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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

#621

Post by ChatGTP »

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…

I once read a quote, I can't remember where, it might've been in a Buddhist text but it was something like: Your body does not belong to you, it's not yours to abuse. It does not belong to the ego.

I never thought of it this way but it gelled with me immediately and I really think it's true, the body supports the mind which supports the concept of self. So if the self decides to trash the body, something isn't right about that contract.

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

#622

Post by seattle_spring »

rovolo wrote: post #266
darth_avocado wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer. Drugs are never going to be safer. If FDA approved painkillers can get you addicted, I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get. And making them cheaper is only going to create more problems. Prohibition doesn’t prevent people from accessing drugs. But that doesn’t mean we make it easily accessible. Theft is illegal, but it doesn’t stop people from stealing. T…

>I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get Proper labeling/packaging would make it easier to know what dose you're taking. I believe many overdose deaths were blamed on fentanyl added to heroin, where the user was expecting just heroin. (I don't know how true my memory is of those initial news articles about fentanyl overdoses in the early 10s)

> I believe many overdose deaths were blamed on fentanyl added to heroin, where the user was expecting just heroin.

Not just with other opiates like Heroin, but all other drugs, period. People are dying from fentanyl when they thought they took a relatively safe party drug like MDMA or Ketamine. Much of that would disappear for people who actually knew what they were getting.

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

#623

Post by ryandrake »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #615
ryandrake wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge strain of "mind your own business" running through the USA right now. When someone is out of line, you used to be able to rely on the public to correct that behavior. Now if you try, you're the bad guy--or "Karen" as they say, and everyone flips out their cell phone cameras to try to capture that crazed weirdo who has the audacity to ask someone else to behave themselves. I brought my kid to a pumpkin…

You think that assholes are a new phenomenon? You think that a few decades ago that lady would have meekly apologized and walked away?

I think the new phenomenon is how many people are now on the asshole's side, or are in the neutral "don't get involved" camp.

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

#624

Post by censor_me »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #615
ryandrake wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge strain of "mind your own business" running through the USA right now. When someone is out of line, you used to be able to rely on the public to correct that behavior. Now if you try, you're the bad guy--or "Karen" as they say, and everyone flips out their cell phone cameras to try to capture that crazed weirdo who has the audacity to ask someone else to behave themselves. I brought my kid to a pumpkin…

You think that assholes are a new phenomenon? You think that a few decades ago that lady would have meekly apologized and walked away?

[dead]

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

#625

Post by djur »

starkparker wrote: post #588
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 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. Even if it had been funded, Oregon wouldn't have been starting from zero, it's been in a deficit for mental health and addiction treatment for almost 20 years prior. It didn't ha…

If I could upvote this a hundred times I would. Oregon's social services are a disaster and have been for decades. Governance here is a wreck, in part because of badly designed programs implemented by initiative. If there is a constituency for good government here, they haven't been showing up to elections. If Measure 110 was designed to fail it wouldn't have been much different. Unfortunately I think it's going to set back the cause of drug law liberalization by decades.

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

#626

Post by srcreigh »

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…

> 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 jail over their uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.

I don’t think there’s any safe injection sites in Portland either, or some safe supply system.

There has to be something in the policy which discriminates between “wrong direction entirely” and “not doing enough”.

Decriminalization on its own seems to be just everybody turning a blind eye and otherwise doing nothing to help, so I’m not surprised that it doesn’t work.

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

#627

Post by 8note »

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 US devalued shame by using it for everything.

The big change recently is the me-too movement to change from shame into consequences, which is good for people with something to lose

But, with the moves towards feudalism in the states, there's too many people with nothing to lose, and both shame and consequences depend on having some status to maintain

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

#628

Post by seattle_spring »

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.

> I am totally fine with taking the idea of something being harmful to society and it being banned

I imagine you must be a major supporter of strict gun control. Right?

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

#629

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

Shame is a bad thing IMO. It's basically self-deprecation as a result of peer pressure.

The thing is, peers aren't always right. In many cases the masses impose their self-centered views on arbitrary topics. It's not always about something as self-destructive as hard drugs, or even self-destructive at all.

You might live in a highly religious community but have LGBT+ feelings. You might wish to enjoy playing games though your community feels those are for kids. You might like particular kinks that others are frowning upon.

Feeling ashamed because of others' judgment in those cases is purely self-deprecating and holding the person back from truly finding themselves.

In many cases resistance to shame is a great thing and promotes diversity. Avoiding hard drugs is not even a matter of shame but the lack of realisation that a person is destroying themself.

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

#630

Post by cronix »

wk_end wrote: post #610
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…

The problem of course is that it's not strictly about one's own body, in this case. "Bodily autonomy" doesn't cover the petty crimes addicts often commit to get money to buy drugs - the impossibility of biking anywhere knowing your vehicle is almost guaranteed to get stolen, the economic deserts created because businesses can't operate in certain areas due to theft and safety, the property damage that needs to be pai…

It also doesn't cover the cost in terms of tying up a major resource: Paramedics, Police and Fire.

Overdoses are at an all time high in Portland. The entity that responds usually gives the person overdosing Narcan, addiction help is then offered for those who recover and 99% of those offered recovery options refuse.

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/08/01/overdose-911-call...

Firefighters (and others) are quitting due to the trauma of responding to these calls over and over and over, with no concrete progress. It takes it's toll mentally to respond these calls which are taking up and increasing percentage of the calls they have to respond to.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/portland-do...

The main failure of this experiment, imho, is the missing component of forcing detox/rehab/etc when x amount of drug related crimes are committed. The measure explicitly said the addict has to seek the help on their own volition. That might work for alcohol and cannabis, but the vast majority of opioid based drugs are so addictive they can't even fathom not getting their next high or life without it.

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