure 110 whiplash is showing is how
| completely social media has supplanted news and data in
| particular in shaping people's view of the world. The visible
| drug use is 100% a problem, but this time around personal
| experiences are serving as confirmation of everything they've
| already been seeing online more than anything. There are enough
| cameras and enough people to fuel very lucrative social media
| accounts drip feeding incidents of any particular issue every
| day (with very questionably accurate attribution) to and from a
| global stage. I live here and regularly hear about it in
| unrecognizably hysterical terms from family and people I
| interact with for work across the country almost daily.
| yowzadave wrote:
| This general story outline is very common: some initiative that
| has a good idea at core has poor execution; it "fails" in its
| popular perception; the initiative's ideological opponents
| claim that the failure is a result of the original idea being
| bad.
|
| Just a cautionary tale about how execution can be equally as
| important as being right about the main idea.
|
| There are many examples I could cite for this pattern, but one
| simple one: the street that runs past my apartment was adapted
| to provide separate bike lanes. Great! But it was done in a
| non-sensical way, resulting in a one-way road that dead-ends
| into another one-way road, requiring cyclists to cross from one
| side of the street to the other in the middle of the
| intersection, and motorists who continually violate the posted
| signs and turn through the flexible barriers. Now everybody
| hates the new road, cyclists and drivers alike.
|
| Bad execution kills good ideas!
| anon291 wrote:
| > In the meantime, police hadn't been writing tickets, since
| the treatment options didn't actually exist yet.
|
| I mean it doesn't really matter, because even if they have
| treatment options less than 1% of the ones they write tickets
| to actually do anything about it.
|
| Here's how it goes. The drug user gets a ticket and has to
| either pay a fine or go to rehab. I think less than 100 people,
| out of thousands of tickets, decided to actually even call the
| number to get information on the rehab program. It doesn't
| matter thaht they don't exist because no one wants them
| freedomben wrote:
| Where are you getting those numbers from?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Also just for some context, a perennial problem in Oregon is
| that many of the people in government agencies are opposed to
| the majority view of Oregonians.
|
| One simple example of this is cannabis legalization. After the
| ballot measure passed, the Oregon Liquor Commission dragged its
| heels on implementation deliberately. The agency is primarily
| staffed by people who live in Salem or the surrounding area,
| and are considerably more conservative than the average
| Oregonian, due to how our population is concentrated in
| Portland. In the end the legislature had to force the OLC to
| implement things, and they basically chose the "Do what CO did"
| route which ironically enough was even more liberal than what
| was decided on before OLC started obstruction.
|
| Another example is the Oregon DOT. All they focus on is freeway
| and highway expansion. They are actively hostile to multimode
| transportation and mass transit. Near where I live there's been
| a years long battle over widening I5. They want to encroach on
| an elementary school where particulate levels are already high
| enough often the kids aren't allowed outside at recess. DOT's
| plan would bring the highway practically right up to the side
| of the building. And the worst thing is adding 2 more lanes
| will not accomplish anything long term. The most simple thing
| we could do to help traffic on that section of I5 is ban trucks
| heading further north from using I5 through the city, and force
| them onto I205 to go around instead. It even takes roughly the
| same amount of time, but all the long haul truckers just
| robotically go right through the core of downtown.
|
| And finally, saying the police aren't writing tickets because
| treatment wasn't available is being too charitable to them.
| They're opposed to these policies and are deliberately trying
| to sabotage them. If they hand out tickets and no treatment
| option is available a judge can simply wave the fine.
|
| So please, when you hear stories about Oregon and Portland,
| please understand we're in a decades long siege against our own
| police and bureaucrats, who are far more conservative than the
| average voter here. Thanks to the alt right weirdos, Portland
| and Oregon are now a favorite punching bag in media, who never
| want to provide this context to what's happening.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Heavy trucks clog I5 and crack the freeways into rubble. An
| efficient and environmentally friendly solution is to
| incentivize long haul containers to be shipped by rail.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> police and bureaucrats, who are far more conservative than
| the average voter here_
|
| The history of Oregon is grimly fascinating. It was more-or-
| less illegal for black people to live in Oregon from 1844 to
| 1926 (although this became complicated to enforce thanks to
| the 14th amendment in 1868).
