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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

#271

Post by somewhereoutth »

23B1 wrote: post #249
somewhereoutth wrote: post #132

A counter-point: https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalizatio... > And in Portugal, no distinction is made between “hard” or “soft” drugs, or whether consumption happens in private or public. What matters is whether the relationship to drugs is healthy or not. Interesting. Of course Portugal has a stronger social safety net, indeed stronger social fabric (though sometimes it feels a bit too strong)

Out of curiosity, are you Portuguese or do you live there?

I live here. There is almost no crime, the streets are clean, very few (visible) homeless, good public transport. I wish they'd cheer up a bit though, maybe colour outside the lines occasionally.

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

#272

Post by wcarss »

tayo42 wrote: post #260
wcarss wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I may be wrong, but I thought we were discussing how many regularly-heroin-using people die early, not how many people try heroin once and subsequently become addicted.

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

#273

Post by BizarreByte »

afarrell wrote: post #96
1letterunixname wrote: post #87

The root cause in both instances isn't drugs and so infinite spending or (de)criminalization won't matter. The core issue is hope. In the absence of work for the abled and care for the disabled and housing, there isn't much hope and so crimes, habits, and deaths of despair take hold. Without holistic and comprehensive betterment of people who feel ignored and cheated, there isn't much for this growing sector of socie…

I have come to the conclusion that lots of humans have a religion-shaped hole in their psyche. It is far better to fill it with a stable, local, hope-giving religion. Hymns are a better opiate of the masses than fentanyl.

> I have come to the conclusion that lots of humans have a religion-shaped hole in their psyche.

I increasingly believe the same and I don't believe the vast majority are capable of filling it on their own in a healthy way, but there are a lot of other social factors at play too.

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

#274

Post by vasco »

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…

> She decided to get clean only when she had a close brush with death thanks to fentanyl.

Under your system she would've never decided to get clean then? Also dying much earlier than she would've had to and probably adding a bunch of burden to the health system. People chastice cigarete smokers for much less.

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

#275

Post by fbdab103 »

cpncrunch wrote: post #144
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…

Heroin is very different from Tequila, so I don't think it's fair to compare them just because they are both "drugs". Prior to fentanyl, what was the percentage of high functioning heroin addicts compared to people living on the street? I can't find any research on that question, and I'm somewhat skeptical that your friend is the norm.

That heroin is illegal and prosecuted is going to massively skew the number of people who are likely ever try it or could develop a safe habit around it.

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

#276

Post by jefftk »

anonygler wrote: post #250
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…

Hard disagree. Decriminalizing drugs has skyrocketed schizophrenia and homelessness. Drugs should only be legalized in specific, medically necessary situations. Recreational use should be stigmatized and dealers should be handled as Duterte advocated. The crime of the War on Drugs was that we had double standards, not that we had a War on Drugs.

Do you apply this logic to alcohol?

(And if no to alcohol, then what about marijuana?)

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

#277

Post by BizarreByte »

hifreq wrote: post #245
anon291 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fairy tales. Its human need for attachment to something greater. America has not filled that with anything else. The previous flag waving civic nationalism has become demonized so now there's nothing.

> America has not filled that with anything else That's not an issue that America has to solve (i.e. the government or the society). It's an individual need that every individual is responsible for.

> It's an individual need that every individual is responsible for.

You shouldn't be surprised then when vast amounts of people fail to fill a hole that for the vast majority of human history was filled for them.

I honestly believe most people simply aren't capable of making their on meaning or purpose out of nothing.

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

#278

Post by varelse »

noduerme wrote: post #212
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…

>> decriminalization is not enough; drugs need to be legalized and regulated. This has been an increasingly popular argument here in Portland since decriminalization. It's deployed, generally, in terms of re-criminalizing hard drugs until there's a well thought out framework for safe, regulated legalization. While I agree in principle [edit: let's say I did agree, but my views on this subject have shifted radically s…

Yes drugs should be legalized and regulated nationally just like Portugal did. But also we should absolutely unambiguously no excuses house and feed the homeless the end full stop we have plenty of money. It just needs to be redirected to doing something productive other than paying endless assemblies of bureaucrats competing with each other to virtue signal the loudest.

Because the reason people get hooked on to drugs is they have nothing better to do with their lives and they've run out of Hope but that runs straight into the effective altruist and effective acceleration as the gender here so it's not going to happen.

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

#279

Post by vasco »

hifreq wrote: post #245
anon291 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fairy tales. Its human need for attachment to something greater. America has not filled that with anything else. The previous flag waving civic nationalism has become demonized so now there's nothing.

> America has not filled that with anything else That's not an issue that America has to solve (i.e. the government or the society). It's an individual need that every individual is responsible for.

The individuals are killing themselves with drugs, hence the discussion.

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

#280

Post by thrawy2to15 »

anonygler wrote: post #250
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…

Hard disagree. Decriminalizing drugs has skyrocketed schizophrenia and homelessness. Drugs should only be legalized in specific, medically necessary situations. Recreational use should be stigmatized and dealers should be handled as Duterte advocated. The crime of the War on Drugs was that we had double standards, not that we had a War on Drugs.

> Recreational use should be stigmatized and dealers should be handled as Duterte advocated.

Are you arguing that no recreational or unsanctioned use of any banned substance should be tolerated?

For context:

- MDMA shows promise treating PTSD. Currently Schedule 1 - total ban

- Psilocybin and other psychedelics reportedly beneficial for end-of-life care, notably in the case of cancer patients. Currently Schedule 1 - total ban

- Marijuana is also still Schedule 1 at the federal level

Schedule 1 is normally also a ban on research but luckily we've seen some improvement in this area. Why? Because the illegal market still exists, and people __do__ discover genuine medical uses for currently banned substances

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