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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

#771

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

freetanga wrote: post #632
flir wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which do you prefer to tack on the end of that: "...except for the disabled" or "...and to hell with the disabled"? Both are widely used.

I have people with disabilities in my family so I know their realities up close - unlike most leftist politicians who only seek them for photo ops. My wife volunteers pro-bono in a foundation that employs solely people with disabilities. They do work (according to their capacities), they get paid a wage, and they pay (little) taxes off it. And they are super proud that they can “pull their weight” and be equals in a…

>unlike most leftist politicians who only seek them for photo ops.

Why the flamebait?

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

#772

Post by doubloon »

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…

So the Shelters are half full? That is higher success rate than most VC startups and cost a lot less too

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

#773

Post by spaceribs »

golergka wrote: post #20
spaceribs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the underlying issue is capitalism itself though?

You're right: if they didn't have food, they wouldn't be able to afford drugs either.

There is an extensive market around drug addiction, be it prisons, police budgets, drug companies, rehab clinics, and of course news media/politics.

You didn't really answer the question and just jumped to your own conclusion.

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

#774

Post by throwaway914 »

foobarian wrote: post #770
xyzelement wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your sharing and open mindedness. It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with. It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc. It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies ar…

How much is the effect exacerbated by Portland being a kind of a magnet? In a large country like the US there is a lot of potential for immigration and making the situation very skewed.

I often feel this is what's happening: Portland and a few other cities around the nation prioritize helping folks in a big way, and we wind up serving a national need not a city need.

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

#775

Post by ipaddr »

achenet wrote: post #766
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't help a person if they don't want to be helped. At the very least you can remove them from the society to make it safe and maybe make the person rethink their life. By shielding a drug addict from the consequences of their wrong life choices you are preventing their potential rehabilitation, unless they've been lost completely, of course.

comment you are replying to said "forced rehab" - this is not sheltering people from the consequences of their actions, it's forcing them to accept them and change those actions. Rather hard examples of this that I've seen have been locking someone up in the psychiatric ward to get them detoxing. Or I have a friend who is a Vietnam vet, who got addicted to heroin whilst there. He ended up getting injured and was in a…

So your plan is to lock them into psychiatric wards. Then let them out and they will be productive members of society because that's how it worked for someone who can back from Vietnam once you heard.

When they get out they don't have a family or job or support system to go back to. They won't seek drugs to ease those pains again?

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

#776

Post by icholy »

Exoristos wrote: post #651
uoaei wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It goes both ways.

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

#777

Post by toyg »

roenxi wrote: post #735
uoaei wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic approach of conservatives: throw wrenches in every part of a welfare system, then point to its failures to justify its dissolution. See: Medicare, public education, etc.

Taking that as an axiom; then what exactly would the plan be to make the welfare system work? Conservatives are frequently going to be in power, they represent about half the votes. If half the voters think something is not an option, then it isn't an option. That is the joy of democracy. There needs to be a consensus to implement policies long term. Assuming you are correct (big assumption, but still) then the only…

Technically, Republicans are not necessarily "half the votes", more like "a third of the votes" which are then joined by another 10-15% of "unfaithful" swing voters - whose opinions don't necessarily overlap 100% with core conservative principles.

Participation rates can also be very low, particularly at local/state level, making that core of strongly-conservative votes actually pretty small in absolute terms.

You can quickly judge the actual opinion of the overwhelming majority of voters on completely abolishing welfare provisions, when you mention a few magic words that happen to extend those provisions to "normies" (medicare etc).

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

#778

Post by red-iron-pine »

foobarian wrote: post #770
xyzelement wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your sharing and open mindedness. It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with. It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc. It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies ar…

How much is the effect exacerbated by Portland being a kind of a magnet? In a large country like the US there is a lot of potential for immigration and making the situation very skewed.

also by the milder climate.

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

#779

Post by fosk »

Intermernet wrote: post #696
oooyay wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Portland. Conservatives do not have anything to do with our city or the county of Multnomah. We haven't elected a conservative since the 80s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_McCready . We're the second highest taxed city in the nation. If you ask me most of our problems come down to fraud/waste/abuse, mismanagement, and dysfunction.

I know this is difficult to digest, but compared to a lot of the rest of the world, almost every US politician is conservative. In regards to Portland, you almost certainly have a problem with the key points you identified, but you also have a problem with the fact that public drug use is intrinsically tied with homelessness. You can't fix one without the other. This involves (in the short term) more public housing,…

You got this wrong: drug use generates homelessness. Most homeless in the US are drug addicts - many of them with serious health conditions partly induced by drug use - and that’s why they can’t hold a job or get a home.

In San Francisco when we give homes to drug addicts, the first thing they do is ripping the sink out to sell it and buy more drugs.

There is a serious drug epidemic that needs to be addressed simultaneously as we try to help the super-minority of legitimate homeless that are bad on their luck and need 2-3 months to find a new job and get back on their feet.

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

#780

Post by czbond »

chmod600 wrote: post #296
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows that making it illegal didn't work either.

When it comes to dangerous drugs, nothing "works". We have to choose the least-bad policies. A lot of people, including me, thought the war on drugs was pretty much the worst policy position. Now I'm seeing that there are (perhaps) worse policies. We need to be quantitative and nuanced, not speak in sweeping characterizations.

To paraphrase an unknown Marine drill Sergeant: "Everyone either needs the carrot or the stick, it's my job to figure out which".
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