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Yes. Oregon was a big Klan state. You can still see the
| results in how few black people there are here. The high
| school I went to in the 70's had only two black kids in
| over a thousand students.
| araes wrote:
| From an outsider perspective, it looks like a siege that's
| escalating. Apparently now setting attack dogs on prisoners
| in dead ends cells. (context: from what I read the prisoner
| refused to be handcuffed and insulted a guard, resulting in
| [1] @ approx 30 sec.) Apparently this is getting rather
| common in US incarceration though.
|
| [1] https://www.insider.com/how-dogs-are-trained-to-attack-
| us-pr...
| bb88 wrote:
| Being in Portland last summer, I got the feeling that the
| residents were tired of police acting as social services, and
| addiction being criminalized.
|
| Part of it is the frustration that drug companies got rich from
| opioids, yet the addicts got to serve the crimes.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Two (?) some years ago a review story about Oregon's
| decriminalization policy was here on HN and I said that I didn't
| think it was a good idea, and was kind of shouted down by people
| saying, "this is the only rational choice, to do what works and
| stop penalizing people which costs a lot and doesn't change their
| behavior".
|
| Well, you can make stepwise rational choices all the way down
| into oblivion and watching your cities and states fall apart. It
| may be kind and more rational, but you've removed disincentives
| to use drugs and find yourselves in a society where you've
| attracted and created the conditions for this behavior to
| continue.
|
| No matter what your policy stance on the potential solutions, it
| is _not good_ to be having a society where people are using
| serious drugs without penalty.
|
| Oh well, lesson learned, especially for people who thought they
| were liberal. Unfortunately at great expense and pain.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| > it is not good to be having a society where people are using
| serious drugs without penalty.
|
| Alcohol?
| kepler1 wrote:
| _Serious_ , and almost inevitably danger / criminal- and
| life-destroying behavior inducing drugs.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| People driving over other people daily is not enough? I
| like alcohol myself but no clue why it always gets a pass.
| Well I do: they didn't manage to even make the prohibition
| work even a little bit.
|
| It's addictive, makes you fat, causes diabetes, screws with
| hormones, metabolism and sugar levels and costing society a
| fortune. Center of domestic violence usually, car crashes
| etc.
|
| What's not serious about it?
| anon291 wrote:
| > People driving over other people daily is not enough? I
| like alcohol myself but no clue why it always gets a
| pass. Well I do: they didn't manage to even make the
| prohibition work even a little bit
|
| Prohibition worked extremely well. The data is
| unequivocal: https://www.vox.com/the-
| highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit.... Hundreds of
| thousands of lives were saved.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If it worked so well, I wonder why it was repealed?
| anon291 wrote:
| Because people like drinking?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Alcohol is likely the most damaging of all drugs available,
| as it's so widely used.
| anon291 wrote:
| > Well, you can make stepwise rational choices all the way down
| into oblivion and watching your cities and states fall apart.
|
| This is a good point. We often see this pathological behavior
| in training neural networks (HN's latest interest du jour).
| It's easy to find local minima and think this is the best it's
| going to get, even if the global minima is in a completely
| different direction. Given the general danger of a stochastic
| optimization algorithm which would see us changing the law to
| increase harm, perhaps stepwise optimization algorithms are not
| the way one should run a government, yet this seems to be the
| only accepted political methodology these days. If someone
| suggests something completely new, even if they have ample
| evidence or a good causal model, they are often ignored.
| BeetleB wrote:
| The studies on this are mixed, with some saying it worsened the
| problem, and others saying it didn't. See, for example:
|
| https://www.opb.org/article/2023/09/27/oregon-drug-decrimina...
