Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

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

#551

Post by lo_zamoyski »

We've all heard it before, that decriminalization will make drugs appear less like a forbidden fruit and remove some of the incentive to abuse. But that's not really true, at least not where things like drugs are concerned and addiction is a possibility.

It turns out that forbidding bad things and punishing bad behavior does reduce their incidence.

Now let's apply that to all the other crime we've gone soft on, like depravity or murder or violence in general. Criminalize drugs, criminalize the production and distribution of pornography, criminalize public displays and promotion of depravity. Singapore may take some things a bit far, but you cannot deny that crime is EXTREMELY low, something that should compel us to get off the sentimental train and consider that adequate punishment is good thing.

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

#552

Post by mdanger007 »

paulddraper wrote: post #532
K0balt wrote: post #520

The 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…

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#553

Post by buzzert »

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…

The drugs available now, for example fentanyl, are nowhere near the same league as the drugs that were available after the Vietnam war. It's a completely different level of addiction.

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

#554

Post by DoreenMichele »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #550
nickff wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

The average life expectancy in the homeless population is estimated between 42 and 52 years, compared to 78 years in the general population.

https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/health.html

We need to address our affordable housing crisis and stop acting like it's a personal problem.

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

#555

Post by tanseydavid »

paulddraper wrote: post #534
DoreenMichele wrote: post #508

And 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 a lot of time.

To me it does not seem like much time at all.

That is, considering that it has been 52 years since President Richard Nixon first declared the "War on Drugs."

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

#556

Post by pierat »

jmspring wrote: post #544
K0balt wrote: post #520

The 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…

What's the saying... "My body, My choice" ?

Well, some people will choose, willingly, to waste their life away living on the streets from one high to the next. The difference between most types of poverty and this, is that they *chose* this path.

Bodily autonomy has powerful upsides, as well as downsides. Here's one of the downsides.

If they wanted to 'get out', I'd be there to help them if I knew them. But they have to want to. Forcing your viewpoint on them makes you just as a horrible person as the judges throwing people in locked boxes for decades for a bit of white powder they injected.

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

#557

Post by jjcon »

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.

No, we should take policy results at face value. If it failed if failed, if it succeeded it succeeded. No need to play no true scotsman.

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

#558

Post by seoulmetro »

K0balt wrote: post #520

The 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 exactly my thinking whenever the debate of "legal is good for all" or "Japan and Korea are safe". It's so honestly true that forming a cohesive group where shame of standing out hurts the individual is the much lesser evil. I absolutely hate the social standards of some Western countries compared to these. Most crimes committed in the shame-adverse countries are masked ones like speeding or spy cams.

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

#559

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by dumpsterdiver »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #489
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair though, you don't really hear much about people selling their bodies (or other similar behavior, I.e. stealing from friends and family, etc) in order to obtain marijuana or alcohol. This kind of behavior is primarily encountered when hard drugs are part of the equation.

I live in a country with a lot of alcohol abuse, and there are many many cases of huge damages due to alcohol. And yes, that includes stealing. And stealing usually comes after all the money is used up, and there's none left to pay the bills or food, even for a spouse and possibly kids. There are a lot of secondary costs too (traffic fines for drunk driving, especially if they cause an accident, stuff destroyed while…

I'm certainly not trying to minimize the damage that alcohol does - it absolutely ruins lives. I do want to clarify my comment about stealing though. I have known people to steal in order to obtain marijuana and alcohol, but it was (I'm having trouble finding a less offensive way of saying this, so I'll just say it)... much less desperate.

The instances I've encountered where people steal in order to obtain marijuana or alcohol usually consist of people stealing the actual marijuana or alcohol.

Edit: Edited the preceding paragraph because I originally presented this type of stealing as less impactful than the one I talk about next, which was not only a poor position for me to take in the first place, but also completely aside from my point.

Contrast this with blankets spread out on the sidewalks of San Francisco containing random household items for sale such as phone chargers, or kitchen utensils. It's pretty clear that one group is willing to go to greater lengths to obtain their fix than the other.

Edit: I want to acknowledge again that alcohol can and does ruin lives, and there are probably kids going hungry because their parents spent the last of their money on alcohol instead of food. My main point was to contrast this behavior with the behavior of people who steal in order to obtain hard drugs. While both are bad, they're still different in important ways. Namely, you typically aren't going to find the alcoholics peddling stolen wares on the streets.

Post reply on HN