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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

#511

Post by willy_k »

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…

> And remember - we did have a long experiment with legally prescribed opioids, and their widespread availability contributed to the current addiction crisis.

Well yeah, when you have criminally-encouraged over prescription of highly addictive, fairly dangerous drugs, you’re going to create an addiction crisis, but the actual deaths happening now are due to the unavailability of those same prescription drugs. Before the prescription crackdown and fentanyl prevalence, some people who got addicted turned to heroin, and some of those people ODed, but now nearly every addicted individual only has access to fentanyl-laced street opiates.

Methadone clinics are a decent example of how regulation helps this issue.

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

#512

Post by coldtea »

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…

>So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users?

That doesn't score virtue points in hipster society.

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

#513

Post by hedora »

Aurornis wrote: post #412
BizarreByte wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Canadian who travelled to Seattle recently and I found that city legitimately scary downtown. The addicts were unstable and violent like nothing I'd ever seen, even in some of the worst parts of our country. Walking through downtown Seattle at night with a suitcase trying to find my hotel is the first time in my life I thought I was about to be attacked or robbed, but thankfully I only had stuff thrown at me by…

I'm an American with decades of history traveling to West coast cities. Portland and Seattle in the past few years look completely different than they did even a few years ago. Both cities have always had run down parts, but now it feels like the blight permeates almost everything. Some of my favorite places to visit have either closed entirely or now have limited hours and require me to buzz in at the front door so…

I recently visited Downtown Seattle, and most people I encountered shared your opinion, but based on their stories, it’s not that bad by current standards.

Honestly, it’s much better than I’m used to. In a day of walking around, only one drugged out person was screaming uncontrollably. When he saw me, he politely asked for a light, and I said no, so he went back to screaming at nothing in particular.

It’s not like I was tripping on human feces (SF, post-pandemic, though they seemed to have cleaned things up a bit for APEC) or needles (various cities in Europe, pre-pandemic).

I don’t mean to trivialize the problems in Seattle. It is much worse than it was. However, it’s better than average these days.

At least in California, housing shortages are a big root cause, as is the broken approach to mental health care: It’s basically illegal to treat someone during a psychotic episode until they’ve already committed some serious violent crimes.

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

#514

Post by briHass »

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…

I thought the drug laws in question were, or rather had to be, enacted at the state level. Why does the issue seem to be most pronounced in Portland but not as significant in the rest of Oregon?

What would be different if the experiment was done on a national scale? It seems to me that you would still see the worst impacts confined to a few major cities. I would hypothesize that other factors come into play like lax enforcement/penalties for petty crime, availability of free support services, and general sentiment/tolerance of degeneracy (though it sounds like that is changing.)

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

#515

Post by hedora »

Aurornis wrote: post #392
rjbwork wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices. Having traveled to Portland recently and witnessed the public drug problem first hand, I have no idea how anyone would think that increasing availability of the drugs would improve the situation. The only thing legalization and widespread availability would help is reducing deaths from tainted drugs. While that is a significant problem, anything…

Sociologists recently performed a large multi-region study of homelessness, drug use, etc.

It turns out that there’s no real correlation between having drug addicts on the streets and the level of drug use in the area or even mental illness. Unemployment doesn’t even predict homelessness, and neither does weather, or laws pertaining to the homeless.

By far, the best predictor is housing affordability and availability.

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

#516

Post by asynchronous »

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…

You’re assuming a populace that doesn’t already have 90% of what you just proposed and still ignores it instead to commit immoral acts and destroy society

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

#517

Post by magicalhippo »

boh wrote: post #399
pcthrowaway wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialize the drug distribution then. The government can manufacture and distribute drugs at dirt cheap prices. I don't want legal drugs for me, but to get rid of the criminal distribution networks, and reduce the lengths addicts need to go to in order to procur drugs (which may often culminate in robbery and theft)

Why can "the government" distribute drugs at dirt cheap prices? Maybe you come from a country where that happens but in the US the government couldn't distribute masks during a pandemic. Plus cheaper, easier accessible drugs lower crime, overdoses...how?

The way Ive heard this done is you get a prescription from you doctor, you go to a dedicated facility where you get your prescribed dose and fresh gear, and you have to take your dose there under supervision by medical staff.

This lets the addicts get their hits without overdosing, without them having to steal or sell themselves to buy the next hit, and they're not funding narco cartels and terrorists.

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

#518

Post by jorvi »

throwaway44773 wrote: post #463
jorvi wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parent comment was complaining that legal consumption made the environment threatening. What the top comment is implying as far as I can see is that going soft on drugs (“philosophical”, “internet argument”) is a solution for pen-pushers. Fucked up as his story may be, what has the war on drugs really ended up accomplishing? Do we really think amping it up will make things better? Legalization combined with har…

All well and good: allow everyone to use as many legalized drugs as they want, but enforce the other laws on those people. Don’t allow anyone to camp in the street, don’t let them steal with impunity. If they want to get wasted on drugs, they should manage to not cause harm to normal citizens.

I could certainly agree with that. Just take a page out of alcohol management. Many cities across the world already have pretty strict laws against public alcohol use. And they send more police to places where drunks are more likely to congregate and cause issues, like around bars at Saturday and Sunday.

What’s an unmentioned but relevant issue to me is how things like MDMA and ketamine (users are less harmed and harmful than with alcohol) are lumped in with hardcore opioid and meth abuse. There’s “hard”drugs and then there’s HARDdrugs.

I’d rather see the really hardcore stuff not even sold in specialized stores with the other stuff, but rather directly distributed through places similar to methadone clinics. They can give whoever wants the drug the full PR on how this substance very likely will get a grip on you and demolish your life. Clinics themselves are quite grim, making the whole atmosphere around recreational use less enticing. And you can put a higher age limit like 21 or even 24 on it.

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

#519

Post by gruez »

hedora wrote: post #515
Aurornis wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices. Having traveled to Portland recently and witnessed the public drug problem first hand, I have no idea how anyone would think that increasing availability of the drugs would improve the situation. The only thing legalization and widespread availability would help is reducing deaths from tainted drugs. While that is a significant problem, anything…

Sociologists recently performed a large multi-region study of homelessness, drug use, etc. It turns out that there’s no real correlation between having drug addicts on the streets and the level of drug use in the area or even mental illness. Unemployment doesn’t even predict homelessness, and neither does weather, or laws pertaining to the homeless. By far, the best predictor is housing affordability and availability…

Link to study?

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

#520

Post by tomjen3 »

chmod600 wrote: post #355
rjbwork wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably as many regulations as there are on alcohol or tobacco or pharmaceuticals (which I'm also not a fan of the doctor/pharmaceutical gated access to other drugs). If you produce it has to be pure, tested, not adulterated, with standards for production facilities. If you consume, only in particular establishments or at home, and you can't drive while under the influence. If someone breaks those regulations, then…

So you'd arrest all of the homeless addicts and put them in jail for consuming in an unapproved place?

Why not?

They can get help if they want to get over the addiction and otherwise they can get a job so they can get a place to do drugs legally.

They are a part of society and their actions have negative consequences for others. We regulate that.

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