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Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

theatlantic.com

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Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#571

Post by hogepiyo »

username332211 wrote: post #538
inferiorhuman wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the headline Portugal is having doubts because they decided to gut funding. Where it was seen as promising or successful, now it's basically decriminalized drug use and no treatment or enforcement. Which kinda sounds like what Oregon is doing now and what Reagan did with mental health care in California.

Could you (or anyone else reading this) define "gut funding" in quantitative terms? I'm asking because I've noticed newspapers have somehow acquired the ability to imply that spending on this or that program is being cut, when in fact it isn't. Often simply refusing to let a program grow at an exponential rate is supposed to be a "spending cut". And sometimes mere exponential growth is not enough. To give an example,…

>To give an example, if one trusts the newspapers of the United Kingdom, the NHS is supposed to have been "underfunded" ever since Cameron became prime minister in 2010. The reality is that expenditures on that system have remained at around 9.7% of GDP until COVID when they rose to 12%, remaining at that level since then. And GDP is a quantity that's growing every year.

The reality is that they cut the things that add cumulative pressure to the NHS itself. E.g - social care cuts meant that thousands of beds occupied by medically fit people were occupied because they had nowhere to send those people to. The "underfunded" thing is a simplistic and borderline misleading way of phrasing it but with the attention economy that we're in I can see why they'd phrase it that way

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#572

Post by jjcon »

jeffbee wrote: post #19
mattzito wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article seems to hit that straight on: "The consequences of Measure 110’s shortcomings have fallen most heavily on Oregon’s drug users. In the two years after the law took effect, the number of annual overdoses in the state rose by 61 percent, compared with a 13 percent increase nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In neighboring Idaho and California, where drug possession rema…

That is a highly misleading discussion though. The existing rate in WV is quadruple that in Oregon. Oregon was up a bit on a low denominator. WV was down slightly on a ludicrous prior rate. Fails to mention that other states with similar trends compared to Oregon are Wyoming, Maine, and Texas. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

WV is a half continent away, has massively different demographics, poverty rates, culture, history etc. Comparisons like that are extremely difficult to do properly. What we can easily compare is Oregon a few years ago vs Oregon now and deduce the impact of it's policies with nearby similar states as a reference.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#573

Post by fzeroracer »

I don't know what people expect. We have a nationwide problem that states are trying to solve at an individual level and failing. I lived in Virginia and Texas, both had severe drug issues, homeless problems and those states are strict on drugs. They're experiencing rises in deaths due to fentanyl, rising homeless rates and more. No one talks about the issues in those states because they aren't doing anything to try and stop it, so there's no new policy to criticize.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#574

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

taeric wrote: post #399
thehappypm wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study has been widely debunked as junk science

To help others that may be looking, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park is a good read on it. Calling it junk science is probably overly stated. Seems the largest confounding fact is that different strains of rats have different propensities to addictions. I can see why that would be a scary thing to look at in humans.

> I can see why that would be a scary thing to look at in humans.

I don’t get it, are you say because of race? Wouldn’t that be more interesting to know that is the case that scared of looking into it?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#575

Post by bill_joy_fanboy »

crtified wrote: post #567

Alcohol, being at once one of the worlds most dangerous hard drugs, one of the worlds premium luxury markets, and a common everyday cultural component across large swathes of humanity, is proof that society can and does incorporate the regular leisure usage of mental intoxicants as an ethically acceptable standard of living. If you are happy to walk down your street and purchase a bottle of wine or craft beer, then y…

Alcohol as a "luxury market" is really just a marketing gimmick. It's dressed up to be palatable and to entice people. Dealers gotta make money.

"Society" isn't really a unit. Plenty of people would happily make alcohol illegal if they had power. It's not ethically acceptable to drink in a lot of communities (even in the U.S.). Some countries prohibit alcohol present day.

My point is that the status of alcohol as "ethically acceptable" is far from universal.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#576

Post by WalterBright »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #568
jmspring wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…

Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.

It's not absurd. It's your body, you can do what you want with it.

There's been plenty of evil done by do-gooders, who are so certain in their rectitude about what's best for others, that they feel justified in imposing that rectitude upon them.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#577

Post by pugz »

atomicfiredoll wrote: post #250
rvcdbn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have built a society where the best options for these people are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you. It won’t stop any…

I had a friend who had tried several substances and thought they were above addiction... until they were eventually hooked on heroin. It's anecdotal, but having watched people (more than him) get addicted, I don't have much doubt that even people with a good life get hooked on bad drugs. Hopefully, as society becomes more honest about drugs and stops scheduling every drug as equally dangerous or criminal, friends lik…

This was me too. I had used many substances (cannabis, ketamine, benzos, cocaine + every other stimulant under the sun) and was able to keep them in my possession and only use them at most once every 4-6 weeks, and only ever in the company of others. This lasted for many years. I was arrogant and thought I was above addiction. I tried heroin and was addicted before I finished my 1g bag.

I think your point about "stop[] scheduling every drug as equally dangerous" is very salient. I really don't want to shift blame anywhere but myself, but if society had been honest about treating heroin as much more problematic than (for example) cocaine or amphetamine, maybe I would have listened. But when they were all considered equally bad and the others didn't form a grip on me... you can see how I ended up where I did.

Thankfully, I had every advantage one could need: a loving spouse, a lot of savings and a medical system that treated it as a health problem, not a criminal one. I told my doctor about my addiction and he prescribed diazepam for the withdrawal. He wrote a referral to admit me to a psychiatric hospital. I was able to take a month off work (and keep my job) while under the care of professionals. Without all of those, I'd probably end up dead in a few years.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#578

Post by efields »

Can’t do the decriminalization and legalization without proper resources devoted to rehabilitation. This is a health problem and the US doesn’t like to provide free healthcare to those who need it.

Oregon did the right thing by decriminalizing, but massively screwed it up by under investment in care.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#579

Post by teolandon »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #568
jmspring wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…

Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.

Whole lot of assertions here that a lot of people would disagree with. Why does "right" presuppose an objective good? Why is harming oneself objectively evil?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#580

Post by deprecative »

pierat wrote: post #549
K0balt wrote: post #520

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…

> The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Wait, are you talking about "personal" shame, or "corporate" shame. Cause if anything, corporations have none, and people are *learning* to also have no shame. Doesnt get you anything. Just makes you feel bad for no good reason, cause others are pointing a finger at you. > Shame is an important a…

I don't think folks want to hear or think about why shame has gone, or is going, away. Having shame will only ever interfere with the pursuit of money. As we live in a capitalist society money is the only important thing in life. You literally cannot live without it. Why would I have shame? Why would anyone? Love? Family? Friends? Those do not pay the bills. As we are hyper individualist and capitalist there is no moral or ethical cohesive force beyond the ability to secure money. People don't seem to grasp that and rely on outdated nonsense like God or Religion. Guess what? Shame is only a detriment these days because of the society we've all agreed to participate in.
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