Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

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

#531

Post by runarberg »

graeme wrote: post #389
notfed wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heroin is very different from Tequila, so I don't think it's fair to compare them just because they are both "drugs". Very true, alcohol is much worse by most metrics, both in terms of number of addicts, number of deaths/year [1][2] and general damage done to the body. [3][4]. (I'm not trying to be cynical, just stating facts.) > Prior to fentanyl, what was the percentage of high functioning heroin addicts compared…

Those stats aren't per capita. That page says 902,000 Americans use heroin annual and 14,000 die. That is a 1.55% fatality rate. And that is strictly overdoses. Any death to which heroin contributed but isn't an overdose isn't counted. 141,000 Americans die from the effects of alcohol each year. That would include factors such as increased heart attacks, etc. It is not merely looking at deaths from delerium tremens o…

The per capita number only matter if you believe that legalization would increase the number of heroin addicts. There is no reason to believe that, and any legalization effort should be done to prevent that as much as possible.

I know drug consumption usually go up when legalized, but a regulated heroin market would ideally be under very strict regulation, much stricter then alcohol or weed. It would most likely involve getting a prescription and buying it at a pharmacy. There would probably be strict no advertising and no branding. As well as a strict non-profit requirements for makers and distributes.

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

#532

Post by felizuno »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #362
felizuno wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, please go to a victim support group and summon the courage to say that to somebody's face.

In these groups is the consensus view you've all come to that addiction is to blame and nothing else of note? Any shared group feeling about overall policy solutions? Or everyone thinks if drugs were maximally criminalized they wouldn't be there? I'm genuinely curious but I'm also biased. I was a homeless street addict myself for a long time and the only way I ever got out was a combination of harm reduction and expe…

Thanks for your comment, it's good to have perspectives from other people with real life experiences. It sounds like you're in a better place which is great to hear :)

Me and most people I met who were victimized by drug users "blame addiction" in the narrow sense that we don't think the people who victimized us would have behaved that way in the absence of the drugs. I don't think the general attitude was that drug users are bad people, more that drug use can result in people acting in ways that they otherwise wouldn't. I certainly don't think using any drug reduces a person's human value.

I'm in support of targeting pathways and outcomes that I think might be similar to yours. We probably have different perspectives on some forms of harm reduction and agree on others, which I think is inevitable based on our different experiences. I think we agree that medical attention and pathways to overcoming addiction outside of jail are important ingredients to a successful recovery.

To me it's not so much about punishing drug use (jail time), it's about stopping drug addiction (intervention and recovery). For example I think intervening in such a way that a user is confirmed to get at least a few hours of sleep before potentially using meth again would be a big start.

I'll admit that I support confiscating drugs when found, but I'm not advocating that arrest is always appropriate. I am in favor of punishing selling meth, which I acknowledge is perhaps hypocritical given my other beliefs knowing that plenty of people sell to support their habits.

I do think it's important to have a mechanism of mandatory intervention, and my non-lawyer understanding is that criminalizing drugs is really the only way to put mandatory intervention on the table. I met mothers who could not force their children into rehab, for example. I should be clear that I don't feel this way about all drugs, but I think that methamphetamine specifically poses a risk to the safety of both users and people around them that merits mandatory intervention.

If we had functional mechanisms to to enact mandatory interventions for users that were non-criminal I'm definitely open to that. Depending on the targeted success rate it seems like inpatient detox + rehab would be required in many cases, and I am simply not aware of non-judicial way we can force a person into those circumstances against their will (which in the case of meth I admit I support even if that opinion is controversial).

I am not an expert, but nonetheless I'm now entangled with the topic as one that defines significant aspects of my life (loss of smell and hearing, PTSD, facial disfiguration). I think we can do better than we have been, both recently and since Nixon, but I think that having tough conversations is part of how we'll get better. My experience is that people in my situation frequently have our perspectives invalidated as "politically incorrect" or otherwise irrelevant (not what you're doing BTW thank you for your perspective), and I wanted to speak up to make sure people know that we exist and we don't want our numbers to grow.

Congratulations on your recovery, and FWIW I really like your your username/giraffes :)

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

#533

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dylan604 wrote: post #411
namesbc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permanent Housing is the only solution. Shelters are at best temporary to survive a cold night, but they are not a solution for a sustainable life.

The only solution to what? While it might get the off the street, it will not cure the addiction. Are you then going to say that someone must be sober before receiving housing? So, again, what is it solving that it is the only thing that can solve it?

You solve homelessness directly by giving people housing.

Free housing paid for by people like me, and ideally others, who are more than happy to take what I make and give it to people who need it more than I do.

And you don’t need to be rich to do it. It’s a decision on how much money etc you actually need to be fulfilled.

