To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:53 AM UTC

oneshtein wrote: post #561

dylan604 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With my personal experience of knowing so many addicts that have been in/out of various recovery programs, I'm totally at a loss. I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want, but that's back when I thought people were only doing things for recreation. I didn't have experience with true addicts until I was older. I've even played with liking the idea of a version of The Wire's Hamsterdam on the sol…

> I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want ... unless this harms other, isn't? Drug addicts are causing harm and are burden to society, so why libertarians support them? In liberal philosophy, value of human life is infinite, thus all humans are equal, thus it's not allowed for someone to cause harm or abuse others. However, why we limit this to humans only? In my opinion, is a bacteria, virus,…

What nonsense is this? Smoking weed next to someone does not lead to addiction. Every place that I am familiar with some form of legalized marijuana consumption says you can't do it just any old place you feel like. So this is also just more BS being spread. You have a very misconstrued understanding of something, and now you're calling it libertarianism.

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

#592

Post by InSteady » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:54 AM UTC

ninth_ant wrote: post #113

qingcharles wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a hard problem to solve. I work with drug and alcohol addicts regularly and addiction is such a damned nightmare. And every homeless person hates shelters. They have way more rules than prisons and all of the drama. I don't know what the solutions are :(

The fact that shelters have "drama" and "rules" is not a compelling reason for someone to make a home in an area that is intended for public use, and render it unusable and unsafe for others. Is this really a hard problem to solve? I can certainly buy the argument that criminalizing homelessness doesn't make sense when the "criminal" has no other options. But if someone has a viable option for not living on the stree…

They are going to live on the street whether you think it's ok or not. Homeless people avoiding shelters has been a thing since looong before homelessness was even talked about in terms of decriminalizing (and legalized drugs were a literal pipe dream). Having talked to many homeless people over the years, shelters really do sound quite awful, actually worse than jail in many ways.

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

#593

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:54 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#594

Post by bbor » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:55 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #129

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…

The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for t…

  It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either

Seems like a hard claim to back up. What would “moving” the homeless from, say, Portland look like? Setting up a giant slum on Mount Tabor? Building a network of trailer parks? I can’t imagine any answer to “let’s concentrate all these undesirables somewhere where we don’t have to look at them and they can’t interrupt us” that ends up being a nice trip for said undesirables

Think about why homeless people go to downtown centers of big cities: community, institutional support nearby, income, tradition, and (relative) safety from police. How would you turn that back? What do you do if someone walks from your camp back to downtown?

I totally understand your frustration, but our failure so far should lead us to examine the obvious structural issues at fault here, and not abandon our fellow man and give in to the more basic instincts to push them away

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

#595

Post by alostpuppy » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:56 AM UTC

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #310

swalling wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 m…

Right, but the plan has still failed. If all the key players are on board and you can't even begin to implement the plan, then it was a bad plan, and the people who developed it had little comprehension of reality. We should not attempt this elsewhere.

So this might be a problem specific to Portland. The government is structured to fail. Hopefully it changes.

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

#596

Post by InSteady » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:58 AM UTC

notyofriend wrote: post #161

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.

How can someone pushing themselves to the limit of heroin od have anything sustainable.

Kind of valid. In Portland "housing first" has been all the rage, but having lived with pretty severe addiction for some years, and spent lots of time around fellow addicts in considerably worse circumstances, it's pretty hard to imagine that a house on its own is some kind of solution. Especially when compared to a support network and high quality addiction treatment, medical care, and mental health services. In terms of sustainable recovery, the former is a luxury, while some combo of the latter are essential requirements. Of course, having all of them is by far the best.. man, addiction is a bitch.

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

#597

Post by johnnyanmac » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:59 AM UTC

swalling wrote: post #293

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 m…

So, how and why are they "sitting on unspent funds"? Are there delays in building plans or legislature slowing stuff down?

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

#598

Post by alostpuppy » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 5:59 AM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #66

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…

This is such a hard problem to solve. I work with drug and alcohol addicts regularly and addiction is such a damned nightmare. And every homeless person hates shelters. They have way more rules than prisons and all of the drama. I don't know what the solutions are :(

We appreciate you

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

#599

Post by singlepaynews » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 6:00 AM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #221

ratg13 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think other cities bussing and flying homeless people out west outweighs every possible policy change. We’ll never know if any of these policies stood a chance due to the USA viewing the west coast as a dumping ground for homeless people. Next time you’re passing by these people, ask them where they are from originally. Locals are like 20% of the problem.

Where I live (central Oregon), this is not the case. More than 80% of our homeless population are people that were born and raised here, and were priced out of housing and onto the streets due to housing prices skyrocketing to eyewatering levels. It has tripled in the last ten years, with a 1-br apartment going for under $600 in 2013 now going for $1700. The homelessness here is homegrown, not imported. Portland is b…

Agreed. This suggests to me that homelessness and drug use may be orthogonal problems.

If you triple my rent over the next 10 years, without raising my income, then I'm gonna be homeless. No drug use necessary, batteries included, no assembly required.

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

#600

Post by hatefulmoron » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 6:00 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #573

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the plan has still failed. If all the key players are on board and you can't even begin to implement the plan, then it was a bad plan, and the people who developed it had little comprehension of reality. We should not attempt this elsewhere.

“They did everything except what would work! Let’s all give up and go back to things that definitely don’t work. It’s the only option.”

It's always interesting when someone assumes that failed strategy X would have obviously worked if only had it been pursued even harder.. you might be right, but it seems like an odd assumption to make given the circumstance.