|
| This is definitely not a decided issue.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| It is for the WSJ readership.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think if you're going to decriminalize drugs, you need to be
| very tough on public use
| superkuh wrote:
| One of the hardest most damaging drugs there is, alcohol, is
| legal and allowed in public and semi-public private property in
| all 50 states. Drinking solvents is not really much of a step
| above huffing them yet we as a society tolerate it. And that's
| good. Because it's their body and their choice.
| atestu wrote:
| no it's not. Very few public places in the US allow alcohol
| consumption.
| superkuh wrote:
| I think we need to define public a bit more. In, say, a
| baseball stadium you're in public, right? And you can drink
| alcohol.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Not really. Open use isn't allowed in Portland.
|
| Due to a quirk in state law, Portland can enforce a
| prohibition on drinking in public (outside of OLCC regulated
| establishments) but cannot enforce a prohibition on smoking
| or shooting up meth or fentanyl in public.
| elil17 wrote:
| Why?
| astrange wrote:
| If you make public space bad, people won't use it.
|
| A big problem with American leftism is that it's all young
| people whose primary goal is looking cool. They think drug
| users are cool and police are uncool. So if you complain that
| some guy is smoking crack on the subway, they'll yell at you
| because they think the act of watching the guy smoke crack is
| giving them street cred and will get them laid because
| they're not like those boring suburbanites.
|
| But what it actually means is parents are going to drive
| everywhere and not take the subway.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of leftism.
| It's not that smoking crack is "cool," it's that the person
| smoking crack is a human being, deserving of dignity, who
| doesn't deserve to be thrown in prison. Of course that
| person shouldn't be allowed to smoke crack in an indoor
| public place, but is the solution really to take away all
| their freedom? I certainly don't think so.
| astrange wrote:
| I believe one case of this I saw this year (which was in
| the UK, and actually did result in them being arrested)
| had a bunch of people claim the specific subway-crack-
| smoking guy was both cool and being oppressed, and then
| it made the news and he turned out to be a domestic
| abuser. Not the most recent time I've seen this argument
| though - that would be yesterday, about Philadelphia I
| think.
|
| People who do drugs in an enclosed space in public are
| doing an antisocial act and as such are the type of
| people willing to do other antisocial acts. It's
| different from simply being homeless.
| elil17 wrote:
| That's a weird thing to call cool and whoever was saying
| that was cool was wrong, of course.
|
| If someone is a domestic abuser who smokes crack on the
| subway, I think they should go to prison for domestic
| abuse and be kicked off the subway for smoking crack on
| the subway.
|
| I do hate that people smoke on the Philadelphia subway,
| although it's mostly cigarettes and not crack in my
| experience. I think those people should be kicked off the
| subway. I just don't think that's the sort of thing
| someone she ould go to jail for.
| kspyy wrote:
| the pilot trying to shut off engines mid flight after having
| taken mushrooms 2 days prior definitely wasn't a great look
| either!
| austin-cheney wrote:
| We shouldn't forget that a measurably significant percentage of
| the population is almost guaranteed to become drug addicts
| provided any access to drugs. This is due to a variety of mental
| and neurological defects that result in addiction craving
| behavior and a near complete absence of inhibition regulation.
| This is tricky because for these people you cannot fight demand
| and counseling will not work as the problem is the hardware not
| the personality. The only partial solution is certain forms of
| medications and the only absolute solution is to forcefully
| separate that population from addictive substances and other
| people eager seeking such substances.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| For a discussion of how likely someone is to behind addicted
| it's crucial to differentiate between drugs. Meth and fentanyl
| are extremely addictive. It's not only mental, but also a
| strong physical addiction. I understand that withdrawal from
| these drugs mashes you feel liked you are gonna die. Fent and
| meth are a huge problem and IMO need to be treated very harshly
| whereas LSD, mushrooms and marijuana aren't physically
| addictive at all and come with comparatively little problems.