If that takes a zombie proof bunker and multiple houses and first class flights and…and… then that’s on your head that you prefer to comfort yourself than take care of others.

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

#534

Post by ImJamal »

overgard wrote: post #297
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 terrib…

Alcohol is only more dangerous because so many more people use alcohol over hard drugs. When you look at the per capita rate, hard drugs kill more people.

Another poster did the math here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38608506

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

#535

Post by UtopiaPunk »

thegrim33 wrote: post #496
theklr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly they never fixed the supporting issues, low wages, inability of affordable housing at pace to keep up with growth. It’s like they just thought giving an aspirin was going to cure the flu.

This is basically just a moving the goalposts argument. The public was told that the policies would fix/help/address the problem. The public was conned into throwing literally billions of dollars at these policies and programs. And then after the programs fail, you can't just say "well of course it failed, we didn't do X and Y". If that's the case, we should never have spent billions of dollars on programs and polici…

Cities primarily need affordable and low income housing. If you're trying to deal with your demons sleeping under a bridge, you're going to get warped. The social safety nets in this country are so inadequate, so when people fall, they fall hard.

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

#538

Post by sneakerblack »

Aurornis wrote: post #405
iteratethis wrote: post #291

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. No…

> 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. FYI, most American cities aren't like this. The article describes Portland for a reason: They're one of a small number of cities that experimenting with decriminalization (combined, theoretically, with treatment pr…

I'm not too familiar with the situation in Portland, but I have heard that programs which decriminalize drugs and provide care centers are not effective without existing social nets such as solid unemployment programmes and public health programmes that treated addicts can use to get themselves out of the socio-economic hole they got themselves into

Maybe the US is lacking in those programmes and is why the drug legalization programme is not effective in Portland?

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

#539

Post by ToucanLoucan »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #130
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, we continue empowering our state-sponsored thugs to harass, detain, charge and imprison more and more people for the use of substances we've decided are too bad for them, while we continue selling cigarettes, alcohol, etc. to everyone else? Decriminalization is the only ethical way to move forwards. For decades now we have abused our own populace and those of other countries to the point of parody in the nam…

> it has failed, just like prohibition did Prohibition was a massive success where did you get the impression it didn't work? Nothing has ever reduced domestic violence or alcohol related deaths as much. Even after being repealed it fundamentally changed how Americans interact with alcohol; how much people drink is still massively below what is was pre-prohibition. > Burn it down, and start over. They did and the who…

> Prohibition was a massive success where did you get the impression it didn't work? Nothing has ever reduced domestic violence or alcohol related deaths as much.

It also more or less created organized crime in the United States, and laid the foundations for every illicit-business-at-scale that would follow it. Of course it reduced alcoholism: alcohol was illegal, and anything made illegal will be necessarily reduced in availability. But it didn't get rid of it, and it made the alcohol that remained far more dangerous:

- The economics of smuggling meant that lighter alcohol like beer and wine were far less profitable to transport than hard liquors like whiskey, bourbon, vodka, and moonshine. SO MUCH moonshine.

- Because the aforementioned products were illegal, there was now zero government oversight involved in their production and distribution, meaning you often had no idea what the fuck you were actually buying and if it was any good, or hell, even safe to consume. Much like the war on drugs, and, if you wanna get REAL political, the fall of Roe v Wade, making it illegal, be it booze, smokes, pot, meth, or abortion doesn't make it not happen: it makes it unsafe.

- Worse still, the legal issues meant that if a particular establishment was selling unsafe liquor, you couldn't do shit about it because, again it's illegal and any report to authorities about the lack of safety put you in legal hot water. This meant the enforcement that did exist was basically down to the aforementioned organized crime rings, who didn't bother with a jury trial, they'd just put you in a hole out in the woods.

And, naturally, no taxes are paid on all this commerce that is very much still happening, and is riskier to the people engaged in it, to suit the puritan sensibilities of a loud minority. Which is probably a big part of why it was no longer the law of the land. And that's all before you consider the fact that it flies directly in the face of all the individual freedom that this country's supposed to be built on in the first place (not that that's usually true, but in such matters, I think we should strive for it.).

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

#540

Post by lmm »

bglazer wrote: post #470
CydeWeys wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the right call, and closer to the way we used to run things -- people acting a nuisance in the city weren't tolerated. We need to go back to it.

Why did we stop?

Feels like a follow-on from the "white flight" phenomenon. The rich and/or influential (that is, middle-/upper-class, but Americans aren't used to thinking that way) people who set policy for a city no longer live or even spend any time downtown. They push for the policies they think are right, but there's no feedback mechanism to tell them what effect they're actually having.
Post reply on HN