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In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

nytimes.com

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Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#361

Post by remarkEon »

sukilot wrote: post #184
koolba wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your perspective promotes traumatizing systems. You are therefore a danger to yourself and society. > If you are locked up as a result of this, will the reeducation take? Ha! If offending people was illegal I'd have been in prison a long time ago. > Thought experiment aside, you don't know what other people need and forcing your ideas onto them is how we get into these messes in the first place. I'm not forcing my…

You think that junkies are higher income than the people who are forced to see them?

The commenter is pretty clearly talking about working people who can't up and move somewhere else because they don't work in Big Tech. Eventually those of means will quit this city, if it really does get bad enough, but people just getting by can't.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#362

Post by dan_quixote »

lacker wrote: post #282
rayiner wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm anti-incarceration for moral reasons, but it's not clear to me that there is a definitive consensus that incarceration does not work. See: https://www.nber.org/digest/jan02/w8489.html > "Annual expenditures of approximately $10 billion on drug incarceration almost pay for themselves through reductions in health care costs and lost productivity attributable to illegal drug use, even ignoring any crime reductions a…

I'm anti-incarceration for moral reasons There is also a middle ground, where you can think that drugs should generally be legalized, but incarcerating people for non-drug crimes is a good idea. The problem isn't really people doing drugs. It's people breaking into cars, damaging property left in public, trespassing, assaulting other people, leaving big public piles of trash, things that fall into the "harming other…

Exactly! I'm not interested in castigating people for shooting up heroin, but I'm really not OK with them littering needles in our parks and sidewalks.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#363

Post by kyleblarson »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #261
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Seattle being Seattle it is not populated by the kind of people who will pack heat. That's like saying "well Austin is part of Texas so why doesn't everyone wear a cowboy hat and go hog hunting on the weekend." Both those cities are basically San Fransisco demographically speaking. And just because concealed carry legal doesn't mean the process is constructed in such a way that normal people can actually do…

WA is a shall issue state. As long as you pass the criminal background check you get a concealed pistol license.

It is currently, but Nick Haneaur and the I-1639 crowd are doing everything they can to not so gradually chip away at gun rights for law abiding WA residents.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#364

Post by vehementi »

dcolkitt wrote: post #75

I fully support legalizing all drugs, but don't understand why the latest wave of criminal justice reform tolerates property crimes. Crimes like smash and grabs, purse snatching, bike thefts, vandalism, littering, and shoplifting clearly have defined victims and lower the quality of life for everyone. It's perfectly possible to be a heroin addict and an upstanding citizen at the same time. The same cannot be said of…

Is this a "just asking questions" post? (edit: haha based on the downvotes it suuuuure was.)

It's not about tolerating property crime, it's about recognizing a) property crime is a symptom of the problem b) people suffering from property crime is a super minor problem c) the real, immediate problem is that we have thousands of homeless/addicts/mentally ill people who are suffering way more than someone who lost their bike d) it is known that you can't arrest your way out of this problem.

So, where to put resources? Obviously, spending a lot of resources on constantly arresting people is a massive waste of money and people will just be back out on the streets eventually doing the same shit. So that's not a good use of police / court system / prison system time and taxpayer money. We need to go after the root of the problem -- untreated mental illness, addiction, homelessness, etc. That is why enforcement of petty crimes is a low concern.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#365

Post by hash872 »

kenoyer130 wrote: post #314
hash872 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His argument has been widely debunked, and subsequent followup found that Leavitt had a huge data error that way overstated his conclusion. I personally find the lead/crime argument to be much more convincing

It is a good chapter to read to see their methodology even if you don't agree with the results. For example, comparing stricter/easier gun laws and prison times in different cities and not finding a correlation to the drop in violence since it was across the board.

Oh I've read it and am familiar with their argument, I just disagree. I don't think analyzing gun laws on a city by city basis makes a lot of sense, they're small, in high demand apparently, and easily smuggled from a more permissive locale.

The abortion argument is just a pathway to IQ/some people are genetically more predisposed to being dumb & violent, etc. It's just a step on the way there. I hardly think I have to spell out what's the next step on the road after that. Open white supremacists like Steve Sailer vocally support the abortion argument, for instance

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#366

Post by ndarwincorn »

thedaemon wrote: post #352
ndarwincorn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those of us still here that prefer empathy would rather you follow your 'fellow-minded' folks and just leave. Seattle's had this tension between the left and the liberals for a century. Traditionally you lived on the outskirts. You're welcome to go back if the city offends your sensibilities.

Isn't a liberal left sided? I'm confused by your statement.

Though it's changed recently (and even more recently is swinging back to historical usage), historically the word liberals referred to folks that are generally corporate/free-trade friendly (Reagan famously claimed something to the effect of, 'I'm a liberal, an 18th century liberal'). They also pay lip service to personal freedoms, but that tends to be through the lens of white men being the only people deserving of those, and they're generally against freedom of migration. Or rather that they care about free-trade more than free-migration because it advantages them more, despite the societal benefits of one relying on the other.