| naruhodo wrote:
| When I saw the headline, I was struck by two thoughts:
|
| * what constitutes _" working"_, and
|
| * "working" for _whom_?
|
| The article makes it clear to me that the main problem is that
| since there are no criminal sanctions, there is less incentive to
| hide drug-taking activity. The streets are now cluttered with
| filthy, homeless fentanyl and meth addicts. Many right-thinking
| citizens are upset by how untidy it all looks.
|
| What a surprise that not making an addict's life _harder_ by
| locking them up has not magically led to them getting clean. The
| uptake on support services is not what one would hope.
|
| Some people would like to return to criminalisation, presumably
| because "out of sight, out of mind". I think people with poverty,
| addiction and mental health problems should be given more support
| instead.
| zerbinxx wrote:
| Fwiw locking people up actually does make some addicts lives
| easier. The life of a hard drug addict is filled with the
| constant strife of trying to procure money/drugs, all while
| extremely fucked up, and the. navigating the dangerous and
| shitty situations that puts them in. My aunt went to jail for 5
| years for meth and she said it was the first time she felt she
| had enough piece to actually understand and work on sobriety
| since she started using 10 years prior. She's been close to 20
| years clean now. Granted, not everyone has it so nice, but she
| lost her kids, became a felon, and suffered a lot because of
| it. But then again, meth addiction begets a lot of suffering as
| well.
| tticvs wrote:
| Your comment implies that having homeless fentanyl and meth
| addicts does not cause actual harm to the rest of society, only
| the perception of harm. This is demonstrably false.
|
| You also suggest they should be "given more support" what to do
| if this does not work, and does not keep the rest of society
| safe?
| mimikatz wrote:
| We need to not treat all drugs the same. Heroin, Fentanyl, Meth
| are absolutely destructive forces and possession should force
| people into rehab or jail (their choice). Weed, acid, maybe coke
| should just be tickets and you can't do it/carry it around
| publically, openly sell it, etc.
| beej71 wrote:
| The worst part about blowing the rollout is that now we're going
| to go back to the expensive, ineffective system we had before.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Possibly there is a correlation between public policy that
| promotes "jacking around" and the subsequent "finding out".
|
| Restated: perhaps there was wisdom in prohibitions against drugs
| heavier than nicotine/alcohol? Maybe there was a line that
| stabilized society in general?
|
| Will there be a sufficient level of "finding out" this side of
| the grave that will trigger thought?
| Ekaros wrote:
| It is not enough. As long as you also have other actors such as
| Federal side stopping you making start-ups. Like Uber of hard
| drugs. Imagine if everything from ethanol, to weed to all the way
| to fentanyl was delivered at moments notice to your door by
| network of independent sellers.
|
| Unless you get to that point you have not decriminalized them
| enough... And it will clearly fail as it stays underground.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| What you are describing is legalization, not decriminalization.
| superkuh wrote:
| Isn't working? How many people have their lives forever ruined or
| murdered by police over drug war delusions? That number has
| surely gone way, way down. It's not like other states don't have
| legal hard drugs. Pretty much every state has one of the hardest
| drugs there is, alcohol, fully legal.
| standardUser wrote:
| Decriminalization is a cowardly half-measure that is doomed to
| fail. It doesn't resolve any of the actual issues that cause
| harm. Drugs are still impure, contaminated and hard to dose. They
| still must be purchased via an often-violent black market. It
| does absolutely nothing to prevent drugs being sold to minors. It
| doesn't create connections between addicts and services that can
| help them. It generates no revenue to fund those desperately-
| needed services.
|
| Legalization with regulation is the one way to manage addictive
| substances in a free society. The rest of us are waiting around
| for you all to stop clutching your pearls so we can do what needs
| to be done. In the meantime, addicts will keep dying and law
| enforcement will keep ruining lives.
