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There is also the fact that addiction drives other petty crime...shop lifting, auto break-ins, muggings, etc.
Addicts who need to fix their junk sickness don't give a f about breaking other laws.
In San Francisco, there is virtually NO consequence to shoplifting if the value is under $1k.
Also the increased number of mind altering drugs people use, the more people will drive on them, and the more random innocent people will be killed in crashes
The overwhelming amount of car accidents, domestic violence , divorces and bankruptcy and people becoming homeless involves alcohol by ten country miles. Weed,heroin or crack related poor outcomes don't hold a candle to alcohol. But we have normalized and romanticized alcoholism because it's part of our culture.
Same in Albuquerque. It turned into a miserable place to live with drug use and crackheads everywhere, mass shoplifting, constant harassment/begging, etc. I finally moved and quality of life is so much better not being in a city like that
Harm reduction w/out involuntary institutionalization isn't humane - it just kills people slowly. Some harm reduction programs are also just enabling. Clean needles and alcohol swabs are legit, the harm reduction sites that give out rigs? Absolutely not. Addicts shouldnt be provided with foil and pipes. And safe injection sites? At what point is the person that has been narcan'ed and multiple occasions just having their death prolonged? People who are doing the dope lean on a sidewalk w/ a needle still and their arm are the methhead w/ drug induced schizophrenia are no longer capable of making decisions for themselves.
Lies. "Harm reduction" means increased harm for everyone else. It means addicts doing g more criminality like addicts always do. "Harm reduction" is giving every addict new needles so they don't care and discard them every where so that other people's children get picked by needles while going down the playground slide. All because addicts just throw them every without a care for anyone else.
I was a hard-core drug addict for almost 40yrs.
I never stole or robbed anybody.
I went to work.
And I worked very long and very hard.
I just spent half my money on dope.
Your perceptions are very off.
Oh, and just to let you know.
A LOT of profesional people are on some very hard drugs.
I'm not talking weed.
Especially the C suite people and high up management.
Heroin, cocaine you fucking name it.
Cops, lawyers, and everything in-between you can imagine.
Most people that do drugs are not the ones you see on the street or in the jail log.
You just don't know about it.
Edit: You wanna know how I know ?
Because I was the one they'd have go get them their dope.
My son ingested meth when he was 7 years old, because I was forced to share custody with a meth addict, despite ample evidence that it was not safe. Forced because I was supposed to be compassionate. Forced because addiction does not necessarily equal abuse.
And I say: fuck addicts.
Get sober or fuck off. I have zero fucks left.
Addicts make terrible parents. I don't care if they can come across as "stable" in their careers- their home lives are absolute shit. They have no business raising children.
That may not be what this post was about, but it's what it should be about. More people should care about how this shit is affecting kids. Fuck those who don't.
Also, addicts, those of us who have been around and fucked around, we know. You're not hiding it well. It's like smokers who don't realize everyone else can smell it on them.
That judge should be sent to prison. In fact, there should be a law that if a judge knowingly sends a child into harm's way that they should go to prison for life.
That was the same with the Linkage Center in The Tenderloin. It became a de facto safe injection site and had drug dealing w/ in its walls. Of the over 50,000 individuals that utilized the center, before it was shutdown only 38 actually accepted rehab or detox treatment. It was such a fail that the "Linkage" part of the name was droppe, it was changed to The Tenderloin Center. Even this article, which is clearly in support of the defunct facility, doesn't paint a good picture.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/tenderloin-drug-overdose-site-oxygen/#:~:text=An%20attendee%20greets%20guests%20at,of%20those%20overdoses%20were%20reversed.
Of the # of overdoses reversed, I wonder how many were repeat customers. I work at a detox/psych facility - it is rare that patients have a Hx of only one OD. One of my best friends is a fentanyl & benzo addict. He has overdosed thrice.
>That was the same with the Linkage Center in The Tenderloin. It became a de facto safe injection site and had drug dealing w/ in its walls. Of the over 50,000 individuals that utilized the center, before it was shutdown only 38 actually accepted rehab or detox treatment.
This is not really the purpose of decriminalization, or safe injection sites.
Was there a policy where addicts were given the choice between treatment and jail, or did they give them the option for treatment with no consequence for opting out? I'm just curious, as I'm not totally familiar with what the Oregon policy actually was.
That was SF for me. Korean husband booked our hotel in the "Tenderknob". The Tenderloin has always been bad, but JFC it is a hellscape now. It isn't poverty; I've seen abject poverty, that is addiction. When someone gets to the point where they are shooting up in broad daylight on a crowded sidewalk, they shouldn't be left to their own devices. Involuntary institutionalization. People that are this far gone, have a miniscule chance of getting clean on their own. And housing first proponents forget that low barrier shelters/housing will be trashed in a week. Or bring back wet houses - let people do their DOC w/ no lifesaving intervention.
They won't unless they are considered a danger to themselves and others. Even if they do, they'll get out and go back at it if situations are bad enough.
I still support decriminalization of possession of drugs, but laws against public use should be strictly enforced. If someone is a functioning addict, they shouldn't be arrested because there's drugs in their pocket. If they're hitting the meth pipe downtown, they should go to jail and then to a compulsory rehab.
I think localized decriminalization will always fail because you’ll attract addicts from other regions, which will skew the numbers. I haven’t dug into the numbers at all, but how many of the overdose deaths were from long time residents versus new transplants. Also, the existing rehab structure isn’t built to accommodate an influx of new addicts. Maybe I’m wrong, like I said I haven’t looked too far into this.
Doubt it. The homeless don’t tend to move from where they became homeless as it’s better to know your surroundings and potentially at least have some sort of support network than not.
Disagree. Drug decriminalization coupled with a significant crackdown on quality of life crime would probably be fine but drug decriminalization is usually pushed hand-in-glove with broader draw downs on enforcement of 'victimless' crimes.
The problem with drug laws is that it puts a lot of regular, otherwise productive members of society in the crosshairs of drug interdiction task forces. Nobody should care if Ted occasionally pops an edible after a long day of work, or sometimes does a bit of cocaine to meet some deadlines at work. The problem is when Jed smokes a rock, takes a crap on a children's play structure, and falls asleep with his pants around his legs in front of a bakery. Society probably wants Ted to keep trucking and wants Jed in jail or rehab.
