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

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

#841

Post by locallost » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:11 AM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #112

gspencley wrote: post #61

It's working just fine. I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc. if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those standards. But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my opini…

A thought experiment I think about is along the lines of: what would society look like, say, 10,000 years in the future, if everybody somehow magically had an Einstein-level of intelligence and rationality. In such a society, sure, the government probably wouldn't need to step in; the vast, vast majority of the population would either have little interest in the drugs in the first place, or, if they did, could be tru…

No offense, but a very high degree of irrationality is to consider yourself to be rational. A good excuse would be if you are very young. Your characterization of drug users as unintelligent and with no interest in higher ideals merely demonstrates that you've had almost no contact with them, thus it is highly irrational for you to have an opinion on them. They are doing things that are bad for them and are therefore stupid? Coca Cola is a diabetes inducing poison, yet people drink it and feel good about themselves. Some will eventually get so sick from it and similar things they consume that they will go blind or lose a limb. Worse yet, others will consider Coca Cola a wonderful business and buy stock, which will go up. Coca Cola will continue to expand and improve, causing more havoc on society, raising the cost of health insurance for everyone. Stupidity as a way of life.

Stop referring to people with a problem as "such people", it implies there is something inherently wrong with them. There are a lot of people that have strong tendencies to addictions, but there are also a lot of them where a bad break or two pushes them the wrong way. There's a lot that can be done with education and prevention. How much of the now unnecessary police funds were redirected for these and other measures?

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

#842

Post by godelski » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:16 AM UTC

vjk800 wrote: post #826

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 an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. In places with diverse people from different backgrounds and cultures (i.e. all modern cities) there is no social contract. Apart from murdering people, there are very few things that people agree are universally good or bad, and thus the behaviour moderating effect doe…

I've lived in small towns and big towns. The difference is that in the big town the drug users are anonymous in that you don't know them. In the small down they are your coworker's sister's brother in law.

I lived in a town of 20k people that was BY FAR the largest for an hour drive in any direction. Lots of drunks. First place I lived there, my neighbor was selling meth, put up a confederate flag in their window when a black lady moved into my duplex, and was shot 6 times later than year (survived, since we was shot by a shaky meth head who used a 22). They were banned from the place and police wouldn't do shit whenever they were back and they got mad at me when I demanded they take care of the screaming meth head at 6am on a Saturday. They stole parts off my truck. There were meth heads climbing their fence all hours and days. I literally watched a different neighbor get arrested by a cop who said "hey, don't we have a warrant for you?" (neo nazi guy, who just turned around and the cuffed him). When I moved later that year? Heard nothing. Wouldn't have known. Only thing was you'd still see grown men riding children's bikes because you know they lost their license. No one rode bikes there. Shit was dangerous as hell.

I went to college in a non-college town about twice that size (college was Look at a heat map of opioid deaths. Then tell me again how this is a problem exclusive to big cities. If it wasn't in small cities, you wouldn't see a looming crisis in The Blue Ridge. If it were shame, Utah wouldn't be an epicenter.

The thing is that humans are really fucking bad at statistics. We internalize them by total samples of the event, unnormalized. Which is already an incredibly biased lens. I guarantee you that several people in your town were doing drugs, you just didn't know. Just take a minute and ask your self "do I know what I'm talking about or did I just pull this outta my ass?" We need a lot more of that if we're being honest.

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

#843

Post by Nursie » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:19 AM UTC

livinginfear wrote: post #514

fooker wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always easy to blame the execution rather than the policy, if you are ideologically biased to believe in the policy.

Looking on from the UK, the only answer American liberals seem to have for the failures of American liberalism is that America just wasn't liberal enough.

The UK that dismisses or suppresses its own reports into drug policy and fires its leading experts because their views are not politically expedient, that UK?

I think even if we don't know what is the right way to go about drug policy, we can probably agree that sticking your head in the sand and pretending there's no debate to be had is probably not the best approach.