|
| And black markets will keep getting richer.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Marijuana was legalized. But, the government heaped so many
| punitive taxes, regulations, and licensing restrictions on it
| that it left the black market a very profitable opportunity.
|
| 2 or 3 decades ago Canada decided to heap big taxes on
| cigarettes. A black market promptly emerged, complete with
| drive-by shootings. Canada rescinded those taxes and the black
| market (and its associated crime) evaporated.
| standardUser wrote:
| The blacket market for weed still exists for a lot of
| reasons, taxes being a small one, but weed is not a good
| comparison for other drugs. The markets for most drugs are
| comparably minuscule and the drugs themselves are not so
| trivially produced by anyone with a patch of dirt.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Taxes/minimum pricing, certified chains limiting supply,
| profit seekers. Taxes and min pricing are a big part of it.
| standardUser wrote:
| There's also the fact that the black market is massive
| and deeply-embedded in American (and Canadian) society.
| Even without taxes it was never going to just disappear,
| certainly not in a single generation. Add to that the
| fact that most states still don't have legal weed, so
| wherever someone is growing they are not far from an
| illegal market. Plus, with use so widespread compared to
| every other drug, there exists a large enough youth
| market to keep a pretty big black market going
| indefinitely.
| neuromanser wrote:
| How long after the abolition of Abolition did the black
| market for alcohol disappear?
| standardUser wrote:
| I imagine bars opened more or less immediately and the
| big producers restarted production as soon as they
| possibly could (some had been making alcohol for medical
| purposes). That prohibition lasted 13 years, versus
| 60-plus years for marijuana. The infrastructure for mass
| production and widespread distribution never disappeared.
| zappb wrote:
| It's still here, just small. While you can make your own
| moonshine for personal use, reselling it is illegal. Find
| yourself some black market spirits!
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > metabolition
| strken wrote:
| What's it take to produce opium? Some (opium) poppies, a
| razor blade, something to scrape the gum up, and a bit of
| drying time?
|
| Market size seems like a better bet, yeah. Plus nobody
| takes weed as seriously as opiates.
| bombcar wrote:
| It amuses me to no end that there are places legalizing hard
| drugs at the same time that they make cigarettes illegal.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| What places are those?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Where are cigarettes illegal? If you're referring to
| restrictions on where you can use cigarettes, I presume you
| can't do hard drugs there either.
|
| (obviously I'm ignoring the fact that "decriminalizing"
| doesn't mean the same thing as "legalizing", so those hard
| drugs aren't legal)
| standardUser wrote:
| New Zealand passed a law that phases out all sales of
| cigarettes...
|
| "Under the new laws, which take effect next year, the
| country's smoking age of 18 would be raised year by year
| until it applied to the whole population. Beginning in
| 2023, those under 15 would be barred from buying
| cigarettes for the rest of their lives." -NYT
|
| That's the only one I know of. I thought I heard about
| one other country considering a similar ban?
| bdcravens wrote:
| There are also countries that ban the sale (and even
| possession) of alcohol.
|
| My presumption is that the commenter was speaking about
| the US, since that's been the context of the thread thus
| far.
| romafirst3 wrote:
| Seems reasonable, I don't think we would have allowed the
| sale of tobacco if we knew then what we know now. Also
| it's a drug that is mostly just addiction. It doesn't
| really have a high until you are addicted to it, so I'm
| not sure non addicted users are going to be breaking too
| many laws to get it.
|
| Contrast with hard drugs, most of the users are not
| addicts, they are recreational users.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Prevalence isn't a good criterion for illegality. After
| all, most instances of drunk driving don't result in a
| crash.
| ljf wrote:
| Apparently we are going to do the same thing in the UK
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-to-
| create-....
| neuromanser wrote:
| I've shaken off everything _but_ cigarettes.
| drpgq wrote:
| There's still a big black market in Canada for reserve
| cigarettes. In Ontario reserve cigarettes are a huge chunk of
| the market.
| runnr_az wrote:
| What's a reserve cigarette?
| ljf wrote:
| Not heard of them, but Google confirmed what I assumed :
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/nyregion/indian-
| tribes-ma...