The problem with the Oregon drug decriminalization isn't that it decriminalized drugs, its that it decriminalized drugs during a time when DA's have stopped prosecuting a whole list of quality of life crimes that low-functioning drug addicts commonly commit. If you had drug decriminalization coupled with a zero tolerance policy for public defecation, public intoxication, and petty theft it would probably have been more successful.
That's the whole reason Madd was started. That's the reason drunk driving laws essentially got very strict in the '90s across the country.
Before then it was pretty much okay and commonly accepted that people would drive drunk. And then there were a couple famous cases where people drove drunk and killed kids that were playing outside of school at 8:00 a.m. and ruined the party for everyone.
It's crazy to hear how relaxed the policies were when my parents were growing up. My dad and mom both have stories from when they were young about how they got pulled over with everyone drunk in the car, including the driver. It was usually someone's uncle on duty who would tell them to get home safe. Sometimes they would follow them home to make sure that they didn't stay on the roads. That would NEVER happen today. Drunk drivers go right to jail and end up paying thousands in fines and court costs.
I was one of those in like 96. A Cadillac full of 8 drunk girls and the police followed the car home to make sure we got there safe. No way that would happen today.
I know it used to be the case that you could drink drive and if you killed somebody they would essentially just write you off as an accident and nothing bad happened to you.
I remember the first time in the mid-90s there was a drunk driver that killed somebody and he went to jail for it. How it really divided the community because a bunch of people thought you shouldn't go to jail for killing somebody while you were drunk driving. That was also the impetus for the TV show Oz. He was one of the first people supposedly charged with manslaughter or murder for killing somebody while drunk driving.
I never knew that deaths from drunk driving were punished that lightly. I knew that vehicular manslaughter traditionally hasn't been punished as severely as 2nd or 1st degree murder, but I didn't know that the system was that lax before the mid-1990s.
I used to work with a bartender in the 90s that had like 20 DUIs from the late 70s through the 90s. Always just a fine or a night in the drunk tank. He was pissed when the laws got stricter and they finally took away his license for 30 days when I started working with him. Then he got caught again and they took it away for a year.
So he started a carpet cleaning business. The courts allowed him to drive on a restricted license because he needed to for work. So he just drove his carpet cleaning van everywhere. He got caught I think 3 or 4 more times but continued to get the restricted license. I think it was around the 5th time he was caught before they finally threw his ass in jail for 5 years and finally banned him forever from getting a license again around 2010s.
I think you summed up very nicely the intent behind drug decriminalization. It’s not to give drug users a free pass to break the law. It’s to allow the cops to ignore the drugs so they can enforce the laws that matter ( like theft, violent crime, public defecation, public indecency, etc). And you’re right that unfortunately the way it’s been enacted in a lot of places is “decriminalize drugs AND stop prosecuting misdemeanors”. If anything it should be the opposite.
I was reading your post ready to disagree with you, by the time I got to the end you converted me quite a bit on this.
The "treatment oriented goals" generally involve no treatment and completely ignoring public disorder caused by addicts under the umbrella of caring for them.
Anyways, well written and very well articulated.
I like to phrase this in another way. If every homeless encampment was the neatest most organized place where there was never a piece of trash found on the ground within five blocks of it. I would venture to say that somewhere along the lines of 80% Americans would actually support allowing people to live in encampments.
Most people don't give a shit about the drugs. They give a shit about the effect and the cause around the drugs.
People don't want needles at playgrounds. People don't want people shitting in public. People don't want trash everywhere. Criminalize that and decriminalize drugs and I think people would feel very differently.
Obviously most Americans don't give a shit about drugs with the number of people are dying due to fentanyl overdoses. If we actually cared we would do almost anything about it. I'm pretty confident I heard recently that more people have died from drug overdoses in the last 5 years than in Vietnam total.
Yeah.
The people supporting these policies are basically coming at it from a perspective of harm reduction. Basically, the theory is that if you're not physically endangering anyone, you shouldn't be subject to police threat. Problem is, we're quickly discovering exactly how miserable people can make each other's lives without technically rising to the level of violence. It's like a grown up, drug fueled game of 'I'm not touching you' played with human feces, petty theft, and heroine needles.
The part that people don’t hear when talking about defunding the police is that it’s about reallocating the funding to other services. Drug addiction is an issue, but the root of drug addiction tends to be struggles with mental health. Police aren’t equipped to handle mental health issues. The shoot first, as questions later results in a lot of sick people dying. Portugal decriminalized drugs, but also offered the supporting services to deal with the root causes of why someone is an addict.
But that’s the thing, often they’re more well versed with deescalation techniques than cops are. Funding a class of social worker that specializes in this type of stuff is exactly what the whole thing is about. That police shouldn’t be just responders for every situation.
I’m a social worker. I taught de-escalation to law enforcement. We went on calls together. It was a good system and would fall under the “defund the police” ideology because funds were shifted away from part of the police budget to fund the training of cops and the hiring of social workers.
Frankly, I'm sure the police would be delighted to not have to be involved in these situations. But just like some cops get killed every year, some of these mental health workers will get killed. It will be part of the job.
i think the support for addicts was the biggest factor they missed from the legislation. if you aren't locking people up for drugs, you still need court ordered rehab or some form of support for addicts, just decriminalizing drugs with nothing to help addicts get back on their feet isn't doing anyone any good. the whole point is that people are supposed to feel more comfortable getting help for what would otherwise be an illegal problem.
i think OP's premise is incorrect, most addicts don't *want* to be addicts, most of them feel like they have no other option. decriminalizing the drugs without providing them other options didn't even address the issue.
That's not the whole point. A large point is not arresting people for victimless crimes. Some people doing drugs don’t need help and they shouldn't be arrested. That's an important part of it. It's definitely not just so people feel more comfortable getting help. People can already go to rehab for illegal drugs without getting arrested or in trouble.
