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

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

#651

Post by Exoristos » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #631

jmcphers wrote: post #82

I live in the Seattle area, which is struggling with public drug use just like Portland. Like Portland, we've lived for decades with very progressive politicians who have lead successful decriminalization efforts and spent huge sums of public funds on treatment and harm reduction programs. After several decades and many, many millions of dollars spent, the problem is, by every measure, absolutely the worst it's ever…

Harm reduction and rehab still only treats the symptom, not the cause. The cause is financial instability brought on by insecurity in housing, food access, etc. It's an issue of human dignity in the economic sphere that drives people to such depths, not recreation. Unfortunately we still have a large portion of the population who believe that one must deserve to live a dignified life, and then apply all sorts of cave…

It's the other way around. They've lost their jobs and their homes -- and their friends -- and their families, because of drugs.

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

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Post by yanderekko » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:11 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #637

achierius wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conservatives who run Portland and Oregon?

You will note of course that the rules and regulations around how to implement these things are always 'bipartisan' and meant to stir up as little backlash as possible. There's many opportunities to install bottlenecks and roadblocks in systems that end up shaping the entire way they function. To some extent it is progressives anticipating conservative backlash but there's plenty of lines in plenty of laws written in…

Are you seriously attributing public sector bureaucratic dysfunction to some sort of subversive public sector conservative operatives, or vague regulatory poison pills that you cannot actually point to here?

It seems a lot more intuitive to believe that you cannot just legislate that all government employees act selflessly towards the Greater Good, and the Homeless Industrial complex is a real thing that is not necessarily working in the interests of the public. Observing waste, fraud, and abuse and reflexively saying "this must be the fault of conservatives somehow" is just sorta sad.

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

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Post by cjwilliams » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:12 AM UTC

vore wrote: post #50

kepler1 wrote: post #38

I commented a few times here over the years criticizing decriminalization as it came up as an option, against loud / vociferous people saying, how can you continue to embrace criminal penalties that clearly aren't working. As if it were crazy to believe that people need laws to obey. I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've m…

The problem is that the people using drugs out in public are already at rock bottom: there aren't many punishments you can use to deter that, short of putting them in jail and when they come out they're just going to be using drugs in public all over again. I'm somewhat receptive to the idea of mandatory treatment but as it stands, "enforcing some harsh laws" doesn't do anything to curb recidivism – temporarily incar…

What about the obvious punishment: Taking their drugs away.

Doing so improves the addicts life in the medium-long term, and provides an immediate consequence. Its something that many addicts actually want, that society wants, yet no one has the balls to actually do it.

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

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Post by VintageCool » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:12 AM UTC

plandis wrote: post #222

cortesoft wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has a viable option for not living on the street I guess it depends on how we define viable. In my experience working with the homeless, there are a lot of valid reasons shelters are avoided; they can be more dangerous, don't allow pets (who are sometimes the only companions they have), and don't allow families or couples. Whether that is viable or not depends on how you use the word.

I really doubt homeless people are good pet owners. Food scarcity, lack of medical care for your pets, etc, etc…

24/7 companionship, with owners that don't leave all day for work...

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

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Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:14 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #610

xyzzyz wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to take anything away from your post but Seattle has roughly half the GDP of Paris with less than a third of the population. The past is the past, if you wanted to place a bet on the future, I wouldn’t take Paris over Seattle. Seattle isn’t just tech, it is one of the major deepwater ports on the Pacific Rim and with a famously diversified industry. It is still on the upward part of its trajectory.

Seattle is not a cosmopolitan global city, this is true, but Paris wishes it had Seattle’s economic dynamism by almost any measure. Like many European cities, its status is the accumulated capital of a prior era that is not being replenished at replacement rate. I have my qualms about Seattle but European cities are largely worse when looking forward.

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

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Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:15 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #610

xyzzyz wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The former is the crown jewel of France and a historic world-class city.

How is this relevant to my point, which is that in Paris (and most of major European metros), the prices-to-incomes ratio is much worse than in Seattle, and pretty much anywhere in US? In what way it is a crown jewel, if, by US standards, 3/4th of the population barely makes the ends meet?

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

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Post by ApolloFortyNine » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:15 AM UTC

notfed wrote: post #318

cpncrunch wrote: post #144

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". Prior to fentanyl, what was the percentage of high functioning heroin addicts compared to people living on the street? I can't find any research on that question, and I'm somewhat skeptical that your friend is the norm.

> 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…

>Very true, alcohol is much worse by most metrics

>I've met good people addicted to heroin. They've been through more hell than the rest of us can ever understand, almost entirely because of those times when they couldn't access it. If I could press a button to forever ban them access to any opioid, I'd press that button; they'd get over it in a few months and thank me. But that's impossible. The second best option is to allow them access to a clean, low-cost, prescription of it for the rest of their life.

How can you say both of these things? People who try to act like alcohol is worse than Heroin do more harm than good, but you even seem to understand it is worse with your last paragraph.

Of the hundreds of millions of users of alcohol, surely we don't even have to look up a study to find that the percentage of people who "been through more hell than the rest of us can ever understand, almost entirely because of those times when they couldn't access it" is less than Heroin.

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

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Post by prmoustache » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:17 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #145

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…

Well, also the only reason a lot of people turned to heroin in the first place was that OxyContin was taken away from them. There was a lot of illegal OxyContin use but most of it was well regulated and under the control of doctors and pharmacists.

Well a lot of reasons people turns to drugs in the USA is because doctors and pharmacists give them strong painkillers way to easily to begin with.

For instance oxycodone and many powerful painkillers are afaik not available as tablets in many countries, only given through IV's and injections in hospitals for serious enough conditions, or under serious constraints like palliative treatments. If you are recovering from an injury and are allowed to leave hospital, all what you should be allowed to take is paracetamol or ibuprofen for a limited time and that's it.

We shouldn't have to enter war against pain. Pain is not necessarily harmful, they are useful signals that can let people assess their recovery and physical state. Trying to avoid pain is trying to avoid reality. It is deemed to fail.

Nobody should take opiods painkillers for minor injuries and ailments, it just doesn't make sense.

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

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Post by INTPenis » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:19 AM UTC

You can't decriminalize or legalize hard drug use without first tackling the reason people use drugs. Otherwise they'll just end up in downtown again, shooting up in public.

And you can't ban public drug use unless you want to build a lot of new jails.

So the answer is to put all drug users into one place, like The Wire. It'll be the nastiest place on earth, but at least all other places will be prettier.

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

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Post by beezlewax » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 7:22 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #616

beezlewax wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cigarettes kill 7x as many as fentanyl every hour, day, week, month, and year. One is available without prescription on every streetcorner, with use allowed in public in proximity to others, and the other is a public health epidemic.

That being the case doesn't negate the fact that cigarette users are not turned into some version of the walking dead but who'd do literally anything for a fix.

Tobacco has a lot to answer for but it isn't the same kind of issue at all. It doesn't destroy communities so directly.