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Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

theatlantic.com

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

#141

Post by bostonsre »

chronofar wrote: post #80
Alupis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are…

> This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. These types of generalizations are usually built of straw and mud, but I'll go ahead and respond as someone in said crowd with a "no it's not." There's an implicit assumption here that increased usage is worse than the effects of prohibition, but that's at minimum highly debatable. I tend to think increased usage of a regulated and taxable substance by a…

> I tend to think increased usage of a regulated and taxable substance by a well educated and supported populous is significantly preferable to prohibition and scare tactics

The problem is opioids and other hard drugs aren't regulated, they are just made legal.

Human thought when addicted to hard drugs is not logical. Giving people the freedom to consume them has the effect of allowing them to forfeit their freedom from choice when they become addicted. Making them even more widely available will just cause more to become ensnared in their web.

We are organic machines developed without the influence of hard drugs over millions of years. We don't have complete control over our actions or thoughts. Why do you like sex? Why do you like men or women? Our programming controls this and drug addiction is a similar irrational control loop.

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

#142

Post by brightlancer »

Alupis wrote: post #28
kelnos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some people will start using because they lose the fear of being caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is. Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment…

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are…

> Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended).

There is some evidence (not conclusive yet) that legal access to marijuana reduces abuse of opioids.

I've never used marijuana, I don't like the smell of marijuana, and so I'm not keen on folks using it around me -- but in the grand scheme, pot smokers are not the ones breaking into cars and threatening folks on the train.

> It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.

Are we going to do that for alcohol _use_? What about caffeine _USE_? Caffeine is the most widely abused drug in the US and thousands of auto fatalities every year are due to fatigue, which caffeine perpetuates.

I don't care about drug use. I care about the assaults, the robberies, and the street people who block sidewalks and harass pedestrians and transit users. I'm not keen on excusing their behavior because of their substance _abuse_.

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

#143

Post by tlogan »

rvcdbn wrote: post #133
tlogan wrote: post #121

I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment. The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll s…

We have built a society where the best options for these people are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you. It won’t stop any…

I understand. But what is the solution? Just wait for them to all die? Here in San fransciso we have 3 overdose death per day. That is 40% spike from last years. In 2017 we had 222 overdose death for entire year and we reached that number by march 15h this year.

[1] https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/2021%2005_OCME%20...

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

#144

Post by AbrahamParangi »

The thing that's craziest to me is that the people who believe in decriminalization are typically totally against deregulating pharmaceutical drugs, but all the arguments in favor of one are in favor of the other as well! My body, my choice? Applies equally to experimental cancer therapies and to crack. You might say "oh well the pharma companies are manipulative, they're liars, they can't be trusted" - dear reader, do we really think the street dealers are better?

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

#146

Post by alphazard »

sharperguy wrote: post #8

I always thought decriminalization was in some ways the worst of both worlds. On one hand, keeping the production and trade side illegal continues to perpetuate the underground culture and fund international cartels. Meanwhile their market base increases due to fewer people being afraid of being caught, the product quality is still completely unregulated. Users still need to stay embedded in an an unscrupulous underw…

As you mentioned, decriminalization is not enough. The effort that was spent on enforcement needs to be repurposed on quality control. It's much easier to enforce laws on businesses who want to sell their products openly than on individuals consuming substances in private.

The FDA and DEA should be entirely repurposed to randomly testing all food and drug products and ensuring that the ingredients list is accurate to within a certain margin. Having a single arbiter of good and bad substances has proven to be a failure again and again (remember the Food Pyramid?). I would much rather have access to everything, and know that it is labeled correctly, than have some dysfunctional bureaucracy "looking out for me".

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

#147

Post by S_A_P »

Alupis wrote: post #28
kelnos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some people will start using because they lose the fear of being caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is. Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment…

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are…

Legalize everything!= Everyone should be using drugs. This is just one step in what should be a public health approach to drug use/abuse. Take away the lock them up because they are weak minded degenerates approach to drug use. I don’t see any dissonance in saying that drugs should be decriminalized and or legal in some cases but I also don’t think most people should use drugs regularly. If someone is abusing drugs it should certainly be cheaper to provide them with mental health care than locking them up in jail. Hard drugs like heroin and cocaine would be safer if they were not sold on the black market. I think that is a net positive vs the status quo- which is a game of “Is It Fentanyl?!?”™ currently. Should people be using those drugs? I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t want to even if I could buy them from a store. As for cannabis, I’m convinced that for 90+% of the populous* it’s safer than alcohol.

*I think anyone with family history of schizophrenia should avoid weed and probably all intoxicants.

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

#148

Post by z0r »

rvcdbn wrote: post #133
tlogan wrote: post #121

I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment. The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll s…

We have built a society where the best options for these people are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you. It won’t stop any…

I think you're oversimplifying things a little bit. Some people will try e.g. heroin and get hooked due to curiosity. Some people do derail otherwise promising lives with drug and alcohol use.

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

#149

Post by ecshafer »

Supporting legalization / decriminalization of hard drugs is a luxury belief. If you’re in a nice rich circle it’s easy to believe it doesn’t harm anyone except yourself. If you are around people that become drug addicts, it becomes apparent that it drastically harms everyone around them, themselves probably not the most. You can only see so many addict parents throw away the money for kids food, or pawn of their kids PlayStation for drugs / gambling / etc before you see a lot of things aren’t as simple as it’s a free country.

Personally: drugs should be illegal, but the punishment should be rehab and life stabilization not prison. Drug selling, production, and smuggling should have the harshest possible punishments.

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

#150

Post by antisyzygy »

Alupis wrote: post #28
kelnos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some people will start using because they lose the fear of being caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is. Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment…

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are…

Alcohol is one of the most harmful drugs ever. It leads to all sorts of societal problems like early deaths, domestic abuse, traffic accidents, workplace accidents, even murder because it reduces inhibitions.

But somehow we're ok with selling unlimited quantities to people.

Most opiates are downright docile by comparison. A person passes out and can't harm anyone anymore.

Legalization would mean opiates are regulated. You can only get a certain strength. You can only buy so much per visit. Purity is regulated so you wouldn't accidentally get Fentanyl laced stuff and die.

There should be treatment options, of course, because it's the right thing to do, and it's also much cheaper than fixing the damage addicts can do, and also cheaper than the cost throwing them in prison.

Generally speaking drug addicts are actually self-medicating something anyway, it's like a slow suicide attempt due to some mental trauma or other mental illness like schizophrenia.

The OP is right. Decriminalization is the worst of both worlds.

For a long time we got use to not seeing as many drug addicts because a lot of them were thrown in prison where you don't see them anymore. Each one costing tax payers a full time wage, 35k per year per prisoner.

Decriminalization means you see more addicts out on the streets, but they're still getting overly strong, even laced stuff on the black market and are taken advantage of by predators.

Where marijuana legalization occurred there are purity limits on things like edibles. And you can only buy so much at once. It hasn't lead to really any problems but of course marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs out there. It's far less harmful than alcohol, so it might not be the best example.

I'd say alcohol is a better comparison to opiates and other hard drugs.

Legalization is the better path. We already should know better via our exercise in alcohol prohibition.

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