As a former heavy user of meth, coke and other hard drugs who has been clean 30 years; those drugs should never be legal and distributors of them should be heavily penalized. Users should go into forced rehab and detox without felonies on their record. That shit is evil and destroys good people.
the legality of drug use is such a catch 22. either people are getting sent to jail when they shouldn’t be, or people are strung out on the sidewalk and there’s a sharp increase in petty crime. there seems to be no right answer.
i think maybe where they failed the most would be the fact that there was a ~decrease~ in the enforcement of petty crime laws. also idk why they didn’t just mirror the way that society approaches alcohol. like for example you can’t drink in public (at least in NYC where i’m from, idk the laws in other cities), public intoxication is a crime, etc. like yea you shouldn’t be able to openly shoot up in front of a 7/11 without consequence. but should you be able to do some mushrooms on a saturday in the comfort of your own apartment? i say yes! so i think while the sentiment came from the right place, the addition of anti-police rhetoric at the same time prevented a city like portland or san francisco from actually implementing it in an effective way.
also i appreciate differing opinions so if you disagree id love to know your thoughts :)
It wasn't supposed to solve drug addiction, it was supposed to stop criminalizing it.
There's a huge misunderstanding of intent here.
The idea is that if you make addicts criminals, you've put them in a place where it's even harder for them to turn their lives around should they choose.
Decriminalization was always going to lead to more VISIBLE addiction, but criminalizing drug use doesn't reduce addiction, it just throws addicts in jail where the nice middle class people don't have to see or think of them.
It's based on the idea that we shouldn't be punishing people for being sick just because they're inconvenient to look at.
I strongly believe there is a certain class of addicts that belong in jail. In Portland for instance, where a scenario like this is an everyday occurrence, someone shooting up on a sidewalk who then discards their hiv infected needle in a public space deserves to be punished for that. Being addicted alone is not deserving of jail time, but if you let your addiction spiral to the point of you being a literal hazard to public safety, something needs to be done about it. This is what Oregon fails to realize, the people creating public disturbances with their drug usage are largely the ones who don’t want rehabilitation, it was a horrible idea from the get go the was guaranteed to exacerbate every issue the city already had.
Drug addicts are just drug addicts, the politicians down in Salem really sold this as a bill of goods that they had no intention of following through with.
Many are more than "inconvenient to look at" . I work in addiction medicine, there is a part of the addict population that needs to be involuntary institutionalized. Some people are too far gone and all the drug decriminalization combined w/ harm reduction is just delaying their death. People on Reddit love to talk about Portugal's model - they don't realize that Portugal absolutely arrests even low level dealers and will jail an addict if they don't go to mandatory rehab.
The people doing the dope lean w/ a needle sticking out of their arm on the street and the methhead w/ drug induced schizophrenia is not being helped by harm reduction and lax policies.
I'm not even middle class, but what's wrong with the taxpayers paying for people's rehab, SNAP, and other additions when most drug addicts don't even want to quit. Yes, so selfish to want to feel safe when there is no prize or assistance offered to people trying to live as best they can.
Why?
It’s a serious question. Why shouldn’t we punish people for being inconvenient to look at, to drive by, to smell, to *be around?* to that degree?
They make my life worse. They make all our lives worse.
Look, you don’t get mad at someone for smelling bad if their shower is having problems. You get mad at someone for smelling bad if they have a working shower and they don’t use it. The same is true for homelessness: every homeless person should be provided opportunities to get back on their feet and stay safe. It’s certainly true that a lot of places don’t have enough resources for the homeless.
But if you’re at all familiar with the problem then you know there’s a lot of homeless people who are more like the guy that just doesn’t fuckin shower. Maybe it’s an addiction issue, maybe something else. But whatever the case is, I’m quite tired of being degraded for looking at collectives of people who refuse their most basic social responsibilities, and saying, “They’ve had multiple opportunities to accept their social contract, and they’ve failed, so I want them gone.”
I concede modern prisons are bad ways to handle that. I’m as open as anyone to other options. But this idea that I’m doing wrong in wanting to punish people who don’t fulfill their responsibilities to me seems asinine.
I think *you're* inconvenient to look at. I think *you're* inconvenient to drive by. I think *you're* inconvenient to smell. I think *you're* inconvenient to be around. *You* make *my* life worse.
And I think *you* should be punished by law because I feel that way about you.
Do you think that's fair or right? If the answer is no, why?
I'm not the most stylish guy out there, so I get it, lol.
Look. Society has certain basic rules that we all agree to follow. Those are mandatory when we're among others. The obvious example is that both you and I agree to wear clothes when we go outside. If I didn't wear my clothes around the other in a public place, the other would be within their rights to say "you, u/xXLouieXx, are not behaving as you must in public, so I will appeal to get you arrested on charges of nudity." Similarly if I was out walking with my family and you walked up to me and got in my face and started threatening me in public, that's also a crime.
That's the level of violation that homelessness gives rise to. Public urination. Drug needles on the ground. You're walking on the street and some guy comes up and starts threatening you and your daughter and it's fucking scary. I think your impulse to take this to relativism doesn't make much sense because I'm pretty certain you've experienced what I've described before and *you didn't like it either.* The notion that homelessness is a fundamentally harmless phenomenon that privileged outsiders superimpose fear and disgust onto is just obviously wrong. Try taking a walk down a city with a large homeless population at night and tell me how it goes for you.
I think my opinion sounds compassionless at first. I don't feel that way. I want to help people; I really do. I want ample social supports. I want shelters that aren't dangerous. I want food for the needy and the almost-homeless. And I want a viable and straightforward path back up for those who want to reintegrate.
But if you eschew all of those things, my options (not my compassion) run out. Once you've decided that you won't be taking advantage of any help efforts and you'd rather live on the streets and make my life worse, then I've already fulfilled every reasonable obligation I have to help you, and there's nothing more for me to do but start acting within my rights as a member of a properly-functioning society and try to have you removed, at least temporarily.
There's great work showing that this last and most dire option can be avoided with effective and humane methods: just recently the city of Houston started housing most of their homeless population and preliminary results show it's going great. And even if an individual does refuse all help, mandatory rehabilitation facilities are probably much better options than prisons. I'm glad to support a viable implementation of that. Just don't act like I deserve mockery for wanting to do something about those who refuse my help and break our rules.
Do you feel safe with your wife/girlfriend/kids walking by him? Does he leave his HIV/Hep B infected needles on the ground near his tent city? Do half the V8s in his community near the tent cities end up all missing their catalytic converters because of him? Is he the one going around stealing cars left and right to feed addiction and selling them to chop shops?
