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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

#801
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-…

What drugs are you thinking of that are prone to overdose and are also socially accepted? I can’t really think of any…

> And let’s not forget that we live in a country that became a world power under a social structure that was much more rigid and repressive than the one we have today

Great point, it’s interesting how eager people are to perform large scale social experiments in rapid succession and with no roll back button.

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

#802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 wi…

On the other hand, it is extremely difficult for an outside observer, looking at the results of the New Approach, to judge whether it is not scaling well because of a lack of funding or because it fundamentally does not scale well. It can also be challenging for the people involved to realize that their approach isn't working (cf. "sunk cost fallacy", "it is difficult to get a man to understand a point when his salary depends on him not understanding it", "confirmation bias"). Often, the approaches are not necessarily poorly funded but rather inefficiently managed - education and healthcare would be the prime examples in the US context. The US spends a roughly approximate amount of its public budget on healthcare as the UK does. At other times, advocates for an approach to solving a social issue are ideologically motivated more than results-oriented. A case in point is the difference between LA's approach to the homelessness crisis and NYC's take (https://public.substack.com/p/three-times-more-homeless-die-...)

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

#803
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, though I suspect most people do this calculus: would I rather want a drug addict to be on the streets or in jail? (Especially if the crime is violent.) Keep in mind that I have no idea how to "fix" this, and it's a very complicated issue, so I'm just trying to spark conversation. If we look at historical examples (e.g. opium dens), it's rarely these societal issues fixed themselves with more lenient social poli…

Prohibition wasn't an abject failure. The most pessimistic reading is that its results were mixed, with many scholars believing it was a success. (There was a reason it took 14 years to repeal and not because people thought it was an abject failure.) Copied & pasted from Wikipedia: "Alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 19…

> 14 years to repeal

It took that long to repeal because it was an amendment (and thus needed another amendment to repeal it). The rest of your post basically says people drank less therefore less people drank (it's obvious that if less people drink, less people will have alcohol problems). I'm not sure if the academic consensus is that it was "mixed," most top search results seem to agree that it was kind of a failure[1][2], but to be fair I never studied it in depth and Google can be biased.

[1] https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/alcohol-prohibition-was...

[2] https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-histor...

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

#804

Worth noting that this and other similar content published by author Jim Hinch is written from his perspective as senior editor of the heavily Christian rehab-evangelist outfit "Guideposts". Not a criticism, merely contextualising the presented editorial position.

This comment should be at the top, as this person has a financial interest is promoting an opposing opinion.

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

#805

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 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…

Why would Japan’s immigration policy be decried as racist? Just because the low raw numbers of total immigrants and (especially) refugees? Or is there something else?

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

#806
post #28
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some people will start using because they lose the fear of being caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is. Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment…

> though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get. This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are…

> It would be better to not throw people in prison for drug use - but instead have mandatory rehab or something... while keeping drug use out of reach for the average person.

Totally agree, but I'd be in favor of a much harder line on the distribution and production side. The problem is one of supply, so if you can help rehab and curtail supply you help reduce usage.

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

#807

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.

This does not apply to addicted ppl

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

#808

Supporting legalization / decriminalization of hard drugs is a luxury belief. If you’re in a nice rich circle it’s easy to believe it doesn’t harm anyone except yourself. If you are around people that become drug addicts, it becomes apparent that it drastically harms everyone around them, themselves probably not the most. You can only see so many addict parents throw away the money for kids food, or pawn of their kid…

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.

Those two ruin more lives because they're legal and way more widely available, so more people abuse them - not because they're worse. Larger sample size means larger number affected overall. And yet we have people here arguing that hard drugs should be legal and widely available too.

Let's be honest, food (sugar) and alcohol are in a totally different league from hard drugs. They're not even relevant to the discussion here. We can do an experiment. I'll take 2 shots of alcohol every day, my friend will drink 3 sodas a day (100+g of sugar), and you can shoot up heroin every day. Let's see how we're all doing in a year.

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

#809
post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Maybe those people were right? Prohibition decreased the amount of people addicted to alcohol and the number of people who beat their wives. If we had a more hard-line response to alcohol instead of the half-in/half-out wishy-washy nonsense that was Prohibition enforcement maybe less people would have their lives ruined by alcohol to this day. Singapo…

Singapore mignt have intense laws. It also takes care of its citizens with universal Healthcare and subsidized housing. People are are in less dire situations and don't need to turn to crime.

Yes, these are good ideas too.

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

#810

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.

Alcohol is bad but lets not pretend that legal booze is the same as allowing something like Oxycontin. If they sold Oxy in grocery stores the country would probably fall to pieces in a few years.

I love how no one got the point of my post which is that we should tackle poor mental health rather than focusing on the specific substance.
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