Maybe if we reach a consensus that neither the war on drugs nor 110 worked properly, we can sit down and have a straightforward discussion about what would, now that both ideologies have failed.
Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
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Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#542They dropped the ball with funding treatment programs, which are essential for this to work in the first place. That should be in the headline. Decriminalization hasn't been debunked.
"state audit published this year found that the new law was “vague” about how state officials should oversee the awarding of money to new treatment programs, and set “unrealistic timelines” for evaluating and funding treatment proposals. As a result, the funding process was left largely to the grant-making panel, most of whose members “lacked experience in designing, evaluating and administrating a governmental-grant-application process,” according to the audit. Last year, supporters of Measure 110 accused state health officials, preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic, of giving the panel insufficient direction and resources to handle a flood of grant applications. The state health authority acknowledged missteps in the grant-making process."
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
But nobody would propose making sugar illegal and putting people that eat sugar in jail.
It wouldn't be 1-to-1, but I wouldn't mind a war on sugar. Letting your kids be fat should be treated as child abuse, and you should lose access to medicare/medicaid if you've been fat for too long. People have gotten too soft(pun intended) about the right to do whatever you want.
The problem is attacking sugar doesn't really fix the problem. Being fat is a problem with overeating as a whole, not necessarily with sugar.
That's part of the issue with policy - often it's not getting at the real heart of the problem.
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#544The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…
The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession.
This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked him to change for her, he wouldn’t. His daughter’s counselor basically told her to decide how to remember him, it’s unlikely he will make it a year.
Personally, I feel the individual is a PoS and hope he suffers but it’s heart wrenching to see the affect it’s having on his daughter.
Addition: this is happening in one of the more permissive and “progressive” communities in CA.
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#545And Oregon’s drug problems have not improved. Last year, the state experienced one of the sharpest rises in overdose deaths in the nation and had one of the highest percentages of adults with a substance-use disorder. Hardly shocking. I would be interested in seeing data -- if it's available -- on how much that uptick is due to people with addictions moving to the state in hopes of reducing the odds of ending up in j…
> "Three years is not a lot of time to give this a chance to work, especially with delays in funding. If you aren't even really providing the programs you said you would, then declaring it a failure is a joke. You never gave it a real chance." 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.
Agreed. Without the requisite funding already secured, this policy basically amounts to a half-baked pipe dream. Declaring the policy a failure really isn't a joke. The policy was not implemented as it was proposed (perhaps "imagined" is a better word), and the end result is that it failed.
When we talk about "not giving the policy a real chance", what are we talking about exactly? Are we referring to an idealized version of the policy, in which everything goes exactly as it was imagined? Or are we referring to the actual implementation of the policy, in which "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" (Mike Tyson quote)?
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#546I 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…
Measure 110 (and the Republican platform on drugs, for that matter) assumes that rehabilitation and punishment cannot coexist for petty drug crimes. I believe they can.
As the article mentions, Measure 110 specifically prohibits recepients of funding from requiring abstinence in their programs. I'm not a psychologist, but it's probably a lot harder to get people to stop doing drugs if you aren't allowed to tell them to stop doing drugs. Hard drugs have to be seen in a negative light in the social zeitgeist, period.
On the other hand, the sheriff's quote basically says "we don't think these rehab programs will work, so we aren't going to give tickets to drug users." That's just as counterproductive as anti-abstinence.
The criminal-justice reform side of Measure 110 is pretty good. Small amounts of drugs shouldn't be punishable with incarceration or huge fines. IMO the asinine rules for rehab programs, and the broken bureaucracy surrounding them, seem like a good place to start.
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
I support making drugs legal. But, it also requires an extensive framework around that legalization. Social supports. Information. Safety nets/healthcare. Without that, it's gonna fails.
I'll pick your comment out of the pack to pick on, though I think we agree. Yours, and dozens of others, talk about "drugs". That's like talking about banning "food" when there is a problem with people eating five cheeseburgers a day. --- The problem is not with cannabis, or mushrooms, or aspirin. It's with meth, heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioids. Drugs need to be *properly* ranked by government and restrict…
Yep, we entirely agree.
I think what you describe (honest ranking + relevant and contextual supports) is part of that framework. Heroin requires different supports than marijuana.
And I think a big part of legalization is an emergent social aspect. Government legalization of marijuana in Canada has meant that my father has actually had real conversations about the drug instead of just treating it as evil. He's now open to using it for treatment of pain or as a means of 'relaxation'. His peers/friends are also in that group. Nothing about the drugs abilities has changed -- just his perception and ability to speak openly in his social circles.
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#548The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…
This is a fascinating view on the sedative crisis. The lack of shame from "normal" people feels very real. Complete inaction to the staggering and ever increasing death count rate and bodies piling on the ground IS utterly shameful, but not for 2023 USA.
I've noticed as well that when I've spoke to friends and family about open drug use and markets I become the one who's "out of line."
Do we as a free society have no shame left to express?
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#549The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…
> The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power.
Wait, are you talking about "personal" shame, or "corporate" shame. Cause if anything, corporations have none, and people are *learning* to also have no shame. Doesnt get you anything. Just makes you feel bad for no good reason, cause others are pointing a finger at you.
> Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract.
Simply put: fuck the social contract. I didn't sign it. It doesnt get me any benefits, and all it is a whole lot of "costs", all of which are ill defined.
So, no.
> Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created a significant subclass of infantile or openly hostile actors.
Being my username, a "pierat", has actually gotten me standing in communities. I democratize content access to the low common denominator of 0. I help others get the content they need or want. Im doing a lot better than capitalists slapping bills on access to everything... even if it does actually cost me money.
> It will likely result in people reaching for a paternal “strongman” figure and a subsequent slide into (probably) fascism.
We already are. Its not like anything I can do will affect that. I mean, whoop-te-doo, I make a pile of votes for even worse sycophantic leeches than myself every 2 years. And being in the "other party's state" (I mean, does it really matter?) my votes are effectively wasted. But it costs me 15 minutes.
Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging
#550And Oregon’s drug problems have not improved. Last year, the state experienced one of the sharpest rises in overdose deaths in the nation and had one of the highest percentages of adults with a substance-use disorder. Hardly shocking. I would be interested in seeing data -- if it's available -- on how much that uptick is due to people with addictions moving to the state in hopes of reducing the odds of ending up in j…
> "Three years is not a lot of time to give this a chance to work, especially with delays in funding. If you aren't even really providing the programs you said you would, then declaring it a failure is a joke. You never gave it a real chance." 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.
People are disenfranchised all over the United States, dying deaths of poverty, abuse, and alcoholism.
Keeping the status quo seems very unethical.