Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by Mizoguchi » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 3:59 AM UTC

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…

People don't necessarily choose their life circumstances. A drug addict is a disabled person, their brains soaked in chemicals inhibiting from any logical reasoning. Sometimes they may experience monetary lapses of consciousness where they can feel both physical and emotional pain. Many of them have parents, siblings and children, and may have decided to stay away from their love ones because of shame. So obviously this social experiment was absurd, you are facilitating the trade of drugs within a vulnerable community. Everyone would agree that a 10 year old kid should not have legal access to alcohol, so why we think a mentally disabled addict should be able to buy drugs? Sobering up is a monumental challenge when you are on hard drugs, you need at minimum a doctor and weekly therapies designed for your particular type of addiction and health/psychological condition, and a strong support system of relatives and friends around you almost 24/7. So expecting that an addict all by themselves voluntarily wants to "get out" and seek or receive help is as ridiculous as the idea of a legal market for hard drugs. Addicts need to be forced into rehab where they can receive the right treatment and eventually be reunited with their families and slowly get back on their feet. This should not be hard to do for a country like the US but no one wants to have the hard talk, so we brush the problem under the rug and call for legalization of drugs and affordable housing

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

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Post by cloverich » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:01 AM UTC

4RealFreedom wrote: post #701

bottled_poe wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government must never, in good conscience, open up the use of extremely physically addictive substances. Decriminalisation for users, I can support, but legalising and selling is a terrible idea. Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are not in the same league as heroin and other opiates. It’s extremely dangerous to equate all drugs in this debate.

Alcohol is physically addictive - ever heard of DTs? Decriminalization enables the black market. Legalization would lower prices, too. The black market should be enemy number one.

Thats dependency, not addictivenes. Alcohol is among the most dependent substances, but its not nearly as addictive as hard drugs or nicotine for that matter. Some people will find themselves strongly addicted to alcohol, but most wont. Heroine by comparison will result in nearly everyone becoming strongly addicted. Its not nearly the same. It has no place in society.

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

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Post by HWR_14 » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:04 AM UTC

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…

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you.

I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless.

Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at all. You called it fascism with no real reasoning. Explicit laws that we can change and discuss seems like a good way to manage things!

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

#714

Post by laverya » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:06 AM UTC

throw16180339 wrote: post #531

laverya wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Singapore (and rest of Southeast Asia) solution set might work here, but there's no way we have the political will for it. If we won't execute the vast majority of murderers, there's no way we'll do it for people just running a kilo of coke or weed. Not to mention "works" and "worth it" are not quite the same thing.

Singapore can do this because they're a city state without jury trials, a bill of rights, or the Kennedy v. Louisiana ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_v._Louisiana ) decision. It's doubtful that the Supreme Court would allow a similar policy. If they did then the cost of appeals make this approach too expensive to implement it.

Yeah, executing drug dealers/smugglers at scale would require significant and likely negative rollbacks to our system of jurisprudence. The US used to do things like this though!

(I say likely negative because a system of trials that didn't cost 100k+ and take years for an actual defense would be a dramatic improvement)

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

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Post by dclaw » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:09 AM UTC

Funny how it completely ignores the fact that covid sent everything to hell, and bureaucratic crap caused funding to not even be dispersed for over 2 years after passage. Of course programs that you judge based on an imaginary 3 year timeline will fail when they have only had maybe 8 months to do anything.

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

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Post by Solvency » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:10 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #636

wkat4242 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

There is good shame and bad shame. If you murder someone, then you should rightly feel shame. If you are gay, then you should not feel shame. Shame can work both ways.

LOL and who exactly do you think are the fair, wise, omnipotent arbiters of "good shame"?

Religion? CNN? Fox News? The average person?

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

#717

Post by webnrrd2k » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:10 AM UTC

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…

I dont think that I buy your line of reasoning. For one thing, historically, a lot of social contacts were based on ignorance and bullshit. Women were persecuted for being witches, people were killed for having the wrong religion, race, sexuality. There are many episodes in history where this was socially sanctioned and approved by authority figures.

I think people are right to have a healthy dose of doubt and even disrespect for authority figures. That's far from infantilization. It's learning to think for yourself and to choose carefully who you take as an authority.

As far as addiction goes, the US had a pretty long experiment with authority figures telling people to just say no. How well did that work out?

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

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Post by ryanSrich » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:13 AM UTC

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…

The solution is what measure 110 was _supposed_ to be. Not what it turned into. At least that was my understanding when I voted in favor of it a few years ago.

The problem is that is has now manifested into default legal possession and consumption. That was not the idea.

What should happen is that if you’re caught doing drugs like meth, fentanyl, etc. you either go to rehab, or you go to jail.

Instead, at least here in Portland, the police LITERALLY doing absolutely nothing. Partly because they are genuinely understaffed, partly because they despise the voter base (understandably so). That still doesn’t excuse the complete lack of enforcement.

This isn’t specific to just drug use either. Day time camping is illegal now in Portland. The police won’t enforce it. Stealing a vehicle is illegal in Portland. The police tell you over the phone it’s not worth looking for your stolen vehicle and they refer you to a Facebook group that tracks stolen cars (I shit you not). Traffic stops, missing tags, no insurance, etc. anything related to traffic is unenforced to a laughable degree. I know people who haven’t registered their vehicles since 2020. They somehow still have a valid drivers license.

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

#719

Post by Exuma » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:14 AM UTC

sircastor wrote: post #360

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…

Any time we have a conversation about this, my wife brings it up: People are using drugs to deal with something - often trauma of some sort. That trauma might be anything from childhood abuse to homelessness. Our society (The USA, generally speaking) is not particularly interested in helping people deal with their trauma before it becomes a problem.

Tell your wife it’s because it’s fun

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

#720

Post by _8j50 » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 4:14 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #713

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…

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless. Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at…

Shame works very well. I so hate it when people use "gay" to invoke some sort of a culture war side-choosing spell. The original comment is about feeling shame not being shamed. If you believe being gay is wrong the yes you should feel shame, if you don't then the question is not relevant for you.

The original commenter is more right than any of us can conceive. So many societal problems would be solved if people had raised their kids to learn to feel shame. Trumpism, gun worship, climate change denial, post-truth mindset, anti-vaxx, treason, insurrection, racial hatred and discrimination,etc... the thing so many of people with these views have in a common is they feel no shame about the harm they are causing.

If in your own opinion you did something wrong, you should absolutley feel shame. What is more evil than being proud of doing wrong by your own standards? You can debate what is right ir wrong or even what morality is but refusing to feel shame is embracing evil.