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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

#261

Post by jes5199 »

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…

it's not like we have room in the jails either, we still routinely release people due to lack of space

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

#262

Post by etchalon »

I'd be interested to hear from people in large European cities and whether public drug use and homelessness are as big of an issue there as they are here.

I've only been to a handful of European cities, and none seem to struggle with either to the extent we see in larger cities in the US.

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

#263

Post by mullingitover »

Eumenes wrote: post #140
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…

Your argument is tired. There is no such thing as a functional heroin addict. Most don't quit after a 20 year on and off relationship with it. They die and usually cause mayhem in the process - to society, their loved ones, the healthcare system, law enforcement, etc. I'm dealing with a very serious addict in my life right now and how "clean" the drug is makes no difference. They steal and lie non-stop. They cause ma…

> I'm dealing with a very serious addict in my life right now and how "clean" the drug is makes no difference. They steal and lie non-stop. They cause massive amounts of anxiety and stress to people who love them.

There are plenty of people who fit this description, and heroin isn't the root cause of their problem. It's just a symptom of a deeper problem. For every person like this, there's someone who dabbles with heroin/etc and still goes to work every day and has a healthy relationship with their family.

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

#265

Post by Kim_Bruning »

kepler1 wrote: post #38

I commented a few times here over the years criticizing decriminalization as it came up as an option, against loud / vociferous people saying, how can you continue to embrace criminal penalties that clearly aren't working. As if it were crazy to believe that people need laws to obey. I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've m…

If it's criminalized there's no way to go and no way to control things. So that's definitely not the right way.

Decriminalization is thus accidentally necessary to gain a better control of the situation, but then you do need to actually seize control of the situation. There need to be institutions to help get people away from drugs.

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

#266

Post by melvyn2 »

anon291 wrote: post #226

[flagged]

Prohibition increased alcohol-related deaths and created a black-market of products so much worse than the regulated market before or after[0]. I would say that, in fact, prohibition did not work.

And neither does current drug prohibition. Fentanyl deaths are directly caused by the black-market supply of drugs in the US, and it isn't "decriminalized" cities like Portland that are leading these charts[1]. The current drug prohibition just means that the demand that will always exist is being supplied by mis-dosed poison instead of a well-regulated market like modern alcohol (and marijuana in some states).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_Prohibition [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...

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

#267

Post by snapplebobapple »

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…

to me it seems like you need a strongly enforced social norm that doesn't include all the worst bits of drug abuse (crime, public defecation, graffiti, other public nuisance/problem things) regardless of whether you legalize and regulate or make it extremely illegal. My preference would be for legalize and regulate and social order enforcement because it would cause a lot less misery but I don't see how this works if people are going to be allowed to leave needles everywhere, routinely vandalize and break into cars and buildings, etc. We should have never gotten rid of the enforcement aspect for the bad behavior when we we getting rid of the criminal aspect of the drug use.

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

#268

Post by slily »

theossuary wrote: post #200
notyofriend wrote: post #150

Singapore has no drug problems. You might think what they do is extreme but it works.

Well what they do is: - Have a government who owns almost all the land, and provide subsidized housing to over 75% of the citizens. - Provides universal healthcare, again subsidized through the government - And forces quotas for all ethnicities to ensure everyone is equally represented everywhere. So I guess we could try it Singapore's way, but Republicans keep saying it's a bad idea.

If Singapore's economic and social policies were successful, surely people would want to move there? Perhaps skepticism is warranted from teh evil republicanz - the subject of this submission, decriminalization of drug use, was touted largely by left-wingers based on a few similar, seemingly-successful, small-scale efforts in Europe. Now we know how that turned out.

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

#269

Post by 23B1 »

I'm a Portland native, born and raised.

It was great up through the early 90s, and then turned into an absolutely bonkers shithole run by people too dumb and too extremist to be considered even progressive (I support many progressive polices and causes fwiw).

I basically was ran out of my own town when the politicians, police, and moonbat locals – many of whom were not born there – started thinking of Portland as some sort of weird test bed, layering on all kinds of experimental policies and governance. It hollowed out the downtown area, made it nigh on impossible to start a business, and made everything bonkers expensive.

I'm sad to say I had no choice but to leave. All of these decisions left very little opportunity to build a career (many of the businesses left) own a house (NIMBY 'urban planning' made housing unattainable) and of course the streets became as gross as the Mission in SFO.

It's like the worst of the Hippy Boomers were able to enact all of their worst policies in one small town and now it's a microcosm of their weird blend of laissez-faire social policies mixed with maximcally-extractive taxation and fiscal policies.

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

#270

Post by anonygler »

namesbc wrote: post #112

What a diaster of a response. The war on drugs was deadly failure that we should never try again.

It was a failure because it wasn’t enforced uniformly, not because it existed. We need a new War on Drugs, but crack and cocaine should have equivalent (harsh) penalties.
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