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Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

drugpolicy.org

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Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#121

Post by cjaybo »

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.

I went to college in the US, in a state that has pretty heavy-handed drug penalties, and my experience doesn't sound much different from yours.

As another comment mentioned, using college-aged kids as a representative sample for the entire population is inherently flawed, especially when it comes to things like drug use.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#122

Post by Noos »

rootusrootus wrote: post #101
Noos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, can you blame them? The petty crimes fueled by drug use don't go away if you decriminalize it. We keep throwing money at homelessness but it doesn't seem to work at all because a lot of the problem homeless really need to be involuntarily committed for long term treatment of mental illness or addiction. Not many people want to go down that route, because we still don't really trust or are comfortable wi…

Decriminalizing possession doesn't make burglary legal.

Decriminalizing possession doesn't stop the need for people to steal to afford drugs, though. It also means people who do them will only interface with the criminal justice system when they commit these kinds of support crimes.

They won't get scooped up for a lesser offense, yes. But if anything, it means when they do get scooped up it will be for a worse one, and it will happen.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#123

Post by whycombagator »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #72
recursive wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking a six-pack at a time does sound kind of binge-y to me.

Start with dinner at 6 and go to bed at 9 and that's 2/hr. Not exactly keg stands and jungle juice territory. The human body processes 1-2 drinks/hr so at the end you'll have a buzz on the order of one stiff mixed drink (~3-4 shots of stuff in the 40% ballpark spread out over a tall glass of sugary fruity stuff). Edit: And since apparently this needs saying "drink" = "the standard alcohol/drink unit that all the prof…

What quantity would you say is binge drinking? Or rather, if a six pack before bed (6pm-9pm) isn’t binge drinking what quantity of beer is?

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#124

Post by rootusrootus »

m463 wrote: post #30
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.

> one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough I kind of agree, but we do have 50 states, each running their own experiments. Massachusetts has right to repair. Nevada has legalized gambling. Some states have stronger employee freedom, some stronger employer freedom. Lots of different educational experiments. Helmet laws, concealed carry, state income tax, no state income tax. Can you pu…

> Can you pump your own gas?

Oh stop it, that's not nice. We are slowly, slowly increasing the ability for people to pump their own gas. Right about the time nobody needs to pump gas any more, we will fully legalize it.

We also have no sales tax, and I consider that a pretty big plus.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#125

Post by lotsofpulp »

ketzo wrote: post #108
lotsofpulp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“1-2 drinks/hr” is not a well defined metric. It’s better to use units of alcohol: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-alc... And more than 1 5% beer is outside of almost all people’s ability to “process” in an hour. I would wager the majority of people based on size/weight can’t process a single 5% beer in an hour.

The original commenter might not have been using "drink" this way, but theoretically there is such a thing as a "standard drink": roughly 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is about 12oz of beer, 5oz of wine, or 1.5oz of liquor. This "standard drink" is what an average person can roughly process per hour. It's all fuzzy because of how many confounding variables there are with alcohol (and because "average person" is kin…

That website just defines a “standard drink” in the US as 14 grams of alcohol. It doesn’t say anything about how much an average person can “process” in an hour. I can’t even come up with a good reason for the utility of a measure of alcohol without it being a ratio of how much can be processed in an hour.

That’s why the NHS metric is better suited for discussions about how much alcohol per unit of time one can/should drink, or to discuss the effects of different rates of alcohol consumption over time.

From the NHS website:

>One unit equals 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol, which is around the amount of alcohol the average adult can process in an hour.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#126

Post by giantg2 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #46

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.

I'm curious where the definition of a class E violation can be found. I didn't find anything through a search.

It seems odd to me that the government can charge a fine without a crime being committed. In my mind, this would remove the rights and protections that someone would have under a criminal charge.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#127

Post by notJim »

throwaway2121bx wrote: post #68

I'm a proponent for legalizing drugs. But I believe there will be negative long-term consequences from drug use becoming normalized and so easy to obtain. People who wouldn't otherwise use drugs could be forgiven (after reading about legalization in the binary and positive way it is often reported, or from walking around a city with an upmarket weed shop every few blocks) for believing it can't be that bad for you an…

I used to favor full legalization, but now I think it's a bad idea. If you can simply go to a store to buy heroin (like you can with weed in many places now), I think we will inevitably have more heroin addicts. People will get addicting just trying it out, and get addicted because they are self-medicating.

There are middle-grounds between full legalization and full prohibition. It seems obvious that prohibition has been a failure. I think instead we should base it on how harmful and addictive they are. Drugs with low harm and low addiction potential should be easy to get. Other drugs should be legally obtainable (and manufactured and distributed by legitimate means) by addicts, but hard to get for most people.

Sometimes people bring up the case of alcohol, which seems to have relatively high addiction potential and harm, yet is still legal. I think this is a case of path dependence though. I don't know if I would advocate making a similarly harmful drug legal and easily obtainable today, but the cat is out of the bag on that one.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#128

Post by ben_w »

ogre_codes wrote: post #79
recursive wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking a six-pack at a time does sound kind of binge-y to me.

Depends if it's piss-water or a quality stout or IPA.

Despite not being a beer drinker, this feels like the right time to mention BrewDog and their ongoing battle to sell the strongest beer in the world.

I first heard of this with Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%); their latest HD Strength In Numbers, which is 57.8%.

https://www.brewdog.com/eu_en/brewdog-vs-schorschbrau-streng...

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#129

Post by giantg2 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #69
frongpik wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What counts as drug trafficking? Carrying weed across county lines?

It's mostly quantity limits. https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/11/here-are-the-dru... The measure makes it a noncriminal violation similar to a traffic ticket to possess the following: Less than 1 gram of heroin Less than 1 gram, or less than 5 pills, of MDMA Less than 2 grams of methamphetamine Less than 40 units of LSD Less than 12 grams of psilocybin Less than 40 units of methadone Less than 40 pills of oxy…

I'm confused why people are saying non-criminal traffic tickets. In my state, traffic violations are usually summary offenses. I'm not familiar with how all the states handle it, but I haven't come across non-criminal traffic citations.

Re: Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today

#130

Post by nitrogen »

sandworm101 wrote: post #113
ttul wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. Criminalization of drug production and distribution has been an abject policy failure from the start. Ending the criminalization of drugs and bringing all drugs into a regulatory framework that is guided by health outcomes rather than the one-size-fits-all goal of eradication is the only path that has a hope of reducing the harms associated with the hardest of drugs. You can't stop…

>> bringing all drugs into a regulatory framework that is guided by health outcomes Outcomes for who? The individual or the population? Seriously. Ask a doctor and they would probably agree that, for a particular patient, having access to legal safe alternatives is a good thing. But ask them about drugs as a whole, for the entire population, and the answer will always be "less is better but zero is best." Stemming th…

illegality also suppresses uptake by new users.

Clearly that's not true, as evidenced by the enormous illegal drug trade. Highly regulated availability of safer substitutes for the worst drugs might reduce uptake of those worse drugs.

Balling all "drugs" into one category and declaring them legal for traffic and sale is a horrible idea.

That's not what the parent comment said. They specifically said based on health.

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