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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

#471

Post by amw »

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.

Absolutely. I feel like the most important infographic for understanding the last fifty years or so of our economy is the one where productivity skyrockets to the moon while wage stays put.

And the most important _book_ for understanding that _infographic_ is Capital Vol. 1.

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

#473

Post by dvt »

simonh wrote: post #446

What was done in Oregon, based on the successful policy in Portugal, was decriminalising use and possession of very small quantities. Distribution and sale are still just as illegal as before. Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically criminals. It ends up with grossly distorted dem…

> Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically criminals.

While I do agree that prohibition is probably not the answer, calling the Portuguese policy a "success" kind of misses the forest for the trees[1]. The most obvious problem is funding (which Porto is running out of): life-long support for a drug addict is going to be significantly more expensive than throwing them in jail for a few years. Not to mention that the latter is also more popular with voters.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/once-hailed-for-decrimi...

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

#474

Post by selimthegrim »

alphazard wrote: post #182
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…

Why is there something to do? Your questions seem predicated on a false assumption that no one likes to say out loud: Drug users have a better life waiting for them after they stop using. Daily drug use may actually be the correct way for some people to maximize the integral of happiness over their lifetime. Especially for those at the bottom with limited prospects. I don't think most of HN can fathom what it's like…

>You're delusional if you think the homeless problem is a bunch of software engineers who tried heroin once, and left FAANG to get high every day.

Replace heroin with meth and FAANG with MS and I can definitely state it’s happened in Portland at least

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

#475

Post by coding123 »

I have two minds on this:

1) I'm kind of against nanny state stuff.

2) From looking around, and seeing the state of things - a lot of people are going to turn to drugs. So people passing these laws... kindof have blood on their hands?

All that said, I'm getting older and realizing something that I don't think young people like to admit or thing about: not everyone is fit to live on this planet. There is only so much resource you can pass out but at a certain point there's not much to do for people just screaming into the wind 19 hours of the day.

We have a society, we can't just turn that off so everyone feels special.

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

#476

Post by jasonfarnon »

simonh wrote: post #446

What was done in Oregon, based on the successful policy in Portugal, was decriminalising use and possession of very small quantities. Distribution and sale are still just as illegal as before. Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically criminals. It ends up with grossly distorted dem…

"based on the successful policy in Portugal"

How are you defining successful? The linked article links to a recent wapo article from last week "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts". I don't know one way or the other, I'm just trying to collect more data points. Didn't Vancouver BC try something similar?

(Seems a little odd that this Atlantic article, the Wapo article questioning Portugal's policy, and yesterday's Times article about weed addiction have all appeared in a week's span. Since none of them seems triggered by an external reporting event.)

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

#477

Post by brightlancer »

troutwine wrote: post #464
fooker wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always easy to blame the execution rather than the policy, if you are ideologically biased to believe in the policy.

Sure, and if you're ideologically opposed to a policy you can make a comment like this. What's needed is data on many alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions taken as one promote better outcomes? Over what timeframes? Otherwise it's just all shouting into a windstorm.

"I'm rubber and you're glue, it's harder to make an argument that saying it's just about you."

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

#478

Post by varjag »

themitigating wrote: post #349
varjag wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol use exerts enormous tax on society which chose to tolerate it for historical adoption reasons. Adding hard drugs is going to exacerbate the situation, and a number of those are worse than alcohol by any metric imaginable.

So then alcohol should be banned? Why the line if only historical?

Alcohol has been with us for millennia, with cultural references going back to Homer. It is deeply embedded in our social fabric. Perhaps at some point it would be banished like tobacco is now. But it makes little sense introducing the prohibition when the bulk of society isn't on board with it.

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

#479

Post by theptip »

We need to decriminalize drugs but this doesn’t mean we need to tolerate public intoxication. It’s a big confounder because we also saw a big increase in homelessness over the last few years due to Covid-related economic impacts; a housing-first anti-homelessness policy would complement drug decriminalization by moving drug use off the streets where it is maximally dangerous, in addition to being maximally unsightly.

I think it’s also really important to carefully weigh the cost/benefit; maybe a 60% increase in OD rate is actually preferable to jailing people in terms of harm inflicted? This is alluded to in the article but not actually analyzed. Repealing (rather than tweaking the implementation as they are doing) might do more harm, even though “think of the children” leads voters to want to roll back the change.

Finally, there is a market composition issue - fentanyl is increasingly common because it’s much easier to smuggle (more doses per gram) than heroin. But the potency also makes it extremely dangerous as it is easier to accidentally OD, even assuming you have known quality / evenly diluted concentration. Heroin on the other hand is much safer, especially if it’s regulated to be consistent and known quality. If we had decriminalized supply of safer versions of drugs, we’d probably see a dramatic reduction of usage in the more dangerous ones (and therefore a reduction in harm). Most drug ODs are accidental due to unknown potency, but simply decriminalizing possession doesn’t resolve this problem. My summary here would be “cheap, quality heroin would displace fentanyl and reduce ODs”.

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

#480

Post by brightlancer »

wobbly_bush wrote: post #463
fooker wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always easy to blame the execution rather than the policy, if you are ideologically biased to believe in the policy.

Isn't the opposite also true?

> Isn't the opposite also true?

Not PP, but the onus is always on the person or group making the affirmative claim. It _might_ be that the policy is sound but the execution is in error, but we should not _assume_ that the policy is sound.

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