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To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

nytimes.com

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Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#21

Post by hnthrowaway6543 »

brianjking wrote: post #5
flerchin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they spent more than a few nights in corrective housing? Actually drying out, and getting treatment? I get that you can't force someone to want to get better, but you can lock them away if they refuse and keep breaking the law. Right? The whole situation is horrible. I moved away from Portland around the turn of the century, and it's unrecognizable to me when I go back to visit family.

What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!? Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until this country starts actually helping people. * Quality drug treatment that is paid for by the state/federal level. * Job training/retraining that is paid for at the state/federal level. * Affordable, high quality education that helps people not get interested in, have time for, be so full of despair that they resort to…

> Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain.

Making drugs illegal and locking people up, or straight up executing them, is actually extremely effective at stopping drug addiction, as seen in many east Asian countries, particularly Japan, Korea and Singapore. As well as the middle east.

It's an uncomfortable truth for the Western world because we don't like strict punishments for nonviolent crimes, and for good reason. But let's not pretend that the heavy-handed corporal punishment approach doesn't work.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#22

Post by kepler1 »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #10

It's really frustrating to see this headline. The officials decriminalized drugs, wiped their hands and backed off from any follow-up legislation to keep it working correctly. It reminds me a lot of the ACA. Officials got the bill passed and have collectively stopped making updates to the program to keep it healthy, but then constantly criticize its faults. American politics are sad in that it's hard to celebrate any…

If decriminalization relies on a whole raft of practically infeasible (or very expensive) associated programs to make it work, is it really a viable strategy?

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#23

Post by hotpotamus »

jgon wrote: post #11
flerchin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they spent more than a few nights in corrective housing? Actually drying out, and getting treatment? I get that you can't force someone to want to get better, but you can lock them away if they refuse and keep breaking the law. Right? The whole situation is horrible. I moved away from Portland around the turn of the century, and it's unrecognizable to me when I go back to visit family.

This is the right answer and it is hopefully one people will converge on, although true to form it will be after trying everything else. Its super frustrating in a lot of cities right now because the current political environment seems to want to have a "stochastic junkie" if you will. When it comes to violence, disorder, theft and just generally refusing to be part of society in a non-harmful way all we get right no…

I've been locked in a hospital for chemical dependency treatment, so I have a hard time believing that it's impossible to force people into it. There was, of course, a huge bill that my insurance largely covered, but I suspect that homeless peoples' health insurance is not so good.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#24

Post by unethical_ban »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #13

Criminalization works, even without sniffing dogs and modern surveillance, when the crime is also a sin . See Islam. To this day I know no relative or close friend of mine who ever drank any alcohol, nor one which used any drugs. But ofc this is the unthinkable for West. Downvote, pass.

The word you're looking for is shame.

I'm not sure the benefits of increased shame in society is worth the danger of allowing radical Islam or Christianity to flourish in a free society.

Of course, there are wonderful atheists and non-Abrhamic believing people in the world, and there is Hamas and ISIS.

I'd rather live in Portland than Tehran.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#25

Post by ToucanLoucan »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #10

It's really frustrating to see this headline. The officials decriminalized drugs, wiped their hands and backed off from any follow-up legislation to keep it working correctly. It reminds me a lot of the ACA. Officials got the bill passed and have collectively stopped making updates to the program to keep it healthy, but then constantly criticize its faults. American politics are sad in that it's hard to celebrate any…

I'm curious, what's the "updates to the program" that were required? I'm not well informed on this issue.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#26

Post by legitster »

oh_sigh wrote: post #2

I lived in Portland before the decriminalization laws passed in 2020, and from my perspective, drugs were already effectively decriminalized for the in-your-face-homeless, which I think is the most obvious social problem that people in Portland are trying to fix. At least that is my view based on the very common observation of people doing hard drugs in public. The people drugs weren't decriminalized for before 2020…

I think the difference is that drug use was at least kept out of nice/touristy parts of town.

There was lots of blatant drug use all over town, but you could expect to go to Powells or Pioneer Courthouse Square without seeing people smoking out of pieces of foil.

So while it was not a great or sustainable system to have police clear out good neighborhoods and force addicts into designated bad areas, having a city be equally unappealing to everyone is in the long run a lose-lose trade-off.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#27

Post by nickff »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #10

It's really frustrating to see this headline. The officials decriminalized drugs, wiped their hands and backed off from any follow-up legislation to keep it working correctly. It reminds me a lot of the ACA. Officials got the bill passed and have collectively stopped making updates to the program to keep it healthy, but then constantly criticize its faults. American politics are sad in that it's hard to celebrate any…

Perhaps they should have done the “follow-up legislation” before the decriminalization then?

I think the problem is quite the opposite from your diagnosis. There are no standards for legislation “success” or “failure”. Very few bills actually achieve their stated aims, and all the ones that don’t are kept on the books, then the results are blamed on under-budgeting, or partisan politics (which should be foreseeable if true).

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#29

Post by golergka »

brianjking wrote: post #5
flerchin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they spent more than a few nights in corrective housing? Actually drying out, and getting treatment? I get that you can't force someone to want to get better, but you can lock them away if they refuse and keep breaking the law. Right? The whole situation is horrible. I moved away from Portland around the turn of the century, and it's unrecognizable to me when I go back to visit family.

What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!? Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until this country starts actually helping people. * Quality drug treatment that is paid for by the state/federal level. * Job training/retraining that is paid for at the state/federal level. * Affordable, high quality education that helps people not get interested in, have time for, be so full of despair that they resort to…

> What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!?

This I support 100%.

> paid for by the state/federal level

This I can't. That's not "we" in any sense or form; that's other people's money taken away from them by violence or threat of violence.

If you encourage people to help others (as we should!), then we should help people ourselves. Not delegate it to others, especially if they're not doing it voluntarily.

Re: To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

#30

Post by jimbob45 »

hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #21
brianjking wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!? Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until this country starts actually helping people. * Quality drug treatment that is paid for by the state/federal level. * Job training/retraining that is paid for at the state/federal level. * Affordable, high quality education that helps people not get interested in, have time for, be so full of despair that they resort to…

> Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain. Making drugs illegal and locking people up, or straight up executing them, is actually extremely effective at stopping drug addiction, as seen in many east Asian countries, particularly Japan, Korea and Singapore. As well as the middle east. It's an uncomfortable truth for the Western world because we don't like strict pu…

Did you leave out the Philippines on purpose? Isn't it kind of the posterboy for executions of this nature?
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