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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

#371

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

Is your attempt at satire trying to say "being against legal hard drugs is like being against legal obesity"? Are you saying that trying to curb hard drug use is as immoral in a free society as trying to curb unhealthy eating?

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

#372

Post by carpet_wheel »

sircastor wrote: post #360
michaelteter wrote: post #342

I don't even have to read the article. The US military is, if anything, serious about understanding cause and effect. They studied and learned about drug addiction during and after the Viet Nam war. What they found might seem counterintuitive. Addicted soldiers could break the habit easily once they returned home. Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance has a lot to do with behavior…

Any time we have a conversation about this, my wife brings it up: People are using drugs to deal with something - often trauma of some sort. That trauma might be anything from childhood abuse to homelessness. Our society (The USA, generally speaking) is not particularly interested in helping people deal with their trauma before it becomes a problem.

We create misery and then distribute poison to escape it. Ugly way of disposing of the unwanted, but it can serve as a warning to the rest.

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

#373

Post by brundolf »

michaelteter wrote: post #342

I don't even have to read the article. The US military is, if anything, serious about understanding cause and effect. They studied and learned about drug addiction during and after the Viet Nam war. What they found might seem counterintuitive. Addicted soldiers could break the habit easily once they returned home. Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance has a lot to do with behavior…

There's treating the root cause (totally agree with, except that as a task it's almost impossibly large/complicated to solve at a societal level), and then there's deciding not to do additional harm (prosecution) on top of the harm that's already happening

I don't think the main expectation of decriminalization is to solve the drug issue, but to stop adding fuel to the fire. But, maybe that will turn out to have been wrong

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

#374

Post by jurassic »

samketchup wrote: post #328
toomim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving drunk is illegal because you're likely to kill someone, and then it'll be too late to say "let's just prosecute the crime of manslaughter, and not prevent future manslaughters by prosecuting drunkenness in the car." In the same way, we should make it illegal to do drugs in situations where you are likely to cause irreparable harm. If we legalize drugs, let's create safe situations to do so. Many drugs are bei…

More people are killed on the road in accidents caused by elderly folks than drunk drivers. I know this sounds insane, but drunk driving should be no harm no foul.

This is whataboutism. Drunk driving kills and should be harshly punished. People who are unsafe drivers for other reasons (e.g. too old) should be handled separately, but their existence is not an excuse for irresponsible behavior.

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

#375

Post by michaelteter »

mouse_ wrote: post #369
michaelteter wrote: post #342

I don't even have to read the article. The US military is, if anything, serious about understanding cause and effect. They studied and learned about drug addiction during and after the Viet Nam war. What they found might seem counterintuitive. Addicted soldiers could break the habit easily once they returned home. Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance has a lot to do with behavior…

Experts and the educated class will say it's a complex and multifaceted issue. I say it's because the fraction of the sweat of our brow we are entitled to is shrinking ever smaller into nothingness.

I think you could expand on this a bit, because I want to understand... I think I might be close...

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

#376

Post by themitigating »

seadan83 wrote: post #279
oatmeal1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decriminalization actually would mean you see more of them out on the streets because they're not being locked away in prison. Decriminalization means the government cannot mandate people enter treatment. If people are out on the street and addicted, the government needs some teeth so they can treat even those that are in denial.

Mandating treatment gets people into treatment, it does not mean they are treated. Detox centers (AKA treatment) are myopic, they get you detoxed but kick you back out to your shitty life that made you do drugs in the first place. Follow up is needed to make sure people can re-establish connections with their community and not feel alone and trapped. > the government needs some teeth so they can treat even those that…

So is jail but there's a higher probability of success with treatment. Maybe they go in and during group hear someone that inspires them. It's a personal to choice to change of course but that can be influenced

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

#377

Post by rqtwteye »

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…

It was clear that making drugs legal wouldn't solve all problems. What needs to happen is that the budgets that got spent on prosecuting and imprisoning drug users now gets spent on treatment options.

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

#378

Post by FredPret »

I thought legalization was the way due to libertarian reasons. Who is the gov to regulate my behaviour?

But then I met addicts. People who made one (fatal) mistake and are now hooked for life, and careening through life completely out of their own control.

In the past, we had strong social institutions like the church, and mass participation in the army, and insane asylums for the bad apples. The problem there was over-control and abuse of disempowered people.

Note I don’t agree with the above, but now we’ve swung so far the other way that there are people doing hard drugs 100m from where I’m typing this, and there are seemingly no answers.

I hope we find an enlightened way to guide those who need help because neither the old nor the current way is working perfectly.

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

#379

Post by reilly3000 »

carpet_wheel wrote: post #372
sircastor wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time we have a conversation about this, my wife brings it up: People are using drugs to deal with something - often trauma of some sort. That trauma might be anything from childhood abuse to homelessness. Our society (The USA, generally speaking) is not particularly interested in helping people deal with their trauma before it becomes a problem.

We create misery and then distribute poison to escape it. Ugly way of disposing of the unwanted, but it can serve as a warning to the rest.

Manufactured Misery. Would make a great slogan for America

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

#380

Post by sircastor »

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…

> Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP payments?

I think this is dealing with the problem far too late for it to be effective. Rehab treats the drug as though it's the problem. The drug is not the problem. The person using the drug is trying to manage some sort of stress or situation that they otherwise can't deal with. If you get a person off drugs but don't address their health, home-security, childhood trauma, abusive relationships, etc. At best they're simply going to shift to dealing with that issue through some other way: Food addiction, sex addiction, video games, abusing a loved-one, etc. And if it's not obvious, this is a repeating cycle.

We need to do a better job of taking care of people in our communities. Before they end up using drugs (or other types of dangerous coping mechanisms). If we can't get to them before, we need to pick them up and start taking care of them. The trouble is (at least in the US), our approach to community support is contrary to our sense of individual freedoms - we don't want the government to support struggling individuals at the cost of individual freedoms (see healthcare, food and housing subsidy, etc)

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