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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

#251

Post by setr »

darth_avocado wrote: post #230
anon84873628 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly the prohibition on drugs is not preventing those people from accessing them. Obviously rehabilitation would be ideal. But all else being equal, it would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer.

> would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer. Drugs are never going to be safer. If FDA approved painkillers can get you addicted, I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get. And making them cheaper is only going to create more problems. Prohibition doesn’t prevent people from accessing drugs. But that doesn’t mean we make it easily accessible. Theft is illegal, but it doesn’t stop people from stealing. T…

Safer drugs is usually referring to not getting drugs cut with other unknown shit. A common scenario is heroin from dealer A being mixed, then you switch to dealer B and get it pure (or at least more so) but not knowing that, you take the same dosage and overdose

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

#252

Post by mattnewton »

dmode wrote: post #223
brightlancer wrote: post #186

Rubbish. Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for the mere _use_ of a substance. (Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction, physical or psychological.) If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly regulated, so…

But doesn't alcohol trigger a wildly different reaction than hard drugs ? Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucination and make you violent ? And these are triggered very very easily by using a small amount of meth or fentanyl. To get to a comparable state with alcohol, you would have to drink copious amount, but then you are more likely to be passed out than exhibit violent behavior. I agree with y…

> Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucination

Sounds like acute ethanol withdrawal aka delirium tremens https://g.co/kgs/BHB6p9

> and make you violent ?

People getting violent with alcohol doesn’t need a citation I trust?

These are basically all the arguments for prohibition. Temperance movements work but legal prohibition doesn’t seem to.

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

#253

Post by downvotetruth »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #200
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…

I used to strongly support people getting fat. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently. Most people who get fat 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 say the nu…

I used to strongly support people getting guns. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.

But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently. Most people who get guns 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 say the numbers are wrong, or focus on wedge issues like LBGTQ or drugs, but they're not going to do anything on hard issues like this one.

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make guns illegal and force people into rehab? Should we require background checks for homeless people to receive government help?

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

#254

Post by anon84873628 »

soligern wrote: post #37
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…

They should couple decriminalization with stringent arrests for public use and public intoxication. It’s so damn simple, why won’t they do it. Set a limit above which you’re not allowed to be loitering on the streets like they do with alcohol.

That's one of the interesting things I noticed about Amsterdam. It is notorious for the availability of cannabis, but it's very clear that you don't consume in public or around the neighborhood. (Modulo a group of teens I saw passing a joint around in the park). The coffeeshops are clearly intended to contain the drug use. Unlike California where you smell weed everywhere.

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

#255

Post by toomim »

anon84873628 wrote: post #158
ecshafer wrote: post #149

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 kid…

Clearly the prohibition on drugs is not preventing those people from accessing them. Obviously rehabilitation would be ideal. But all else being equal, it would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer.

That's not true. If that were true, then decriminalization wouldn't be making them easier to access. But since drugs have been decriminalized, they have gotten much easier to access. There are open-air drug markets in SF and Portland. You can walk through and say "fent?" and get offers to sell right there. You couldn't do that 10 years ago.

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

#256

Post by lotsofpulp »

tomp wrote: post #248
GeoAtreides wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to strongly support people getting fat. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently. Most people who get fat 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 say the nu…

People should be allowed to be fat. But if you're so fat you need 2 airline seats, you should pay for 2 seats, just like a non-fat person who wants 2 seats. People should be allowed to use drugs and be drug addicts. But if you're so drugged up that you shit in the street and attack other people, you should go to jail, just like a non-drug user who shits in the street or attacks people.

And how about payment for surgery for coronary artery disease/type 2 diabetes medications/etc?

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

#257

Post by Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #138
thegrim33 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought experiment I think about is along the lines of: what would society look like, say, 10,000 years in the future, if everybody somehow magically had an Einstein-level of intelligence and rationality. In such a society, sure, the government probably wouldn't need to step in; the vast, vast majority of the population would either have little interest in the drugs in the first place, or, if they did, could be tru…

Regulate the anti-social behavior, not the substance. The problem is the places which legalized drugs also legalized anti-social behavior.

The substance is causing the anti-social behavior though, it’s putting people in a state where they’re not able to control their behavior or reason rationally about how it affects them and the people around them. In such a situation, you cannot just focus on the outcomes, you need to control the inputs as well.

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

#258

Post by cyberax »

kelnos wrote: post #5

https://archive.is/rznQr We've plainly seen over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an abject failure. All it's done is increase incarceration rates (without solving the problems of drug use and addiction), and many people caught in the system are just drug users, not distributors/traffickers. This really doesn't help much of anything. > State leaders have acknowledged faults with the policy’s implemen…

> We've plainly seen

I have not seen that.

> over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an abject failure.

It was not. WoD helped to _control_ the amount of drugs. It certainly had not eradicated them, but it helped to reduce their prevalence.

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

#259

Post by chimeracoder »

brightlancer wrote: post #215
kelnos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, and certainly a problem, but I don't think the solution is "let's just go back to throwing everyone in jail". We know from long experience that isn't working.

How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit? If someone wants to get high in their home, I don't care. If someone wants to get high in a bar or such, I don't care. If someone wants to get high in one of those places and then walk out in public _without harming an…

> How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit?

> If someone wants to get high in their home

That doesn't work in a society in which housing is not guaranteed, and in which almost all "last-resort" housing options (such as shelters) require sobriety. Achieving and maintaining sobriety without stable housing is virtually impossible, and yet somehow society expects everyone to be able to do it and then complains when this doesn't magically happen.

The "tough on crime" mentality says, "well, this should give you an incentive to stop using drugs", except that attitude is completely fantastical: it goes against all clinical evidence of how substance use disorders actually work, and all empirical evidence of what resources a person needs to stop using drugs (assuming that is even the end goal, which is not a given).

To spell it out: if you don't provide housing options for people who use drugs, then you will wind up with homeless people using drugs in public. And criminalizing drug use doesn't change that; it just moves those people "out of sight" to jails and prisons, where they keep using drugs, at a monetary cost to society that is literally orders of magnitude greater than the straightforward option of just giving them housing.

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

#260

Post by svnt »

mcphage wrote: post #208
brightlancer wrote: post #186

Rubbish. Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for the mere _use_ of a substance. (Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction, physical or psychological.) If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly regulated, so…

> The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking and shooting on BART, smoking and shooting in public parks, smoking and shooting on sidewalks in front of residences Not being from California—when/how did they do that?

They didn’t, but the police force stopped enforcing those laws, generally in response to defunding or threats of defunding.

The police forces in these cities are in the majority comprised of individuals who live outside of the city and commute to perform enforcement in an area they don’t want to live in.

This is the difference that never translated between the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter/Thin Blue Line groups: in one, in the majority the enforcers are not and have never been part of the community. In the other, the deputy’s kids go to your elementary school and they volunteer at the pancake breakfast.

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