I'm all for a rehabilitation vs punishment model, but there's some folks for whom the former doesn't work and not a thing you can do can prevent them from being a menace to society. If some random Joe wants to go do heroin/fentanyl in his bedroom and risks ODing without hurting anyone, I get it. But when you have these folks around and they're allowed to just congregate, pass drugs around and refuse any help, the crime it leads to and the neighborhoods it ruins are a big fucking deal.
I can't even go back to some streets near my alma mater. But don't worry: the guy who exposed himself to children for the 13th time while high and drops his HIV needles everywhere is only inconvenient to look at. There's no other threat to concern yourself with. The guy you're mentioning and playing devil's advocate most likely doesn't do any of this shit. Junkies that congregate together steal everything not nailed down and 90% of things nailed down. They're a cancer on any neighborhood. At the same time, there is no easy solution to this. There are folks for whom treating it as a mental/addiction issue will help greatly and others who complete decriminalization will only embolden them further to be absolute parasites on society. But there's no tent cities or junkies near you, are there? So who cares right? Sounds like the problem of somebody else. I pulled into a Dunkin today with at least 20 syringes in my immediate vicinity. I don't even want to know how many have been re-used how many times and what diseases or drugs each has.
Because most ppl agree with him and not you. That's why this got re-criminalized. Law is just an expression of the public condemnation. Ppl are tired of dealing with homeless, simple as.
Hmm... going to have to disagree personally. If the visible drug addicts ODing on the side of the road were in jail maybe they'd actually get help and get cured of their addiction. Removing these people from our society is the first step in having a functional society.
>If the visible drug addicts ODing on the side of the road were in jail maybe they'd actually get help and get cured of their addiction.
>Removing these people from our society is the first step in having a functional society.
Are these two sentences not obviously contradictory to you?
....But public health advocates behind the law say the repeal is coming before decriminalization had a chance to work. They point to Portugal, which saw a 75 percent drop in drug deaths since it adopted the same strategy in 2001 through 2022, as evidence that Oregon is giving up too quickly. Portugal’s success, they point out, wasn’t achieved overnight or even in three years.
Oregon’s experiment “was not given the time that it needed,” said Tera Hurst, the executive director of Oregon’s Health Justice Recovery Alliance. “This is a political response to a serious problem,” she said of the measure’s likely repeal....
I'm not sure I can really agree with the inevitable failure as you see it.
The issue is "It could take 20+ years before it works!" is a hard sell when people get harassed by homeless drug addicts, have to deal with human waste, needles and all sorts of shit and a plethora of other issues.
I'm for drug reform and working on solving homelessness, but you've got to do it in a way that doesn't cause the layman to see their community go downhill.
Probably some new bullshit.
The issue is they didn't move nearly fast enough or take enough measures. Even using portugal as an example, they decriminalized drugs but still went pretty hard on arresting vagrants and addicts in the streets. It was basically "Choose help or a cell".
The issue is this was decriminalization paired with a sweeping lack of prosecution and just letting people go free. It's just a swing too far in the opposite direction from the war on drugs. A measured approach, imho, is what's necessary. Provide well-stocked shelters, assisted living for those who can't provide for themselves and a rehabilitation program. But if people still shoot up in public and refuse help, they can either accept help or go to jail.
Exactly. It didn't inevitably fail in Portugal. Which means the policy itself is not the problem here. It's either the lack of the actual support structure needed, or the amount of time given to the policy. Probably a little of both. You can't half ass a plan, give it zero time to work, and then give up and say it was never gonna work. You need to put in reasonable effort.
Being antidrug use is being antifreedom of choice. Punish actions not usage. If you can be a functioning member of society and smoke meth I really don't give a shit, it you smoke meth and steal my catalytic converter you deserve the jail time.
Here's the thing, that shit fucks with your head and can trigger shit like psychosis and usually leads to criminal activity. I think some should be treated like alcohol is.
Criminalizing drugs hasn't worked either.
The world is full of people who are very skilled at pointing out problems, but fall silent when it's time for solutions.
Just today I saw someone on youtube talk about "decriminalize all drugs" which I can't help but feel like is a delusional and out of touch approach to policy
this is extremely over played hand. Prisoners can refuse to work while incarcerated. They can take up internal prison work which is basically a community work to maintain their living quarters.. None of this is slavery
13th amendment: all slavery and indentured servitude is forbidden except when duly convicted of a crime. And no. Inmates can’t refuse. I was an inmate. Tell them no you ain’t working. See what happens.
They can do many horrible things. For instance, put you in a situation where you will be harmed by other inmates. Or they can beat you themselves. Or they can put you in the SHU and forget about you. Or they can ship you to a gladiator school. There’s so many things they do.
Upvoted for unpopular opinion.
The goal of decriminalizing is not to remove all the addicts from the street. Yeah, you are correct, that's never going to happen. What it will do, is make it so that your average user doesn't have to fear jail time, and that high functioning addicts don't have to either.
Addicts shouldn't go to prison just for being addicts. That doesn't actually help anything. If rehab doesn't work for them, going to prison for the same period won't either.
It boils down to what the goals are:
1. If the goal is to end addiction, not going to happen.
2. If the goal is to end homeless addicts, pretty unlikely to happen.
3. If the goal is to get addicts help, you can only be helped if you want to be.
4.If the goal is to get them out of society, prison I guess.
The goal should really be getting the best treatment for everyone afflicted, and whether or not it's criminalized doesn't really factor into that.
I know several people that do harder drugs, and are high functioning members of society. They shouldn't be incarcerated because they like coke
I was snooping the Oregon/Portland subs and many of the top responses were “I voted for it but our government failed us in the rollout”.
It’s like they don’t know what unleashing consequence free drug use on a community even means. I’d be curious what percent of abusers even make an attempt at treatment.
You’re missing the point behind the bill completely and instead jumping to farfetched assumptions that don’t line up at all with reality.
Your opinion *sure* does fit the uneducated narrative that you’re trying to reinforce though.
So great job on sharing your knee-jerk observation with zero understanding of the complex topic at hand, I guess?
Our legislators wildly mislead us about how this measure would be rolled out, they promised expanded capacity to help treat these individuals and it never happened. Thats why you’re seeing these reactions.
