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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

#291

Post by iteratethis »

I find it astonishing that nobody has the common sense to consider that the nature of this epidemic is uniquely American, and thus learn from the plenty of developed nations that don't have this problem.

You will barely find any find meth or fentanyl in Western Europe. You won't have zombie blocks nor would they ever be tolerated at this scale. The absurd amount of deaths would trigger urgent and decisive actions.

Nor would frequent petty crimes be tolerated. In the Dutch city that I live, there were imminent threats of looting during the lockdown curfew days. Vast crowds of local men, including the local football hooligans, formed a spontaneous army awaiting the looters.

They would not allow their town to be trashed. Everybody stood for the integrity of their community: citizens, police, businesses. Public disorder is not tolerated, not at a large scale anyway.

The attitude to just let it spiral out of control is anything but "progressive". You have a right to public order, clean cities, consistency in applying justice, it's the basis of a functioning society.

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

jefftk wrote: post #276
anonygler wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by swalling »

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…

   "Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc."
This is not even remotely true.

Everyone in the city, from the mayor [1] to the head of the largest services non-profit [2] has been yelling from the rooftops about the glacial slowness to effectively spend the allocated funding for drug treatment. Until just months ago, Multnomah County has been sitting on tens of millions of unspent funds,[3] and has been perpetually criticized for spending on harm reduction instead of treatment.[4] We actually closed the only local sobering center in 2020!

1. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-mea...

2. https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-l...

3. https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-trac...

4. https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementin...

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

#294

Post by hifreq »

vasco wrote: post #279
hifreq wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I get that. I disagree with the idea that to stop that we need Jesus.

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

#295

Post by John23832 »

akira2501 wrote: post #56
deepfriedchokes wrote: post #12

Drug use is a mental health issue. People take things that make them feel good when they don’t feel good. They’re just self medicating and we need to start treating it as a symptom of an underlying issue rather than the issue itself. Same with the obesity epidemic. It’s not the what, it’s the why.

Yet.. there are people who take things to make them feel good when they already feel good. Further.. the idea that someone is going to improve their situation in any other than the most short sighted terms by "self medicating" with something like Methamphetamine or Heroin is completely ridiculous. I am absolutely not comfortable standing by to see how that story plays out, I know exactly how it plays out, and it's co…

Not all recreational drug users are addicts.

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

#296

Post by chmod600 »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #254
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When it comes to dangerous drugs, nothing "works". We have to choose the least-bad policies.

A lot of people, including me, thought the war on drugs was pretty much the worst policy position. Now I'm seeing that there are (perhaps) worse policies. We need to be quantitative and nuanced, not speak in sweeping characterizations.

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

#297

Post by overgard »

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…

Considering that alcohol is, by far, the most dangerous drug and it's completely legal, I think there's something to be said for your point.

I gotta say though, it's sort of complicated when you're talking about legalizing things that are already legal as prescription drugs (like opiates and benzos). Alcohol is different because it doesn't really have any medical use outside of disinfecting things (it's fairly terrible as an anesthetic or as a tranquilizer), but there's something kind of weird about having former prescription drugs just be legal over the counter. How many people might bypass their doctor and start using strong opiates for pain that might not need it and end up in a bad spot?

I don't think you can go so far as like w/ alcohol where you just show an ID and buy whatever you want, but it does seem like there needs to be some way to ensure the product is safe. Maybe a compromise might be some sort of free testing kits, or something like narcan on hand in a safe space.

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

nine_k wrote: post #234
davesque wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I remember how things were before fentanyl came around (as an outside observer, not as a user) and heroin was a horrible, life-destroying drug addiction back then as well. And I think it was and is convincingly argued that it is much more addictive than alcohol.

Opioids keep the top spot of addictiveness. The second place firmly belongs to nicotine. It's way more addictive than. say, cocaine. Why not ban nicotine, by the same logic as heroin? The key difference is that nicotine is a mere stimulant, while heroin alters your perception, it literally changes the way you see good and bad, because it's the ultimate feel-good substance. I have zero qualms about legalizing LSD, psi…

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by pj_mukh »

felizuno wrote: post #168

So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users? I was beaten nearly to death (in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood) in Seattle in 2020 by two men enabled to descend into meth addiction by permissive policies. In my victim support group I met so many people - innocent people - permanently injured & disfigured like me, or raped…

Were they ever caught? This seems like assault (and battery?) all already illegal.

Your problem doesn’t seem to be drugs but (probably) the defacto police work stoppage? That’s the problem in the Bay Area atleast [1]

https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-...

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

#300

Post by running101 »

rjbwork wrote: post #282
felizuno wrote: post #168

So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users? I was beaten nearly to death (in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood) in Seattle in 2020 by two men enabled to descend into meth addiction by permissive policies. In my victim support group I met so many people - innocent people - permanently injured & disfigured like me, or raped…

I actually don't think we should decriminalize. Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices. There's no reason to fund crime (drug dealers/organized crime), maim and kill users, push users into poverty, and generate and push the externalizes of drug use onto the rest of society. This is the choice we have made and continue to make a society under a prohibitionist regime, decriminalization or…

Illogical thinking
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