Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#101

Post by nemo44x »

gspencley wrote: post #61

It's working just fine. I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc. if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those standards. But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my opini…

> But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies.

Because we invest in people. We pay money to educate them, in many cases feed, shelter, and clothe them and in a variety of other ways. We expect citizens to contribute back into society. Having millions of zombies interested in nothing else than getting high is self destructive not only for the individuals we have invested in but also to our societies general longterm health.

So yes, government does have an active interest in having a healthy populace.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#102

Post by jeffbee »

anon291 wrote: post #99
jeffbee wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But see that is exactly what I am talking about. You cannot — cannot — attribute a change in overdose rate to state policy without examining and controlling for the factors that we know influence overdoses: personal income, homelessness, etc. This article completely fails to examine whether Oregon's changes can be due to a shift in the income among its population.

I'm pretty sure being on the streets as a drug addict also causes loss of income, so you really can't take that into account without taking in cyclic effects.

And yet you have for some reason assigned causality in the case of WV.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#103

Post by andybak »

_blz2 wrote: post #67
gspencley wrote: post #61

It's working just fine. I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc. if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those standards. But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my opini…

Why do you think everyone should get voting rights if there is a section of the society who want to actively harm themselves. What are their votes reflective of?

This is quite frankly, a bizarre take that shows little understanding of drug use or society.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#105

Post by chronofar »

wonderwonder wrote: post #36

If you decriminalize hard drugs, all that happens is that addicts stay addicts, have a higher likely hood of becoming homeless and higher chance of dying. Hard drugs for the most part outside of controlled environments have almost no positive qualities. Drugs like cannabis have medical attributes and can provide benefits. People addicted to hard drugs require treatment, leaving them to their own devices is likely to…

> Not sure what the answer is but just waving a wand and making hard drugs legal is not it.

Make them actually legal (and thus more safe), tax them heavily, use a portion of said taxation to educate properly and then support and rehabilitate those who need it. Don't allow unsafe activities in public places that cause an unsafe environment.

This really isn't that complicated, we've just been under the spell of prohibition for so long waking up can be a bit disorienting.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#106

Post by ikrenji »

wonderwonder wrote: post #36

If you decriminalize hard drugs, all that happens is that addicts stay addicts, have a higher likely hood of becoming homeless and higher chance of dying. Hard drugs for the most part outside of controlled environments have almost no positive qualities. Drugs like cannabis have medical attributes and can provide benefits. People addicted to hard drugs require treatment, leaving them to their own devices is likely to…

problem with this kind of reasoning is that there is very little real data on a world where drugs are decriminalised / legal. while the things you listed could all be negative consequences of such a world, since it was never tried we don't know and its just a conjecture...

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#107

Post by 71a54xd »

I recently visited Portland and is was shocking. Sad because aside from stunning homelessness and crime out in the open it's actually a beautiful quirky city. 1br luxury apts / condos are well designed and reasonably priced. Restaraunts and culture are incredible and feel deeply grounded in community - a far cry from what Austin (my home town) now considers "weird" or cool.

I'd live there in a second if the state / city cleared up the nutty violent "activists" and homeless all over the place.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#108

Post by jokowueu »

vondur wrote: post #65
Demotooodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a novelty right now. In Amsterdam when you go to a music festival you will not see a lot of pod heads. I was one of the few and I'm a German! Look at Portugals drug history. Legalization saved that country!

It looks like Portugal is having some serious issues with decriminalization. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

>cuts funding >Decriminalization doesn't work ! >not shocked

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#109

Post by ddtaylor »

nemo44x wrote: post #101
gspencley wrote: post #61

It's working just fine. I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc. if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those standards. But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my opini…

> But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. Because we invest in people. We pay money to educate them, in many cases feed, shelter, and clothe them and in a variety of other ways. We expect citizens to contribute back into society. Having millions of zombies interested in nothing else than getting high is self destructive not only for the individuals we have invested i…

By that same logic more people are dying or ruining their lives from poor diet and lack of exercise. Should the government be mandating diet and enforcing exercise quotas?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#110

Post by squarefoot »

Decriminalization has nothing to do with limiting the use of drugs. The main purpose is to bring down costs so that criminal cartels will see their profits eroded through competition. This will also reduce other crimes, especially violent ones, because less people will need for example to rob a shop to buy drugs. Of course more easy drugs around mean that initially more people will use them, however that is just the immediate result of having at hand something that once was harder to find. Give it time. We all know that whoever is on drugs won't stop searching for them, no matter the cost, and no matter if that cost is on someone else's life; the choice is between prohibiting something that can't be prohibited effectively, or destroying profits for criminals, which can be very effective.

And then there's the stance by some politicians furiously in favor of prohibition, which smells of conflict of interests to say the least, but that's another story.

Post reply on HN