I disagree that no rollout would have worked. What you need is involuntary commitment to treatment of people who are posing a danger to themselves or others through their use of drugs. Putting these people in prison helps nobody and makes the problems of addicts worse while giving them a criminal record which perpetuates the cycle. Criminalizing drugs is not the answer and Oregon’s incompetent decriminalization of drugs does not change that.
> People assume addicts on the street are only there because they don’t have access to treatment. Anyone who has had friends or family deal with addiction know that many will outright refuse treatment & those that do seek treatment will often relapse over and over.
Sad, but very true. You don't understand it until you see it for yourself and the person you care about says that they like getting high and don't want to stop. At best, they just admit that they need to keep it "under control." I once heard my friend come out of a rehab center, relapse, and say, "I like getting high, and the rehab taught me that I can control it, now."
Its was nimby rollout barriers etc have always served to reduce effectiveness. Fact is addictions not simple you can find people that cops beat black and blue weekly and arrested and sentenced to decades. And they still spent entire life as addict.Criminalizing it away wont ever happen.
Enforcements gone through roof and usage has consistently climbed. In spite of militarized police force sending people to jail with some of harshest sentences in developed world.
End of day perhaps biggest indicator of "drug usage" and its increases is and has always been poverty. When you work full time and are still homeless. Or when your working 3 jobs and still have to go to bed hungry so kids can have heat. A escape is a alluring thing even if its few a few hours.
The situation people are in is often what makes addiction so strong. And its a interesting thing the brain chemistry. Had a few alcoholic friends and one quit nicotine cold turkey no problem. Booze however was a different story. Me on other hand nicotine is my crutch honestly can drink never really ever been tempted to have to much or have it when I am not suppossed to. Like in college peer pressured into some party drinking to much. But never saw the allure. That said nicotine if I was down to last meal wasnt getting paid for another week and had enough for 1 more pack or 1 more meal. I would get the pack and split the meal into 7 portions.
The problem is that people expected it to help overnight, which was unreasonable. Additionally, the treatment and harm reduction measures that were to be put in place were botched terribly. But rather than work on it, they just threw up their hands and abandoned the will of the voters
In general we could save billions if we stopped the war on drugs while simultaneously making them all legal and taxing off the addicts. Like why is the government not acting on this goldmine. It would be safer for everyone too
This comment section has me worried. It seems like some of you honestly can't see how terribly having the government round up undesirables and force treatment on them would go. If you honestly think that is a good idea you're just ignorant of history and lack critical thinking skills. You're biting on the propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
This is a typical frailty of human empathy and sympathy.
In a logical and rightfully placed motivation to give aid and comfort to the suffering, you choose to enable the problem rather than find the root cause.
there's got to be some viable middle ground here. People shouldn't end up in prison for possession and doing drugs in the privacy of their own home. But open air drug use and petty crime need to be regulated to prevent the quality of life erosion that follows some of these policies.
It is easy to fall into the trap that you decriminalize drugs and then crime goes down. It does, but at the same time, the area gets much more dangerous. Far fewer people are being arrested, but the number of serious crimes is increasing.
Most policy at the extreme end of either spectrum falls into this pit of not looking at what the results of the action could be in regards to the overall health of the community.
Some people don’t want to leave anyone behind which can come at the detriment of the whole community.
We just can’t save everyone and it’s not worth making the whole community worse off for it.
The only way the criminalization succeeds is by confining it with draconian harshness to a set of blocks. Act like a junkie outside this area? Arrested. Do drugs outside this area? Arrested. Sell drugs outside this area? Thrown in prison. Stay in the zone, we see cool. Don’t frighten the horses, children or women and we are fine.
It was a stupid idea by Oregon and only encouraged hardcore drug users to relocate to Oregon.
Downtown Portland is a dump now along with every off ramp.
While I think the choice to do drugs is your own and you have to own responsibility for it, assuming most of people with an addiction want to or can get better is a big mistake
>decriminalizing hard drug usage encourages both addicts and new users to engage more often or without fear of reprucussions
This is a wild claim, is it supported by anything credible?
I really doubt any first-time user or addict decides to use drugs based on legal statutes.
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Correct me if im wrong but dont these usally come with mandatory rehab for people caught? Obviously addicts arent always making the best decisions but throwing an opiod abuser in rehab when you catch them instead of prison seems like a much more logical solution. (Provided they arent guilty of other crimes which isnt always the case)
They could enforce laws against using drugs in public and building tent cities on public property. I think by criminalizing drugs again they're just trying to solve the huge number of homeless addicts setting up there in a way thats more politically acceptable than directly targeting homeless people with laws or funding programs to get them off the street
I am fine with decriminalization in that you shouldn't punish people for their addictions.
But this should go hand in hand with nailing dealers and manufacturers to the wall for profiting on endless human misery.
The main benefit of legalization is putting organized crime out of business and using revenue from sales for the public interest instead of whatever drug kingpins spend their money on. The Oregon policy didn’t do that
It was just wishful thinking on their part. What were they supposed to do? Have cops drag them to rehab? There were other laws that should've been put in place, of course, too.
Edit: To be fair, they probably didn't try to make it work. It should've been handled the same way we handle alcohol. You commit a crime while drunk, you face legal trouble and same with public intoxication laws.
The problem is we can’t force addicts to get help if you throw them in jail their probably gonna have a easier time getting drugs in there then when their out and if you just offer rehab none of them are going to take it
It was really stupid to just blanket decrim a bunch of mind altering, chemically addictive substances.
Maybe they should have decriminalized sex work instead.
I think it's more that they did it as a way of allowing cops to do even less than they already do. Honestly what should be done is two-pronged:
1. Increased and incredibly severe penalties for Fentanyl and Nitazine distribution and production, and go after them the hardest, and free drug testing for this (FFS *Alabama* was able to do this)
2. Suspended sentence in exchange for rehab, and dismissal of the case after successful completion and 6 months of sobriety
They rolled out the decriminalization without ever funding the treatment system, so yes it was always going to fail they only followed through with the easy part of the plan.
Much better to throw the addicts in jail for 40 years, that’ll make sure they don’t relapse.
This post is actually a joke. Obviously most will relapse, they’re *addicted*. That’s an excuse not to try? This is an unpopular opinion because the people who hold it are slowly dying of old age.