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

#844

Post by TulliusCicero » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:20 AM UTC

vjk800 wrote: post #826

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 an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. In places with diverse people from different backgrounds and cultures (i.e. all modern cities) there is no social contract. Apart from murdering people, there are very few things that people agree are universally good or bad, and thus the behaviour moderating effect doe…

Is drug abuse actually more common in more diverse and larger cities?

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

#845

Post by godelski » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:22 AM UTC

vjk800 wrote: post #840

throwaway77384 wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my town no-one did drugs, because that would have been shameful. Reads: People hid their drug use successfully. How much history do we need to experience before we accept that shame only leads to everyone pretending that something isn't a problem instead of addressing it head on.

"No-one" was a bit of a hyperbola; there was a known "drug gang" of three people who we were warned not to interact with when we were children. These three drug users were known by everyone and I'd really be surprised if there were significantly more people using any kind of illegal substances; back in the 90s it was just not that easy to hide stuff in a town of 3000 people. Also, where the hell would you even get dr…

It sounds like you're suggesting they were selling. Which if so clearly people were using. Back in the 90's it was easy to hide shit. Especially small towns. It's not like you're all living on one block. Sounds like rural area and that's a lotta land.

> Alcohol... many people had a problem with it.

I think this disproves your entire point. We both know that problematic drinking isn't socially acceptable in those small towns. Especially with the religiousness. So probably a different factor that you're conflating.

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

#846

Post by ttctciyf » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:23 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #611

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 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…

Carroll's episode is worth listening to, not least for it's exceptionally clear exposition of the current physics consensus around QM, qft, standard model, etc., and how they are related, but the point you specifically mention is a weak spot for me.

For one thing he hardly mentions the epic failure of string theory to make good on its initial promises nor the murky waters of anthropic claims and metaphysical notions of beauty, etc., used to keep it suspended like Wile E Coyote after running off the cliff of empirical support.

As non-crackpot physics profs and postgrads (e.g. [1], [2]) have pointed out, this has not engendered public trust and is a key ingredient in whatever "crisis" the discipline is undergoing.

Not that Carroll doesn't make plenty of good arguments to support his views, but his seeming equation of any criticism of the field with crackpotist heresies is a cheap trick for a philosophy prof.

1: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?cat=8

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

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

#847

Post by loxdalen » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:24 AM UTC

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…

Why should he have to choose to be either clean or homeless?

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

#848

Post by darthrupert » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:27 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #817

nonethewiser wrote: post #737

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…

This is a terrible example. Most people do not want to murder, even when very angry. You don't need laws to make people not murder. The laws are for what to do when people do. No matter how universal an attribute is it'll never be 100%. Besides, you'll notice the murder rate is highly localized and associated with economic opportunities. You know why talking about gay people _is_ a good example? Because you probably…

Most people do want to murder when very angry, at least for the definition of very angry that I'm familiar with. The problem is that our societies drive more and more people to be very angry.

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

#849

Post by yafbum » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:30 AM UTC

I feel like when I traveled to Asia, I didn't see any of that. I don't think it's because of better individual self-control (plenty of other addictions, like gambling, alcohol or smoking). But isn't there like death penalty for drug traffickers there? Is that the only effective deterrent?

Harsh perhaps, but if we look at outcomes, the current situation kills a lot of people and wastes a lot of lives. I can see how some people would think "don't administer narcan to addicts" but I don't think that it's fair to attribute addictive behaviors entirely to the user. Someone is selling them the stuff and know full well the amorality of it. That said, creating negative consequences for users before addiction takes place can also create the right incentive structure to avoid mass addiction such as what we're seeing in both cities and countryside in the US.

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

#850

Post by DropInIn » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:32 AM UTC

Decriminalization doesn't work in isolation

Well funded and highly available treatment programs must be made available alongside it

And that's not even getting into the need for a regulated and safe supply that can only come with outright legalization...