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Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

drugpolicy.org

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Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#41

Post by mr-wendel »

kolbe wrote: post #12
imperio59 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment. No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs". Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads. The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let t…

I think it's very juvenile to equate legality with encouragement. [edit below] > Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment. I find it to be much better than the alternative where we make a choice with no experimental data, and instead of a small test small test sample being impacted by the decision, we have an entire country impacted by it. I really don't understand the hesitancy among…

Meanwhile, there are reasonable arguments that to at-risk individuals (the youth in particular) making things like this illegal is a near-certain way to draw their attention to it and make it even more exciting.

It's not a perfect comparison, but there was an interview given by Alice Cooper about city officials in London trying to prevent him from doing a concert there back in his earlier days. The amount of publicity and attention it got him only helped make him more of a success, and he subsequently sent nice flowers and cigars to two notable detractors involved to say thanks.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#42

Post by TamDenholm »

lanevorockz wrote: post #24
random_savv wrote: post #18

Good. This has worked well in other countries, particularly Portugal: https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portuga...

Slightly hard to believe in data these days ... I went to uni in portugal and it was rare to find a student that didn't use weed. I guess this is why it was so easy to legalise it. Then the data says 10% ... it's laughable.

Well that 10% is highly unlikely to be evenly distributed amoungst the population. The percentage of those that smoke weed from a sample of university students is likely to be higher than the same sample taken from the age groups of 60yr old and above. You can make statistics say whatever you want, pretty sure I could get a pretty high percentage of weed usage if i limit my sample size to Bob Marley and Snoop Dogg.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#43

Post by chapium »

daenz wrote: post #26

As a libertarian leaning person, I agree with this. However, I still think it will have a lot of negative consequences that people will be eager to sweep under the rug. Even if the net effect is positive, we still need to be honest about any negative results that we may see from this.

I think the key takeaway from other countries that have implemented this is to treat addiction clinically, not criminally. This makes a lot of sense really, given the effects on the body. Ethical sourcing of drugs is another issue, and should be looked at through a legal lens.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#44

Post by tastyfreeze »

imperio59 wrote: post #6
kolbe wrote: post #3

Say what you will about your opinion of what the results of this will be, it does create an experiment for us to learn with. I think one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough, so when ones like this pop up naturally, it'll give us great data.

Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment. No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs". Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads. The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let t…

People are going to use drugs regardless of legality. There has been great harm to individuals from ingesting substances of questionable purity. Legalizing cannabis has allowed adults that choose to consume get consistent quality and avoid sketchy circumstances when purchasing.

As for society as a whole it costs less to help people that abuse drugs than it does to imprison all drug users. We should not punish adults for what they choose to put in their bodies on their own time.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#45

Post by treeman79 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #23
blhack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what metrics we should track to determine if this is good or not.

Does drug use increase? Does crime increase? What impact does it have on the prison population and public health?

What happens with kids?

I adopted a teen who was in the system for 10 years because parents were constantly stoned.

Police had to bring kids home from school many times because The bio parents were so out of it.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#46

Post by GuB-42 »

Just to make things clear, decriminalization is not legalization. Drugs are still illegal, and users risk a $100 fine, especially if they are uncooperative. The difference is that it is now a civil violation instead of a crime, so no record, no jail time, kind of like a parking ticket.

Drug trafficking is still a crime.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#47

Post by aidenn0 »

daenz wrote: post #26

As a libertarian leaning person, I agree with this. However, I still think it will have a lot of negative consequences that people will be eager to sweep under the rug. Even if the net effect is positive, we still need to be honest about any negative results that we may see from this.

That's become the status-quo with all policy changes these days though. e.g. it's not enough to say that "The Green New Deal" is poor policy, you have to say "Global Warming is a Hoax"

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#48

Post by theptip »

anewaccount2021 wrote: post #17
rjbwork wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives. Nah, the next obvious step is to legalize them and have pure supplies of known purity and dosage distributed by the government at near-cost + tax to exclusively fund social programs and rehab. There's no need to bring profit into it. Prohibition doesn't work. We've seen it t…

Why would anyone enter rehab if the government is providing free, high-quality drugs?

Many drug addicts don't actually want to be drug addicts; they started off as drug users and then lost control.

Consider if alcohol was free; would you expect alcoholics to still want to enter rehab? I think the answer is quite obviously yes. I think it's a common error of reasoning to think that illegal drugs are very different to alcohol.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#49

Post by worik »

imperio59 wrote: post #6
kolbe wrote: post #3

Say what you will about your opinion of what the results of this will be, it does create an experiment for us to learn with. I think one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough, so when ones like this pop up naturally, it'll give us great data.

Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment. No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs". Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads. The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let t…

I deny these drugs are harmful.

It has been prohibition that has caused most of the harm.

People have problems. Often people who have problems get lost, in madness, in violence, in drugs. Stop blaming madness, violence and drugs.

The people who have problems need help from their community, quite often. It seems (from the outside) that in the USA community is being deprecated.

Most people who use drugs have fun. They do not come to any harm, so long as they do not get busted by police, or beaten by the crooks that sell the drugs.

Time to get the law out of it. Time to start being kind to each other. People with problems do not need to be punished, usually that does not help.

Legalising drugs will lead, probably, to better drugs. Powdered injectable heroin came about because it is the best way to market such a illegal product. In the nineteenth century opium was mostly used in tinctures.

In South America cocaine was traditionally used completely differently chewed with lime (?)

Prohibition has been a catastrophe for the victims and good on you Oregon for looking for a way out.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#50

Post by _9hey »

imperio59 wrote: post #6
kolbe wrote: post #3

Say what you will about your opinion of what the results of this will be, it does create an experiment for us to learn with. I think one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough, so when ones like this pop up naturally, it'll give us great data.

Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment. No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs". Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads. The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let t…

This post being downvoted into oblivion is what irks me about the hacker news community. It’s not enough to disagree, you have to silence the dissenter by graying out their comments. That’s real democratic
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