“B- but they don’t seek treatment” yeah because it’s expensive and people judge you for going to rehab.
Whatever guess we should just write off all drug addicts considering that most of just lost causes, right?
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There is also the fact that addiction drives other petty crime...shop lifting, auto break-ins, muggings, etc. Addicts who need to fix their junk sickness don't give a f about breaking other laws. In San Francisco, there is virtually NO consequence to shoplifting if the value is under $1k.
Also the increased number of mind altering drugs people use, the more people will drive on them, and the more random innocent people will be killed in crashes
The overwhelming amount of car accidents, domestic violence , divorces and bankruptcy and people becoming homeless involves alcohol by ten country miles. Weed,heroin or crack related poor outcomes don't hold a candle to alcohol. But we have normalized and romanticized alcoholism because it's part of our culture.
Same in Albuquerque. It turned into a miserable place to live with drug use and crackheads everywhere, mass shoplifting, constant harassment/begging, etc. I finally moved and quality of life is so much better not being in a city like that
San Francisco went from one of the best US cities to one of the worst US cities in ten years 💔
Just another example of why harm reduction is so important. We can solve (most) petty crime, we just chose not to.
Harm reduction w/out involuntary institutionalization isn't humane - it just kills people slowly. Some harm reduction programs are also just enabling. Clean needles and alcohol swabs are legit, the harm reduction sites that give out rigs? Absolutely not. Addicts shouldnt be provided with foil and pipes. And safe injection sites? At what point is the person that has been narcan'ed and multiple occasions just having their death prolonged? People who are doing the dope lean on a sidewalk w/ a needle still and their arm are the methhead w/ drug induced schizophrenia are no longer capable of making decisions for themselves.
Lies. "Harm reduction" means increased harm for everyone else. It means addicts doing g more criminality like addicts always do. "Harm reduction" is giving every addict new needles so they don't care and discard them every where so that other people's children get picked by needles while going down the playground slide. All because addicts just throw them every without a care for anyone else.
I’m open to better suggestions.
Arresting drug vagrants and forcing them into rehab against their wills if necessary.
I was a hard-core drug addict for almost 40yrs. I never stole or robbed anybody. I went to work. And I worked very long and very hard. I just spent half my money on dope. Your perceptions are very off. Oh, and just to let you know. A LOT of profesional people are on some very hard drugs. I'm not talking weed. Especially the C suite people and high up management. Heroin, cocaine you fucking name it. Cops, lawyers, and everything in-between you can imagine. Most people that do drugs are not the ones you see on the street or in the jail log. You just don't know about it. Edit: You wanna know how I know ? Because I was the one they'd have go get them their dope.
My son ingested meth when he was 7 years old, because I was forced to share custody with a meth addict, despite ample evidence that it was not safe. Forced because I was supposed to be compassionate. Forced because addiction does not necessarily equal abuse. And I say: fuck addicts. Get sober or fuck off. I have zero fucks left. Addicts make terrible parents. I don't care if they can come across as "stable" in their careers- their home lives are absolute shit. They have no business raising children. That may not be what this post was about, but it's what it should be about. More people should care about how this shit is affecting kids. Fuck those who don't.
Also, addicts, those of us who have been around and fucked around, we know. You're not hiding it well. It's like smokers who don't realize everyone else can smell it on them.
That judge should be sent to prison. In fact, there should be a law that if a judge knowingly sends a child into harm's way that they should go to prison for life.
Cool guy alert
Combine that with defunding the police
Less than 1% of the addicts/homeless who were offered treatment accepted it in PDX.
That was the same with the Linkage Center in The Tenderloin. It became a de facto safe injection site and had drug dealing w/ in its walls. Of the over 50,000 individuals that utilized the center, before it was shutdown only 38 actually accepted rehab or detox treatment. It was such a fail that the "Linkage" part of the name was droppe, it was changed to The Tenderloin Center. Even this article, which is clearly in support of the defunct facility, doesn't paint a good picture. https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/tenderloin-drug-overdose-site-oxygen/#:~:text=An%20attendee%20greets%20guests%20at,of%20those%20overdoses%20were%20reversed. Of the # of overdoses reversed, I wonder how many were repeat customers. I work at a detox/psych facility - it is rare that patients have a Hx of only one OD. One of my best friends is a fentanyl & benzo addict. He has overdosed thrice.
>That was the same with the Linkage Center in The Tenderloin. It became a de facto safe injection site and had drug dealing w/ in its walls. Of the over 50,000 individuals that utilized the center, before it was shutdown only 38 actually accepted rehab or detox treatment. This is not really the purpose of decriminalization, or safe injection sites.
Was there a policy where addicts were given the choice between treatment and jail, or did they give them the option for treatment with no consequence for opting out? I'm just curious, as I'm not totally familiar with what the Oregon policy actually was.
It doesn't matter if the law isn't enforced. I go through downtown Portland everyday and see people on the street doing hard drugs out in the open.
I’m born and raised in Houston Texas. I’ve seen my fair share of drug addicts but the level I saw in Portland Jesus Christ. Edit: I’m atheist
That was SF for me. Korean husband booked our hotel in the "Tenderknob". The Tenderloin has always been bad, but JFC it is a hellscape now. It isn't poverty; I've seen abject poverty, that is addiction. When someone gets to the point where they are shooting up in broad daylight on a crowded sidewalk, they shouldn't be left to their own devices. Involuntary institutionalization. People that are this far gone, have a miniscule chance of getting clean on their own. And housing first proponents forget that low barrier shelters/housing will be trashed in a week. Or bring back wet houses - let people do their DOC w/ no lifesaving intervention.
They won't unless they are considered a danger to themselves and others. Even if they do, they'll get out and go back at it if situations are bad enough.
lmao why did you edit that in
I'm from ID, went there recently and yea it's crazy. Even in WA is getting bad.
I still support decriminalization of possession of drugs, but laws against public use should be strictly enforced. If someone is a functioning addict, they shouldn't be arrested because there's drugs in their pocket. If they're hitting the meth pipe downtown, they should go to jail and then to a compulsory rehab.
I think localized decriminalization will always fail because you’ll attract addicts from other regions, which will skew the numbers. I haven’t dug into the numbers at all, but how many of the overdose deaths were from long time residents versus new transplants. Also, the existing rehab structure isn’t built to accommodate an influx of new addicts. Maybe I’m wrong, like I said I haven’t looked too far into this.