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Cigarettes sold/sourced on First Nation reserves.
|
| Now you see them in the sketchier areas of cities as
| well.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| The black market for this kinda thing (bootleg cigarettes or
| untaxed whatever) is very much alive and well, if
| decentralized. Not gonna get into the demographics or
| anything
| Teever wrote:
| > Canada rescinded those taxes and the black market (and its
| associated crime) evaporated.
|
| This is completely incorrect.
|
| The taxes remain and have in fact been increased, and the
| black market has remained, but mostly shrunk as the pool of
| smokers has decreased due to the increase in taxes and other
| national campaigns to reduce the amount of smokers.
| criddell wrote:
| > Decriminalization is a cowardly half-measure that is doomed
| to fail.
|
| How is failure or success determined? Did we know what the
| goals were for decriminalization? Was improving drug purity a
| goal? Were legal markets supposed to appear? Was it supposed to
| reduce access to minors? Was some mechanism for connecting
| addicts to social services to help them supposed to appear?
|
| What would "help" mean in this context anyway? Does it only
| mean _get sober_ or could it also involve helping addicts
| continue to use as safely as possible?
| standardUser wrote:
| > How is failure or success determined? Did we know what the
| goals were for decriminalization?
|
| I think supporters would say that ending an approach that has
| failed miserably across multiple generations is a success
| unto itself. And that the bigger goal was to open a path to a
| wider rollback of the drug war.
|
| > Was improving drug purity a goal?
|
| Saving lives is always an explicit and implicit goal in
| public policies around health. Drug purity saves lives.
| Especially these days.
|
| > Were legal markets supposed to appear? Was it supposed to
| reduce access to minors?
|
| No. It is basically a government mandate for people to hand
| their money directly to the criminal drug dealers.
|
| > Was some mechanism for connecting addicts to social
| services to help them supposed to appear?
|
| To be fair, Oregon has taken other actions to fund services
| for addicts, like diverting funds from their marijuana tax
| revenue.
|
| Most people probably want a drug policy that leads to a)
| fewer dead people and b) fewer addicts and c) reduced crime.
| Personally, I also think we need to consider liberty as one
| of the top goals if we're going to judge a drug policy as
| successful or not. But even in that respect, this law did
| very little.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Most people probably want a drug policy that leads to a)
| fewer dead people and b) fewer addicts and c) reduced
| crime.
|
| It's entirely unclear if full legalisation full will have
| that effect. Maybe it will, or maybe it will have
| disastrous effects. It's going to be one hell of an
| experiment.
|
| You casually dismiss people as "clutching pearls", but
| that's far too easy, especially when a number of limited
| experiments have made things _worse_ rather than _better_.
| "If we move in this direction it first gets worse and then
| gets better" is possible, but is going to need a (much)
| deeper analysis to be convincing.
|
| But no one really knows what will happen. We can guess, but
| that's all they are: guesses.
| criddell wrote:
| If things like improving drug purity wasn't a goal of
| decriminalization, then I don't think it makes much sense
| to judge decriminalization on those axes. I certainly
| wasn't expecting decriminalization to produce the results
| you list.
|
| I would be surprised if there is a single policy that could
| accomplish all three of the (a), (b), and (c) goals. I
| thought decriminalization is meant mostly to tackle (c) in
| that if having and using drugs isn't a crime, then the
| number of drug offenses that end up in the courts should go
| down.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| The part that annoys me is the obsession with sobriety as the
| only acceptable means to avoid further prosecution. Its like,
| thats not how any of this works. Your neurons and brain
| chemistry doesn't give a shit about deferred prosecutions or
| expungement etc when its not able to brain.
