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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

#251

Post by kazinator »

wcarss wrote: post #248
kazinator wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a critical difference between heroin, and heroin laced with uknown amounts of a fentanyl analog. The adulterated stuff kills even first time people experimenting with drugs. Joe Perry & Steven Tyler (Aerosmith's "Toxic Twins") are still here. Clapton lives. So does Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. All those guys would be long dead if there had been fentanyl lacing back in the 70's.

That's a little bit like the football-betting-sequence fallacy -- if I send a thousand letters out, with 50% predicting team A wins and 50% predicting team B wins, and do so successively for 10 weeks, at the end of the 10 weeks a small number of people will have gotten my letters "correctly predicting" the football outcome 10 times in a row. But of course, I didn't know anything about the games. You can name a few of…

> but how many have

Oh, plenty!

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

#252

Post by prawn »

CydeWeys wrote: post #129
legitster wrote: post #57

Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back t…

The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for t…

I think you can provide services (shelters, etc) AND crackdown with a view to cleaning the city for regular people (rather than just specifying taxpayers).

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

#253

Post by somewhereoutth »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #159
somewhereoutth wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like in Europe? But seriously, though our GDP may be lagging behind the US, we do seem to be able to deal with homelessness and drug addiction somewhat better.

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-ministe... https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/in-sweden-bill... I'm always happy to learn from countries which have succeeded at something, but insofar as Europe has succeeded at things, it hasn't been a simple matter of "end capitalism". The devil is in the details. Also remember that Europe freerides on the US a great deal. They get bargain prices on d…

During the cold war it was realized that unless the broad mass of people in Europe were reasonably happy / well off, they would turn to communism as it was right next door. The US had no such compelling imperative, so capitalism was allowed a freer rein.

Drugs+innovations are largely funded by the public sector (see a previous discussion on HN I can't find right now), but in Europe we don't have a predatory healthcare industry.

As for NATO, that was formed to stop the entirety of the Eurasian landmass falling under Soviet control. It is hard to imagine an isolated US fairing too well in that kind of world.

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

#254

Post by Kim_Bruning »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #227
drewg123 wrote: post #110

Nowhere in these comments have I see anybody take the position that decriminalization is not enough; drugs need to be legalized and regulated. I have a close friend whose relative is a heroin addict. According to her, a lot of overdoses are due to almost no "heroin" actually being heroin, rather its fentanyl cut to varying degrees of strength. Not knowing what you're taking, and not knowing how strong it is, can lead…

This is not a strong argument as it doesn't consider all aspects. 1. Public drunkness is still a problem 2. Drunk driving still kills a lot of people. Legalization of alcohol doesn't help.

History shows that making it illegal didn't work either.

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

#255

Post by Eumenes »

skyyler wrote: post #203
Eumenes wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source is my personal experience dealing with individuals involved in addiction. No amount of "experts" claiming we need to legalize hardcore drugs is going to change my opinion, thats for sure.

So you're not even interested in hearing people that actually have done research, you're just going to run with your assumptions? That's a rather emotional place to make an argument, in my opinion.

I'll hear the research, but it won't change my mind. I just want them to stop because its killing them. They aren't young. Every time they use is a major rolling of the dice. Many an ER visits have occurred. I don't really care if the drug is legal or not. Same would go with alcohol if that was the poison of choice. And yes, it is an emotional place to make an argument, because its personal, not some stranger you read about on the 4th page of the Tuesday paper OD'ing (which probably isn't even news anymore).

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

#256

Post by User23 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #23
jgon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd be wrong. Medicaid is fantastic. No copays (nominally there are, but you can just not pay, which obviously street junkies opt for), no premiums, full service.

The only drawback is it represents a kind of prisoner's dilemma defection and when a sufficiently high percentage of the population gets a clue and starts reliably defecting the whole system is going to collapse. Not for lack of payment, but simply for lack of beds, doctors, and nurses.

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

#257

Post by doubled112 »

babyshake wrote: post #205
xkjyeah wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally, fentanyl is legal and regulated. It's used as an anaesthetic.

The only time I've ever been on fentanyl was in a hospital, and the nurse described it to me as the "Michael Jackson drug". I actually enjoyed the gallows humor of the nurses, as I felt it brought down the tension in an otherwise serious environment.

Wasn't that Propofol, a sedative?

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

#258

Post by wcarss »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #181
wintogreen74 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> flood prisons with substance abuse treatment programs As a tax payer it's perfectly reasonable that I don't want to pay for that, though.

Yes. But we are already paying more to many keep these people out of prison than in. $100k/year per unhoused neighbor on fent is hugely expensive, and they aren't even getting treatment in most cases.

Personally, this is where I hope the costs are going to come down with time. I'm content for this to be something we try, and we can measure its costs and efficacy after some real time and investment. The initial outlay and efforts are likely going to have a lot of bespoke work and trial and error, and lack economy of scale.

If after a decade it ends up being very expensive but very effective, or moderately expensive and moderately effective, or expensive and not very effective, we can make better informed decisions -- rather than stick with prison by default, just because it is cheapest for now.

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

#259

Post by 0x0000000 »

babyshake wrote: post #205
xkjyeah wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally, fentanyl is legal and regulated. It's used as an anaesthetic.

The only time I've ever been on fentanyl was in a hospital, and the nurse described it to me as the "Michael Jackson drug". I actually enjoyed the gallows humor of the nurses, as I felt it brought down the tension in an otherwise serious environment.

I thought propofol was the "Michael Jackson drug", not fentanyl.

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

#260

Post by tayo42 »

wcarss wrote: post #248
kazinator wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a critical difference between heroin, and heroin laced with uknown amounts of a fentanyl analog. The adulterated stuff kills even first time people experimenting with drugs. Joe Perry & Steven Tyler (Aerosmith's "Toxic Twins") are still here. Clapton lives. So does Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. All those guys would be long dead if there had been fentanyl lacing back in the 70's.

That's a little bit like the football-betting-sequence fallacy -- if I send a thousand letters out, with 50% predicting team A wins and 50% predicting team B wins, and do so successively for 10 weeks, at the end of the 10 weeks a small number of people will have gotten my letters "correctly predicting" the football outcome 10 times in a row. But of course, I didn't know anything about the games. You can name a few of…

Quick Google says that 20 to 30% of people that try the drug get addicted. So most won't. The worst cases probably just stick out.
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