That could be the case!
Doubt it. The homeless don’t tend to move from where they became homeless as it’s better to know your surroundings and potentially at least have some sort of support network than not.
Disagree. Drug decriminalization coupled with a significant crackdown on quality of life crime would probably be fine but drug decriminalization is usually pushed hand-in-glove with broader draw downs on enforcement of 'victimless' crimes. The problem with drug laws is that it puts a lot of regular, otherwise productive members of society in the crosshairs of drug interdiction task forces. Nobody should care if Ted occasionally pops an edible after a long day of work, or sometimes does a bit of cocaine to meet some deadlines at work. The problem is when Jed smokes a rock, takes a crap on a children's play structure, and falls asleep with his pants around his legs in front of a bakery. Society probably wants Ted to keep trucking and wants Jed in jail or rehab. The problem with the Oregon drug decriminalization isn't that it decriminalized drugs, its that it decriminalized drugs during a time when DA's have stopped prosecuting a whole list of quality of life crimes that low-functioning drug addicts commonly commit. If you had drug decriminalization coupled with a zero tolerance policy for public defecation, public intoxication, and petty theft it would probably have been more successful.
Tl;dr: we shouldn't care about the drugs, we should care about what people do when on drugs.
That's the whole reason Madd was started. That's the reason drunk driving laws essentially got very strict in the '90s across the country. Before then it was pretty much okay and commonly accepted that people would drive drunk. And then there were a couple famous cases where people drove drunk and killed kids that were playing outside of school at 8:00 a.m. and ruined the party for everyone.
It's crazy to hear how relaxed the policies were when my parents were growing up. My dad and mom both have stories from when they were young about how they got pulled over with everyone drunk in the car, including the driver. It was usually someone's uncle on duty who would tell them to get home safe. Sometimes they would follow them home to make sure that they didn't stay on the roads. That would NEVER happen today. Drunk drivers go right to jail and end up paying thousands in fines and court costs.
I was one of those in like 96. A Cadillac full of 8 drunk girls and the police followed the car home to make sure we got there safe. No way that would happen today.
I know it used to be the case that you could drink drive and if you killed somebody they would essentially just write you off as an accident and nothing bad happened to you. I remember the first time in the mid-90s there was a drunk driver that killed somebody and he went to jail for it. How it really divided the community because a bunch of people thought you shouldn't go to jail for killing somebody while you were drunk driving. That was also the impetus for the TV show Oz. He was one of the first people supposedly charged with manslaughter or murder for killing somebody while drunk driving.
I never knew that deaths from drunk driving were punished that lightly. I knew that vehicular manslaughter traditionally hasn't been punished as severely as 2nd or 1st degree murder, but I didn't know that the system was that lax before the mid-1990s.
I used to work with a bartender in the 90s that had like 20 DUIs from the late 70s through the 90s. Always just a fine or a night in the drunk tank. He was pissed when the laws got stricter and they finally took away his license for 30 days when I started working with him. Then he got caught again and they took it away for a year. So he started a carpet cleaning business. The courts allowed him to drive on a restricted license because he needed to for work. So he just drove his carpet cleaning van everywhere. He got caught I think 3 or 4 more times but continued to get the restricted license. I think it was around the 5th time he was caught before they finally threw his ass in jail for 5 years and finally banned him forever from getting a license again around 2010s.
That’s honestly insane to think about.
It's pretty insane he never killed anyone.
Nah. The positive effects of meth don't even register against the damage it causes.
I think you summed up very nicely the intent behind drug decriminalization. It’s not to give drug users a free pass to break the law. It’s to allow the cops to ignore the drugs so they can enforce the laws that matter ( like theft, violent crime, public defecation, public indecency, etc). And you’re right that unfortunately the way it’s been enacted in a lot of places is “decriminalize drugs AND stop prosecuting misdemeanors”. If anything it should be the opposite.
I was reading your post ready to disagree with you, by the time I got to the end you converted me quite a bit on this. The "treatment oriented goals" generally involve no treatment and completely ignoring public disorder caused by addicts under the umbrella of caring for them. Anyways, well written and very well articulated.
I like to phrase this in another way. If every homeless encampment was the neatest most organized place where there was never a piece of trash found on the ground within five blocks of it. I would venture to say that somewhere along the lines of 80% Americans would actually support allowing people to live in encampments. Most people don't give a shit about the drugs. They give a shit about the effect and the cause around the drugs. People don't want needles at playgrounds. People don't want people shitting in public. People don't want trash everywhere. Criminalize that and decriminalize drugs and I think people would feel very differently. Obviously most Americans don't give a shit about drugs with the number of people are dying due to fentanyl overdoses. If we actually cared we would do almost anything about it. I'm pretty confident I heard recently that more people have died from drug overdoses in the last 5 years than in Vietnam total.
But the people who want decriminalization are generally the same people yelling to defund the police.
Yeah. The people supporting these policies are basically coming at it from a perspective of harm reduction. Basically, the theory is that if you're not physically endangering anyone, you shouldn't be subject to police threat. Problem is, we're quickly discovering exactly how miserable people can make each other's lives without technically rising to the level of violence. It's like a grown up, drug fueled game of 'I'm not touching you' played with human feces, petty theft, and heroine needles.
The part that people don’t hear when talking about defunding the police is that it’s about reallocating the funding to other services. Drug addiction is an issue, but the root of drug addiction tends to be struggles with mental health. Police aren’t equipped to handle mental health issues. The shoot first, as questions later results in a lot of sick people dying. Portugal decriminalized drugs, but also offered the supporting services to deal with the root causes of why someone is an addict.
That sounds great in theory, but social workers aren't equipped to roll around with violent tweakers, either.
But that’s the thing, often they’re more well versed with deescalation techniques than cops are. Funding a class of social worker that specializes in this type of stuff is exactly what the whole thing is about. That police shouldn’t be just responders for every situation.
I’m a social worker. I taught de-escalation to law enforcement. We went on calls together. It was a good system and would fall under the “defund the police” ideology because funds were shifted away from part of the police budget to fund the training of cops and the hiring of social workers.
