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

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by blackoil »

nonethewiser wrote: post #737
HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

It doesn't work selectively, if society can shame you into not taking drugs it will do so everything else non-confirming.

In my society not valuing individual freedom girls have/had been shamed into not wearing jeans/skirts, going out for night movie show or even cutting hairs.

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

#762

Post by pierat »

TyroneBlack wrote: post #760
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…

>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 Are you an anarchist? If not, then please explain how every law you support is not forcing your viewpoint on others?

[flagged]

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

#763

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #748
HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean shame doesn’t work? America is a country that literally can’t reproduce itself without importing people from countries where mothers shame children for not having children in a timely manner. America had 100,000 people die of drug overdoses last year, whereas societies that shame people for drug use have far lower rates of overdoses. Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-…

If you think AIDS isn’t a problem in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, I have a bridge to sell you.

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

#764

Post by forgingahead »

nonethewiser wrote: post #737
HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

Japan is highly homogenous - their immigration policy would be decried by many liberals in the West as "racist". It is a massive factor in how their society is run, and why they are so high-trust that they don't need strong enforcement mechanisms (in some cases. Don't be a Western car exec there for example).

There is a show on Netflix called "Old Enough!". It's worth watching to see how some of the high-trust works in practice, and also to perhaps think through if we could be comfortable with the same in our own neighbourhoods and countries. My guess for most people in the Anglo West, the answer would be "No".

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

#765

Post by AlwaysRock »

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…

You're describing an addict.

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

#766

Post by lambdasquirrel »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #476
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…

"based on the successful policy in Portugal" How are you defining successful? The linked article links to a recent wapo article from last week "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts". I don't know one way or the other, I'm just trying to collect more data points. Didn't Vancouver BC try something similar? (Seems a little odd that this Atlantic article, the Wapo article questioning Portu…

I live right across the border from Vancouver BC. Whatever they're doing to solve the addiction problem isn't working terribly well either. There's lots of places in the PNW that look downright utopian from a distance, but when you go and live hereabouts, only then do you see the problems. Portland is getting the flak here and everyone knows about SF because it's the worst by long shot, but even in smaller towns on both sides of the border, there are problems.

We need a hard look at this problem because particularly on the West Coast of US and Canada, and particularly SF and northward, it is making a mockery out of the free-spiritedness and open-mindedness that folks here would espouse. We don't set boundaries on detrimental behavior. The way people OD in the streets here is not okay. The violent behavior of addicts on the BART is not okay. Then on the other end of the spectrum, when someone "important" in the community does something awful around here, other people will try to encourage reconciliation by taking on smaller doses of that bad thing. As if that makes it less bad. It's absolutely insane. It's like this whole place has given up on trying to do better, societally. It is radically individualistic, and yet, personal accountability has broadly flipped on its head. The folks who have chosen addiction and homelessness over getting clean / sanity / whatever are really just the tip of the iceberg.

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

#767

Post by nonethewiser »

cal85 wrote: post #673
javajosh wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It presents an interesting problem for those "left behind" who value shame, self-restraint, and other unpopular virtues. The neoliberal view is that you can prove your point by forming subcultures that do better than the surrounding culture. I think that's true, but it's a plan B - plan A should be to fight hard to not lose those values in the first place. It's appalling that public discourse about systemic issues ha…

> The neoliberal view is that you can prove your point by forming subcultures that do better than the surrounding culture. Can you clarify who you actually mean here by neoliberalism? It seems a very loosely defined ideology. Do you just mean ‘the mainstream West’, or something more specific? It’s a strange -ism. It’s very vague in definition, and no one ever professes to be a member of it, yet it is ostensibly an id…

> It’s very vague in definition, and no one ever professes to be a member of it, yet it is ostensibly an ideology. And I only ever hear it used with a pejorative subtext, which is interesting.

Is there a name for the phenomena? Its almost like a strawman but not really.

I actually think the OPs comment was fair a d not maligning, but this is a real rhetorical trick. Perhaps not exactly the same but it makes me think about how many Atheists read the bible like fundamentalists.

> For instance, Corey has fun rebutting an atheist who accuses a “devout” Christian girl of hypocrisy for having tattoos, because those are supposedly forbidden by the Bible—if you read the Bible like a fundamentalist. As a Christian myself, I’ve been accused by atheists of inconsistency for holding that neither Christians nor theists in general need believe that God created the universe in literally six 24-hour periods, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. It’s as if I can’t be a creationist at all without being what’s called a young-earth creationist. That would be news to St. Augustine as well as to many respectable contemporary Christian thinkers

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2017/08/why-atheists-read-th...

In this case, you have someone who disagrees with an ideaology insisting on what the ideology is, in spite of many genuine believers espousing less extreme ideas.

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

#768

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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 have no problem with people abusing drugs as long as (a) the property crime that comes with it is heavily cracked down on and (b) society isn’t on the hook to fund drug treatment. Both are libertarian viewpoints: society exists mainly to protect property rights, and my property shouldn’t be stolen to recover from someone else’s bad decisions.

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

#769

Post by makeitdouble »

nonethewiser wrote: post #737
HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

The 2nd has more people diversity than the 1st.

You'd think no one wanting to murder you is the best state, but practically people will have strong feelings about a lot of things in life, and it's hard to imagine a healthy society where "that would look bad on me" is enough to restrain you from your deepest anger moments. Having no immediate way to murder you + an active police to protect you should be the barrier to avoid a tragedy.

Japan is no exception. People get murdered everyday, but there is a lot of prevention and arrangement to limit the impact of a single individual going berserk. Police patrol will catch you walking down an empty street at 3 AM with a kitchen knife in hand.

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

#770

Post by AlwaysRock »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #476
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…

"based on the successful policy in Portugal" How are you defining successful? The linked article links to a recent wapo article from last week "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts". I don't know one way or the other, I'm just trying to collect more data points. Didn't Vancouver BC try something similar? (Seems a little odd that this Atlantic article, the Wapo article questioning Portu…

Unfortunately, what you are describing is incredibly common. Issue A gets some funding to try a New Approach because nothing else has worked. New Approach sees some positive results. New Approach gets some more funding. People working on New Approach say hey to scale this effectively we will need significantly more funding. They receive some funding or no funding. New Approach continues to work to some extent, but without additional funding is not scalable.

Issue A gets some funding to try a New Approach... and so on.

One of the worst parts about this cycle is that people will point to Issue A and say, "We've been throwing money at the problem for years and nothing works!" and give up and/or decide that they are now against funding Issue A.

This cycle happens constantly.

Post reply on HN