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

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

#831

Post by silent_cal » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #412

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…

I'm an American with decades of history traveling to West coast cities. Portland and Seattle in the past few years look completely different than they did even a few years ago. Both cities have always had run down parts, but now it feels like the blight permeates almost everything. Some of my favorite places to visit have either closed entirely or now have limited hours and require me to buzz in at the front door so…

Yeah I was there before 2020 and it was beautiful, I'm surprised to hear what it's like now.

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

#832

Post by u32480932048 » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

LargeTomato wrote: post #805

u32480932048 wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, they're inexperienced with the world and of a background where problems like these are only hypothetical, and therefore very black and white. It's easy to get behind the feel-good answer if you know nothing about the problem other than a Vox explainer you read 5 minutes ago. They don't know what real harm reduction actually looks like, because that would take more than hitting Like and Share. "Wow!…

Respect is for humans. If you rot your brain until you begin to revert to primal instincts the state is under no obligation to accommodate you.

The state is accommodating us by dealing with such people, and we keep the state under control (lol) by not letting them get sloppy with even the worst among us.

That is, the state does in fact have certain obligations, regardless of any personal feelings one may have.

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

#833

Post by local_crmdgeon » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

renegade-otter wrote: post #801

dougmwne wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it still fail horribly. That’s because it was never the laws that were working, but the society and culture as a whole. You can’t bring good laws to a place with a disintegrating social fabric and expect the same results.

Absolutely this. A country needs a healthy government and public employees dedicated and honest. A culture of sacrifice for public good. Not "but meeeeee!" culture. It does not work where the "Deep State" is the enemy and grifters run for Congress to become Twitter trolls.

I don' think this one is on the Republicans, a group that effectively doesn't exist in Portland politics.

This is a progressive failure

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

#834

Post by silent_cal » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

knallfrosch wrote: post #720

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…

This aspect of the discussion truly baffles me. It's like there's noone but the drug users to consider. Oh, do the addicts get enough treatment? Ah, they want to camp next to a school because they find more 'shelter' from the rain there? No problemo! Aren't tax-paying citizens allowed to demand that they be able to walk into a train station that doesn't smell like urine and fecal matter?

They think that if you are a peaceful citizen with a place to live and a job, you are privileged and so the government doesn't have to help you. And if you are a homeless addict or criminal, you are an oppressed victim and deserve the help of the government.

I agree with you, the government is supposed to serve the tax-paying and law abiding citizens. But this oppressor-victim ideology that's spreading everywhere is blinding everyone from seeing it.

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

#835

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #677

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…

Can always look at places that don't have drug problems like Singapore, Qatar or UAE. decriminalization. look at china who also had a crippling opiate problem with opium and it wasn't solve with decriminalization. Opoids have no place in society and there's no such thing as harm reduction when it comes to opioid use besides complete prohibition. I know 4 people who have died from opioid over doses, and just recently…

What are you reffering to wrt Singapore? They have stricter laws than China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapo...

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

#836

Post by huytersd » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

zztop44 wrote: post #744

huytersd wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution is easy. If you’re visibly publicly intoxicated with hard drugs, you go to a special rehab that’s essentially prison without the violent criminals. If you’re already a violent criminal, you get put into a segregated area. You then get forcibly treated. If youv’e stayed clean for a set number of months, you get to leave. None of this shows up on any permanent/criminal record.

Christ, I’ve been visibly publicly intoxicated with hard drugs on a number of occasions (many years ago) while holding down a respectable middle class professional job (and being good at it!). If I’d been forced into months(!!) of rehab I’d have lost my job and had to move cities and/or change industries (it’s a small world and people talk). And the scariest thing (for me personally) is that even if I knew that was a…

You can probably make the same argument for someone with an alcohol DUI but we still deal with that issue severely. We need more of that here.

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

#837

Post by local_crmdgeon » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:51 PM 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…

Absolutely agreed + the second you start shaming people for complaining about this you've lost the plot

People were getting ratfucked online for saying "I don't like watching people shit all over the sidewalk" - so you know what? They moved! Maybe out of Portland, maybe politically, but pretending that smoking fentanyl on the MAX is good and normal is just totally insane.

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

#838

Post by iteratethis » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

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 didn't suggest it's a country-wide problem.

The size of a country isn't an excuse for any of this. You won't find this phenomenon in other large developed countries either, not with these specifics.

This is about laying down the law in a very basic way.

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

#839

Post by iteratethis » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

Inward wrote: post #428

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…

Hmm go to North Korea and let me know about their drug use and violent crime; internet arm chair comments like these just show how out of touch most people on HN are

What are you implying? That the Netherlands, a vastly more progressive nation than the US, is somehow similar to North Korea, an authoritarian state?

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

#840

Post by local_crmdgeon » Tue, Dec 12, 2023, 2:54 PM 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…

"We have to fix every single problem to prevent people from smoking meth in public."

No we don't. This wasn't a problem 10 years ago. This isn't a problem in much, much poorer countries. This isn't a problem in fucking Houston or Tampa or NYC or Boston.

I get that you want to overthrow Capitalism, but the rest of us want to live a normal life without junkies shitting on our stairs