Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

I often hear the "decriminalize drugs it worked in Portugal" phrase. But while it's not wrong it also misses a lot of points.

Portugal did much more then just decriminalizing drugs, they also e.g. giving people free therapy or consulting to get them away from drugs, places where addicts can safely take drugs and also people can reach out to them to help them reduce drug consumption and much more. Also they did various steps to reduce the povertyorganized crimeselling drugstaking drugs relationship through I don't remember enough details.

I'm not even sure the last step is possible in the US due to the US being in a very different situations, e.g. wrt. police violence, gang violence, but also stuff like how society tends to punish people which had been in prison even through the prison punishment already is supposed to be their full penalty and enacting such discrimination is quite problematic (as it makes it much harder for someone to change their live to the better).

Anyway only decriminalizing without any other steps is likely most times a bad idea.

E.g. in Portugal after cutting resources for that program the results also started to become worse AFIK.

What is most important in my opinions is to make it easier for people to get away from drugs and turn their live around. _And this fundamentally also means not treating drug addicts for criminals because they are drug addicts_. But that isn't exact the same as a general decriminalization. For example you could have rules like not punishing people which committed a (non serve, e.g. drug possession up to some amount) crime due to being addicted iff and only iff they take a withdrawal therapy, and only once or so. Also such a therapy is provided for free by the state for any addicted citizen, at least once or twice in their live. Similar you do not get discriminated when for having been addicted in the past if you went to a withdrawal therapy. Especially the later point is really important.

I can tell you firsthand that minors have no problem acquiring alcohol and tobacco.

The [Portugese drug offense] committees have a broad range of sanctions available to them when ruling on the drug use offence. These include:

Fines, ranging from €25 to €150. These figures are based on the Portuguese minimum wage of about €485 (Banco de Portugal, 2001) and translate into hours of work lost.

Suspension of the right to practice if the user has a licensed profession (e.g. medical doctor, taxi driver) and may endanger another person or someone's possessions.

Ban on visiting certain places (e.g. specific clubbing venues).

Ban on associating with specific other persons.

Foreign travel ban.

Requirement to report periodically to the committee.

Withdrawal of the right to carry a gun.

Confiscation of personal possessions.

Cessation of subsidies or allowances that a person receives from a public agency.

Meanwhile Oregon's (and much of the West Coast's) idea of "decriminalization" is just... No consequences for doing hard drugs! Here's Oregon's law, from the article:

To achieve this goal, Measure 110 enacted two major changes to Oregon’s drug laws. First, minor drug possession was downgraded from a misdemeanor to a violation, similar to a traffic ticket. Under the new law, users caught with up to 1 gram of heroin or methamphetamine, or up to 40 oxycodone pills, are charged a $100 fine, which can be waived if they call a treatment-referral hotline. Second, the law set aside a portion of state cannabis tax revenue every two years to fund a statewide network of harm-reduction and other services.

You don't even have to pay the fine! You can just call a hotline. No follow up, no ensuring that you go to treatment... Just a phone call.

The idea that you can have no consequences for hard drug use, and that people will just voluntarily check themselves into "services" (or that "harm reduction" services will dissuade people from using hard drugs) is I think at this point dead in the water.

I used to be in favor of broad drug decriminalization. But the opioid epidemic changed my mind: some drugs are so bad that even when administered by a regulated medical system, large numbers of people's lives can be ruined simply by giving them access to the drug. Allowing street usage of similar drugs like heroin, fentanyl, etc can't be safer than that. I don't necessarily think jail is the best option, but zero-consequence + entirely-optional treatment for opiate abuse is not a working policy, and IMO jail is actually a better policy than that: at least in jail you have a chance at forcing them off the drug. My preferred policy at this point would probably look more like mandatory state-enforced rehab in a confined setting without long-term legal implications like a criminal record, though.

Less-addictive drugs like marijuana, ketamine, MDMA, etc I think probably should be legal for adults, with some guardrails around access similar to e.g. Sudafed. But effectively having an open season for using opiates is asking for trouble.

This isn't an academic study; if people are dying and the treatment funding is not being increased immediately, keeping this 'experiment' going seems very unethical.