| Stagnant wrote:
| I agree that legalization/regulation should be the end goal but
| it isn't a prerequisite for creating connections between
| addicts and health care services. In many of the western
| european countries there have been "drug consumption rooms" for
| decades now and the general opinion about them seems to be very
| positive[1]. They are essentially supervised rooms where
| addicts can get clean needles and use their drugs in a clean
| and supervised setting as well as having a change to speak to
| social workers if they want to.
|
| I don't know if Oregon has any system like that in place right
| now. If they don't, it would seem like the reasonable first
| step considering that one of the major complaints seems to be
| drug use in public.
|
| 1:
| https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/media/publications...
| bdcravens wrote:
| I'm not exactly on the ACAB bandwagon, but I do feel that
| governments are willing to do half-measures as a way of
| reinforcing the perceived need for a stronger police state.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| these theories all rely on an extremely coordinated
| government.
|
| in this case it was a direct referendum passed by voters,
| overwhelmingly.
|
| the measure itself is quite comprehensive, read it yourself
| to see if it fits into a roundabout theory
| bdcravens wrote:
| Pushing towards a certain set of values doesn't require
| coordination, only mindshare.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yes, so how does this fit the goal of underhandedly
| moving the mindshare towards interest in a stronger
| police state
| jl6 wrote:
| > cowardly half-measure
|
| > in a free society
|
| I feel these two go together. One reason that we have such a
| patchwork of messy ineffective policy is because the
| policymakers are pulled in different directions by a deeply
| divided society. Just look at this thread - there's very little
| clear consensus about what exactly the right answer is.
| Everybody has an opinion. People vote. Policy lurches.
|
| > do what needs to be done
|
| In contrast, this kind of tough talk is more fitting of a _non-
| free_ society where sweeping decisions get made by steamrolling
| stakeholders. The populace gets tired of pusillanimous party
| politicians, so they elect a strongman who can _do what needs
| to be done_. But will the strongman do the right thing?
| Strongmen don't have a great track record.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Only one point, how hard has it ever been for a minor to get
| alcohol and cigarettes?
| Bostonian wrote:
| I don't think I want the government to be spending money to
| ascertain the quality of recreational drugs -- it seems like an
| endorsement of such drugs. In theory, brands that earn a
| reputation for high quality could develop.
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| Why not? Bad/deadly drugs, particularly due to cross
| contamination, are a public health crisis. Making sure a drug
| isn't going to have fentanyl in it is no more an endorsement
| than making sure a beer doesn't have bleach in it
| kbelder wrote:
| I knew it would kill hundreds or thousands of people when I
| voted for it. I also intensely dislike recreational drug use.
|
| But people should be in charge of their own behavior, even if
| self-destructive.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The issue generally is that self-destructive behavior now
| costs you (both in terms of $$ from your taxes, but also in
| terms of societal safety and disruption)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Big picture, it's kind of funny seeing a community assume it has
| new insights into human nature and burn down the metaphorical
| Chesterton fence only to learn the hard way.
|
| "I pride myself on being a bit cynical, but obviously I was very
| naive."
| joenot443 wrote:
| The preface to your quote, from the article, makes the irony
| that much more palpable.
|
| "There is constant problems all over town--it doesn't matter
| where you live--with people strung out on drugs," said Loew,
| who described herself as a communist. "I pride myself on being
| a bit cynical, but obviously I was very naive."
| romafirst3 wrote:
| Compared to what? Do we think throwing everyone in jail and
| having the cops spend their time chasing around after drug users
| is a success?
|
| If people are upset at drug users using drugs in public (which
| seems to be the thing everyone actually has a problem with) give
| them somewhere to use their drugs that isn't in public.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| > give them somewhere to use their drugs that isn't in public
|
| Why can't they use them at home?
| brlewis wrote:
| I'm studying persuasion. If anyone changes their opinion on
| decriminalization as a result of arguments made here, could you
| please say so in reply to this comment?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| How do we define "working" here?
|
| Does "working" mean it prevents people from using drugs? In that
| case, throwing millions of people into prison must be a great
| idea! I call bullshit.