In Seattle, the leftists are the AnSyn folks at the unsanctioned May Day celebration, or the WTO protesters two decades back. Further back, they're the folks organizing the general strike[1]. The liberals are the folks that put their No Re-zoning sign next to their BLM sign in the window of their Ballard home. Or more charitably, the folks that see Gates and Bezos as shining examples of what our city is capable of.

In case you need it in song form, this is a song written by a leftist[2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_General_Strike

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nFvhhCulaw

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#367

Post by leetcrew »

frankus wrote: post #349
sempron64 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active as in currently shooting up.

I think he was alluding to non-injected drug use, like drinking beer or smoking weed. Of course by the time injecting street drugs into your veins seems like your least-bad option, you're in a pretty desperate place and maybe not someone that kids should be around while you're using.

I thought the post I was replying to was implying that people on drugs are inherently dangerous to be around, so all I was really trying to suggest is that there are a lot of people who appear "respectable" but are hiding a serious drug habit.

it seems that sempron64 meant people who are literally in the act of shooting up. I guess I can understand not wanting a child to see that, although I question whether that's really as bad as we are supposed to think. it can certainly be unsettling to see for the first time, but all it ever suggests to me is that the person has a truly miserable life. I honestly doubt that it's as bad as pervasive images of people drinking, smoking, partying and having a good time. the latter seems a lot more likely to lead an impressionable mind astray.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#368

Post by dan_quixote »

dymk wrote: post #7

I am just astounded that this is being spun in such a positive light. It absolutely has had a negative impact on public safety here. They're offered public services, and they refuse them, because many of our "tiny villages" have no-drug-use policies, which they will not abide by. My city has one of the worst problems with repeat violent drug addicts in the nation (perhaps aside from the Bay) and yet we refuse to jail…

For the people you describe, there are basically no social services. The typical cycle is: 1 - police arrest them 2 - if they seem psychotic or mentally troubled they get dropped off at an ER 3 - the social workers at the ER (mostly) unsuccessfully try to find a place for them at a mental health provider 4 - eventually they get released by court order 5 - cycle repeats

I have friend that is on the front line as a social worker. Any time one of these prominent incidents occurs, I make sure to ask if she knows the perp. And about 50% of the time they are a former patient that she couldn't find a spot for at a mental institution.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#369

Post by xyzzyz »

rayiner wrote: post #149
just_lurkin wrote: post #17

The reporters designation of "figured out" seems to stem more from the fact that the solution fits his own view than any actual real evidence. There is mention of the difficulties such lax policies has brought to the city, but they are waved away as being "growing pains" toward a new utopia. I can't say, living here, that I feel that the problem is solved. I view the needles outside my apartment as evidence to the co…

It's interesting people always point to Portugal to support the idea that decriminalization is the way to address substance abuse. But compare Sweden, which has similar levels of drug dependency to Portugal, but takes a "zero tolerance" approach to drug use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Sweden . While Sweden does include treatment as part of its drug policy, that is a complement to, not replacement fo…

Portugal is such a strange example to point at. Yes, the heroin use fell after the decriminalization, but it also fell in other countries at the same time. Use of other drugs in Portugal after decriminalization actually rose.

Re: In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs

#370

Post by rayiner »

anaisbetts wrote: post #347
lacker wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm anti-incarceration for moral reasons There is also a middle ground, where you can think that drugs should generally be legalized, but incarcerating people for non-drug crimes is a good idea. The problem isn't really people doing drugs. It's people breaking into cars, damaging property left in public, trespassing, assaulting other people, leaving big public piles of trash, things that fall into the "harming other…

At the end of the day though, the people breaking into cars are usually doing so because they have no other reasonable means to sustain themselves, or they are compelled to do so because of drug addiction. The long-term _solution_, is to remove these obstacles . In other words, middle-class employed people who are safe in their environment don't really commit crimes - why would they? The best way to solve crime In Ge…

If economics were the main driver, you'd see a strong correlation between crime rates and the economy. But by and large you do not: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta....

> Based on these estimates, the observed 2 percentage point decline in the U.S unemployment rate between 1991 and 2001 can explain an estimated 2 percent decline in property crime (out of an observed drop of almost 30 percent), but no change in violent crime or homicide. The sharp increases in crime in the 1960s—a decade of strong economic growth—further corroborate the weak link between macroeconomics and crime.

Violent crime rates started trending up in the 1960s, more than doubling by 1971: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/U0YlrTTCYi550Z4py1MNVenNt-...

Meanwhile, the economy was quite strong until 1969, with unemployment below 4%: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33069.pdf (p. 5). Poverty rates went down about 40% from 1960-1970, and then were stable until about 1980. Over that same period, violent crime tripled. From 1982 to 1990, poverty went down by 15% and unemployment dropped in half, but violent crime increased 36% to historical peaks.

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