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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

#561

Post by User23 »

pierat wrote: post #556
jmspring wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bodily autonomy isn’t a moral principle, it’s a rhetorical device. Literally every law on the books interferes with your autonomy. Trying to apply it as the former is as nonsensical as arguing when someone says “nobody goes there anymore” when some people in fact still do.

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

#562

Post by inferiorhuman »

username332211 wrote: post #538
inferiorhuman wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the headline Portugal is having doubts because they decided to gut funding. Where it was seen as promising or successful, now it's basically decriminalized drug use and no treatment or enforcement. Which kinda sounds like what Oregon is doing now and what Reagan did with mental health care in California.

Could you (or anyone else reading this) define "gut funding" in quantitative terms? I'm asking because I've noticed newspapers have somehow acquired the ability to imply that spending on this or that program is being cut, when in fact it isn't. Often simply refusing to let a program grow at an exponential rate is supposed to be a "spending cut". And sometimes mere exponential growth is not enough. To give an example,…

Sure.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-cameron-cuts-nhs...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9722661/David-Came...

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-se...

Cameron effectively cut £500 million from the NHS budget by redefining what the budget was and then claiming the budget increased. The result is that Cameron was ordered to stop claiming that he increased NHS funding.

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

#563

Post by zer8k »

whycome wrote: post #547
unethical_ban wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

It's not support network it's societal harm. There are many things that were de facto "illegal" but now completely out in he open. Heroin or cocaine for example are not drugs you can support your way into safe use. The difference between weed and heroin, for example, is when someone runs out of weed historical data shows they don't kill people and commit crimes. The answer to this is not to make heroin easier to access. Then you just have a ticking time bomb you constantly reset the clock on.

IMO the key is for so-called "hard drugs" to develop the corrective measures. Arrest them, but instead of throwing a simple user in jail adjudicate them into a treatment program. I've watched two people in my life go from "functional" heroin addicts (as in I couldn't outwardly tell) to missing a week of the drug and breaking into homes to steal. It is not possible to "dabble" in hard drugs like one might have a beer on the weekend or a cigar at a bar. It's 0-100. Watch interviews with former heroin addicts. Chasing the dragon starts from the first hit.

Societal danger should modify the way we treat a drug. Most people agree the solution to alcoholism is not to give alcoholics more alcohol. So too, we should not be giving hard drug users more hard drugs. Treat them.

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

#564

Post by smaddox »

ecshafer wrote: post #429
epolanski wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delusional. The drug that kills and ruins most lives on the planet is alcohol followed by food (diabetes). And the abuse of alcohol and food has the same root that drug abuse does: mental health and education. And let's not even start talking about the damage of legal drugs (medicines) on society at all age tiers.

Great. Let’s ban alcohol and sugar too. I am totally fine with taking the idea of something being harmful to society and it being banned. Though for sugar, I haven’t personally seen people pawn off their childrens possession or rob people to get a fix, so it might not be as bad as drugs. But it’s subsidization should stop.

> Though for sugar, I haven’t personally seen people pawn off their childrens possession or rob people to get a fix, so it might not be as bad as drugs.

Sugar is both legal to possess and readily available at very low cost. No one needs to rob people to afford it.

Rats prefer both sucrose (table sugar) and saccharine (artificial sweetener) over cocaine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/

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

#565

Post by chrisbolt »

username332211 wrote: post #538
inferiorhuman wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the headline Portugal is having doubts because they decided to gut funding. Where it was seen as promising or successful, now it's basically decriminalized drug use and no treatment or enforcement. Which kinda sounds like what Oregon is doing now and what Reagan did with mental health care in California.

Could you (or anyone else reading this) define "gut funding" in quantitative terms? I'm asking because I've noticed newspapers have somehow acquired the ability to imply that spending on this or that program is being cut, when in fact it isn't. Often simply refusing to let a program grow at an exponential rate is supposed to be a "spending cut". And sometimes mere exponential growth is not enough. To give an example,…

From the Washington Post article:

> After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.

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

#566

Post by jmspring »

pierat wrote: post #556
jmspring wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What bugs me most, communities like the one I am referring to will denigrate anyone pushing back about homeless Uber all agenda. They are open to the distribution of needles without support services. Anything against this line of thought, one is a hater, anti homeless, etc. Yet these same people do nothing personally to help those on the streets and do not want oversight in effectiveness of plans/etc.

In this case, the individual forsake his parents and his kid. What about the rights of the teenager having to watch / know their father will likely die because the powers that be will do nothing?

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

#567

Post by crtified »

Alcohol, being at once one of the worlds most dangerous hard drugs, one of the worlds premium luxury markets, and a common everyday cultural component across large swathes of humanity, is proof that society can and does incorporate the regular leisure usage of mental intoxicants as an ethically acceptable standard of living.

If you are happy to walk down your street and purchase a bottle of wine or craft beer, then you are casting your vote about what you consider to be an acceptable standard for such activities.

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

#568

Post by lo_zamoyski »

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…

Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.

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

#569

Post by DoreenMichele »

wonderwonder wrote: post #36

If you decriminalize hard drugs, all that happens is that addicts stay addicts, have a higher likely hood of becoming homeless and higher chance of dying. Hard drugs for the most part outside of controlled environments have almost no positive qualities. Drugs like cannabis have medical attributes and can provide benefits. People addicted to hard drugs require treatment, leaving them to their own devices is likely to…

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

In a later comment you ask ...how should I provide help & compassion?

I would say one-on-one as an individual walking the streets, you probably shouldn't, especially if you have children in tow.

We need to address our nationwide affordable housing crisis. California is disproportionately impacted and takes a lot of the blame for it, but I think they are basically the dumping ground and whipping boy for a national failure.

Decriminalization is helpful in part because if you criminalize use of the drug, it makes it harder to seek treatment. People who expect to go to jail for trying to get the help they need are more likely to not come forward and to continue to try to fix their problems themselves.

We need a better understanding of why people do drugs, what the underlying root causes are. It's hard to solve a problem without knowing why it exists. Given our long track record of not getting results, I think we have room for improvement in how we frame this problem.

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

#570

Post by ClumsyPilot »

treeman79 wrote: post #90
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Maybe. homeless are the main issue, rather than drugs? Like if I had to choose between regular cocaine habbit, and bein homeless, i'd rather be a cokehead.

Meet people that have have done a lot of drugs? Some can still function. Others, just can’t. Had an owner of a successful tech company see it fall apart because he couldn’t make decisions anymore. Was a really nice guy, but by the end I might hire him to sweep the floors, but only with supervision. Not sure how he’s doing now, but I imagine he’ll be homeless by some point. He enjoyed going to burning man a lot.

I am not endorsing drug use at all, but I have seen highly functioning drug users. I have never met a homeless man that could still function after being on the streets for a year.
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