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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

#601

Post by johnnyanmac »

acchow wrote: post #578
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…

Prohibition also failed horribly. We need a middle ground. What about drug use as a privilege? If you’re living on the street, your litter is all over the street, and you never pay taxes, then you lose your privilege.

I thought we solved this with alcohol already. Can you drink? Yes. are you allowed to be shit faced drunk in the streets? No. Are there lounges to drink safely and responsibly? Yes.

Granted, it may be much harder to make a "drugs bar", but we can use comparable metrics to deem who is too unfit to independently do that stuff and if they need intervention.

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

#602

Post by lazyasciiart »

vineyardmike wrote: post #211
prawn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are many of them going to care? I imagine testing would be useful for pill-takers at festivals, but something that is a daily addiction dominating life seems a different case.

> I imagine testing would be useful for pill-takers at festivals And many people bring test kits to festivals and raves and clubs and bars already. So this is 100% a proven solution for light recreational party usage. I agree with skepticism about addicts (especially someone living on the street, etc)

You are talking about harm mitigation, and when options are made available there is very enthusiastic take-up from even street addicts. If you create a safe injection center people will come and use there, so there is medical care. If you distribute drug test kits they will use them. If you offer clean needles they will use them.

We don’t offer them in most places because (a) nobody wants a safe drug use center near them because drug users will come to it and (b) a really despicable and unfortunately common attitude that harm reduction is bad because it keeps drug users alive.

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

#603

Post by hifreq »

InSteady wrote: post #567
Consultant32452 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two problems with these programs. The first problem is that the people we're really talking about, the ones living/defecating/etc on the street do not want help. The second problem is that in order to want to get better, an addict has to hit their personal rock bottom. Programs that keep people floating above their personal rock bottom are like family members enabling addicts. It ultimately doesn't help them.…

Plenty of people on the streets want all kinds of help. They don't want shit programs with a million hoops and strings attached, nor do they want gross dilapidated shelters also with hoops and strings plus predators prowling around looking to steal their shit (or worse) while they sleep. Also, while the whole rock bottom trope probably holds some truth for many people, when you make every story all about it you kind…

[flagged]

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

#604

Post by johnnyanmac »

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,…

>why we limit this to humans only? In my opinion, is a bacteria, virus, ideology, hate, chemicals, drugs, pollution, technical problems, climate change, ecology causes harm to humans, then it should be equal to harm done by a human directly.

because when you go that granular it's hard to figure out who to blame. is COVID really any one person's fault, even if we narrow it down to a specific patient 0? is that harm intentional and worthy of punishment? Is having a buggy website really "harming a human directly?" And who takes blame? The web dev, the site owner company, the ISP? These start to get unnecessarily nitpicky.

>Why it's illegal to shot someone, but legal to smoke weed near to someone, which leads to addiction and further death?

depends on the drug? Secondhand smoke is a thing but even that has dubious legalities. You're usually not punished for the smoke but for violating the ruls of the premise to not smoke. But nothing is illegal about smoking tobacco in public (as unpleasant as the smoke is).

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

#605

Post by lazyasciiart »

hatefulmoron wrote: post #600
lazyasciiart wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

What circumstance? The clamor to use prison time as a solution to homelessness and drug use?

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

#606

Post by __turbobrew__ »

belkinpower wrote: post #481
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…

What part of Canada? I live in the Seattle area and visited Vancouver for the first time recently, and Vancouver was much visibly worse than Seattle in terms of open drug use and general sketchiness. Obviously there’s a lot of potential selection bias there in terms of what neighborhoods I visited there vs where I spend time in Seattle. But I was still surprised at how bad it was.

In Vancouver the rate of violent crime doesn’t feel that high. There are lots of people strung out of their mind and they will definitely yell at you but I have never heard of anyone in my circle of friends and their circle of friends being assaulted.

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

#607

Post by felizuno »

WalterBright wrote: post #542
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…

What happened to the people who assaulted you? Were they fully prosecuted?

no, the prosecutors office cut deals with both of them because they were a) only able to schedule murder trials and b) scared to face a jury in Seattle

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

#608

Post by beezlewax »

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…

ODs have more than doubled because of fentanyl but I suspect you know this already.

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

#609

Post by hifreq »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #533
dylan604 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, and we can solve drug addiction directly by giving people drugs.

What is free housing? Free as in indefinitely free with no strings attached? Free utilities, free services, free food, perhaps free transportation? Free furniture, free healthcare, free drugs, free clothes, free HOA?

Do you think the violent addicts everyone complains about just need a house, and starting from day one they will become productive members of society?

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

#610

Post by enraged_camel »

xyzzyz wrote: post #552
jandrewrogers wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define “low wages”? Current minimum wage in Seattle is $18.69/hr, which is higher than the median wage in several US States and almost all of Europe. Cost of living is high but not that much higher than the more expensive parts of Europe. There are legitimate causes for the blight in Seattle but lack of jobs and low wages aren’t one of them.

Americans have no idea how high the cost of living is in Europe relative to wages. Median sale price in Seattle is $560/square foot, which is almost exactly $6000/square meter. With minimum wage at $18.69/hr, that's 320 hours of minimum wage work per square meter. For comparison, average price per square meter in Paris is over 10 000 EUR ($10 700), whereas the minimum wage is 11.50 EUR, giving you a ratio of 870 hour…

Not sure if Paris vs. Seattle is a good comparison. The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city. The latter is one of the smaller cities on America's West Coast and is fairly unremarkable.

If anything, I'm stunned that the price for square foot in Paris is only 180% of that in Seattle.

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