|
| We need to be explicit about our goals! The goal I support is
| _treatment_.
|
| Yes, decriminalization is failing to provide treatment. Of course
| it is! That wasn't its intended purpose in the first place. The
| purpose was to stop punishing victims with incarceration and
| felony conviction.
|
| We still need to replace the broken system with a useful one.
| That means regulated production and distribution of drugs instead
| of turning a blind eye to the black market. That means programs
| that heavily encourage treatment, not just "I gave them a ticket
| to go if they feel like it".
|
| Just imagine if our society put half the effort we put into
| getting people to drink Coca-Cola into _getting people
| healthcare_.
| foxyv wrote:
| Judging by the way drug laws have been enforced in the past.
| Working means arbitrarily suppressing Americans right to vote,
| speak, protest, and participate in our economy.
|
| So yeah, it's not working because it isn't doing that anymore.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > How do we define "working" here?
|
| You could read the article.
|
| "People sprawled on sidewalks and using fentanyl with no fear
| of consequence have become a common sight in cities such as
| Eugene and Portland. Business owners and local leaders are
| upset, but so are liberal voters who hoped decriminalization
| would lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug
| users are taking advantage of new state-funded rehabilitation
| programs."
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I did read the article. Did you read my comment?
| comte7092 wrote:
| >Yes, decriminalization is failing to provide treatment. Of
| course it is! That wasn't its intended purpose in the first
| place.
|
| Gonna have to correct you here. Measure 110 was supposed to
| bring decriminalization _and_ treatment. The treatment just
| never really materialized.
| costco wrote:
| How many conversations do people need to have on the relative
| merits of criminalization vs decriminalization before they get
| sick to their stomach? If you want to make a difference either
| get rich or climb the ranks of whatever political organization
| has the most power in your area. Everyone should think about a
| retirement from arguing online!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Looks to me the law is working, addicts don't end up in jail for
| being addicts.
|
| Did it solve the drug problem, no. This is not enough and such a
| problem cannot be solved in 3 years, nor can it be solved state
| wide because addicts who don't want to be harassed by law
| enforcement will move to states that let them live.
|
| Looks like people just don't care about the drug problem, and its
| impact on criminality, economy and general well being of their
| fellow human being. People just don't care there are addicts,
| they care about seeing them out in public only.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| The reason why drug production and consumption should be legal is
| not that this will necessarily lead to better social outcomes as
| measured by conventional standards, it is because prohibitions on
| drugs are an insult to liberty. It is ridiculous for a supposedly
| free society to try to stop people from putting substances into
| their own bodies just like it would be a ridiculous for a free
| society to try to stop people from, for example, having
| consensual sex with each other.
|
| Drug prohibition is in principle incompatible with liberty.
|
| If you want a free society, some things must be legal even if the
| social impact of allowing them to be legal seems to many people
| to be negative. There are already laws against many of the things
| that people blame on drugs. I know that it is tempting to many
| people to criminalize drugs rather than to try to do a more
| effective job of policing things that people blame on drugs. But
| this is the same kind of mentality that would, for example, get
| rid of free speech because sometimes free speech leads people to
| commit violence. That kind of mentality is a pathway towards the
| US becoming like China.
|
| Another issue with the drug war is unfair enforcement. Well-off
| people have absolutely no problem getting illegal drugs. A huge
| number of successful professionals do illegal drugs on a regular
| basis and only rarely even come close to potentially getting in
| legal trouble. Meanwhile poor people and dealers are probably
| more likely to get busted.
|
| The drug war, by artificially making certain substances sell at
| prices that are vastly higher than what it costs to manufacture
| them, also creates a type of black market currency that enables
| the activities of all sorts of groups that engage in actually
| harmful behavior like killing people.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Why should any drug be treated any more harshly than some
| grandfathered in bullcrap like alcohol? I can't even get past
| that first enormous hypocrisy...
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