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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

#591

Post by whiddershins »

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…

Just because something is legal doesn’t mean bad behavior related to it should be. Or that it should be legal in all or most or any public areas.

This distinction allows us to keep alcohol legal, but punish people for getting into bar fights or urinating on the sides of buildings.

We could legalize all drug use while criminalizing illegal behavior around it, such as shoplifting, littering, etc.

Might not work but what if we just tried that. Only make things illegal that overtly affect other people negatively.

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

#592

Post by ChoGGi »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #218
mtalantikite wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal. The unlicensed weed bodegas popping up on every other block in NYC beg to differ. People might not text a delivery service anymore, but they're definitely not going to legal recreational dispensaries here in NYC.

Part of the reason for that is they've been so slow to allow them to open. There's only like 8 stores at the moment (4 of those are very recent), and they're all in Manhattan except for one that's way out in Jamaica at the end of the JZ line. Because there's so few of them, they always have an hour long line of people waiting to enter, mostly tourists. The higher prices will still leave room for black market weed sal…

That sounds like Ontario when they first legalized it, they did a lottery system for stores.

I can walk 5 min and be inside a pot shop.

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

#593

Post by lo_zamoyski »

User23 wrote: post #561
pierat wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#594

Post by jjcon »

WalterBright wrote: post #576
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not absurd. It's your body, you can do what you want with it. There's been plenty of evil done by do-gooders, who are so certain in their rectitude about what's best for others, that they feel justified in imposing that rectitude upon them.

[flagged]

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

#595

Post by NotSuspicious »

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?

Yes, it should.

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

#596

Post by travisjungroth »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #568
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…

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.

I don’t trust you, the person I’m replying to, to decide what is objectively good and evil for me to do. I don’t trust you to decide what is and isn’t harm for me.

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

#597

Post by remarkEon »

chrisbolt wrote: post #565
username332211 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups

The only groups in this merrygoround of policy torture that have a vested financial interest in not solving drug use problems.

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

#598

Post by bill_joy_fanboy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #529
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…

> Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? You should make the negative behaviors associated with drug abuse illegal and force those people into rehab. Use all the drugs you want until you go to break some other law, then you get arrested and don't get to go home until you're clean.

Might it not be smart to prevent those crimes from happening by preventing drug use/abuse in the first place?

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

#599

Post by whiddershins »

darth_avocado wrote: post #301
toomim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving drunk is illegal because you're likely to kill someone, and then it'll be too late to say "let's just prosecute the crime of manslaughter, and not prevent future manslaughters by prosecuting drunkenness in the car." In the same way, we should make it illegal to do drugs in situations where you are likely to cause irreparable harm. If we legalize drugs, let's create safe situations to do so. Many drugs are bei…

Legalization and decriminalization are two different things. I am all for decriminalizing. From a personal viewpoint, I don’t think drugs should be legalized. And as far as the legal administration etc., that already exists in SF and it has had a poor track record of helping people.

Legalization addresses the 100,000 overdose deaths a year.

Legalization bankrupts criminal organizations.

Legalization creates tax revenue.

Refusing to prosecute antisocial behavior is the problem.

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

#600

Post by Turskarama »

dvt wrote: post #504
Turskarama wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>life-long support for a drug addict is going to be significantly more expensive than throwing them in jail for a few years Citation needed, you might be underestimating how much it costs to jail someone. If a drug user actually manages to get clean (which with proper support, most can) then the cost of support is basically checking up on them a couple of times a year. Meanwhile they can hold down a job and live a no…

> If a drug user actually manages to get clean... Ah, I was assuming the drug addict (or at least a signification portion) wouldn't be getting clean. A large part of Portugal's policy is focused on safe drug use (decriminalization, clean needles, drug dispensaries, etc.).

The primary purpose of these policies is that they actually do help people get clean. It's harder to fix up your life when you're also going through the criminal justice system, or otherwise trying to avoid all forms of authority.

Consider this: if drug use is criminalised, then seeking help increases your risk of getting arrested!

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