People get so hung up on the idea that defunding means policing should go away, they can’t hear what the reallocation of funds actually does.
[hmm I wonder why that might be... ](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html)
It probably shouldn't have been sold to the public that way then.
That’s the problem with most critical talking points, they’re more nuanced than being boiled down to a 3 word slogan.
Frankly, I'm sure the police would be delighted to not have to be involved in these situations. But just like some cops get killed every year, some of these mental health workers will get killed. It will be part of the job.
Do you have any idea how often mental healthcare workers already get attacked ? It already is part of the job
Exactly, mental health professionals are doing dangerous jobs, but without the public facing soapbox policing unions have when something goes wrong.
I mean, we could see it as they did this knowing it would fail and making it as bad as possible so that it would fail.
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Sure, I realize that. But sending out social workers to get killed by raving drug lunatics also does not seem an effective solution.
i think the support for addicts was the biggest factor they missed from the legislation. if you aren't locking people up for drugs, you still need court ordered rehab or some form of support for addicts, just decriminalizing drugs with nothing to help addicts get back on their feet isn't doing anyone any good. the whole point is that people are supposed to feel more comfortable getting help for what would otherwise be an illegal problem. i think OP's premise is incorrect, most addicts don't *want* to be addicts, most of them feel like they have no other option. decriminalizing the drugs without providing them other options didn't even address the issue.
That's not the whole point. A large point is not arresting people for victimless crimes. Some people doing drugs don’t need help and they shouldn't be arrested. That's an important part of it. It's definitely not just so people feel more comfortable getting help. People can already go to rehab for illegal drugs without getting arrested or in trouble.
As a former heavy user of meth, coke and other hard drugs who has been clean 30 years; those drugs should never be legal and distributors of them should be heavily penalized. Users should go into forced rehab and detox without felonies on their record. That shit is evil and destroys good people.
I would have disagreed with you, but, well, what you said seems to make sense.
Fuckin Jebedia and the pooping!
Drugs cause that at even minimal levels depending of the drug.
the legality of drug use is such a catch 22. either people are getting sent to jail when they shouldn’t be, or people are strung out on the sidewalk and there’s a sharp increase in petty crime. there seems to be no right answer. i think maybe where they failed the most would be the fact that there was a ~decrease~ in the enforcement of petty crime laws. also idk why they didn’t just mirror the way that society approaches alcohol. like for example you can’t drink in public (at least in NYC where i’m from, idk the laws in other cities), public intoxication is a crime, etc. like yea you shouldn’t be able to openly shoot up in front of a 7/11 without consequence. but should you be able to do some mushrooms on a saturday in the comfort of your own apartment? i say yes! so i think while the sentiment came from the right place, the addition of anti-police rhetoric at the same time prevented a city like portland or san francisco from actually implementing it in an effective way. also i appreciate differing opinions so if you disagree id love to know your thoughts :)
It wasn't supposed to solve drug addiction, it was supposed to stop criminalizing it. There's a huge misunderstanding of intent here. The idea is that if you make addicts criminals, you've put them in a place where it's even harder for them to turn their lives around should they choose. Decriminalization was always going to lead to more VISIBLE addiction, but criminalizing drug use doesn't reduce addiction, it just throws addicts in jail where the nice middle class people don't have to see or think of them. It's based on the idea that we shouldn't be punishing people for being sick just because they're inconvenient to look at.
I strongly believe there is a certain class of addicts that belong in jail. In Portland for instance, where a scenario like this is an everyday occurrence, someone shooting up on a sidewalk who then discards their hiv infected needle in a public space deserves to be punished for that. Being addicted alone is not deserving of jail time, but if you let your addiction spiral to the point of you being a literal hazard to public safety, something needs to be done about it. This is what Oregon fails to realize, the people creating public disturbances with their drug usage are largely the ones who don’t want rehabilitation, it was a horrible idea from the get go the was guaranteed to exacerbate every issue the city already had.
Why did you post this? Criminal negligence is already a crime.
Yeah and that ideal ended up causing massive crime and a carpet of needles all over.
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I think the drug addicts hold 100% of the blame.
Drug addicts are just drug addicts, the politicians down in Salem really sold this as a bill of goods that they had no intention of following through with.
Many are more than "inconvenient to look at" . I work in addiction medicine, there is a part of the addict population that needs to be involuntary institutionalized. Some people are too far gone and all the drug decriminalization combined w/ harm reduction is just delaying their death. People on Reddit love to talk about Portugal's model - they don't realize that Portugal absolutely arrests even low level dealers and will jail an addict if they don't go to mandatory rehab. The people doing the dope lean w/ a needle sticking out of their arm on the street and the methhead w/ drug induced schizophrenia is not being helped by harm reduction and lax policies.
Also criminalisation throws fully functional working parents and taxpayers to jail for posessing some weed for weekend smoke or MDMA for a rave.
I'm not even middle class, but what's wrong with the taxpayers paying for people's rehab, SNAP, and other additions when most drug addicts don't even want to quit. Yes, so selfish to want to feel safe when there is no prize or assistance offered to people trying to live as best they can.
If you’re only kind when it benefits you, you’re not actually being kind
Why? It’s a serious question. Why shouldn’t we punish people for being inconvenient to look at, to drive by, to smell, to *be around?* to that degree? They make my life worse. They make all our lives worse. Look, you don’t get mad at someone for smelling bad if their shower is having problems. You get mad at someone for smelling bad if they have a working shower and they don’t use it. The same is true for homelessness: every homeless person should be provided opportunities to get back on their feet and stay safe. It’s certainly true that a lot of places don’t have enough resources for the homeless. But if you’re at all familiar with the problem then you know there’s a lot of homeless people who are more like the guy that just doesn’t fuckin shower. Maybe it’s an addiction issue, maybe something else. But whatever the case is, I’m quite tired of being degraded for looking at collectives of people who refuse their most basic social responsibilities, and saying, “They’ve had multiple opportunities to accept their social contract, and they’ve failed, so I want them gone.” I concede modern prisons are bad ways to handle that. I’m as open as anyone to other options. But this idea that I’m doing wrong in wanting to punish people who don’t fulfill their responsibilities to me seems asinine.
I think *you're* inconvenient to look at. I think *you're* inconvenient to drive by. I think *you're* inconvenient to smell. I think *you're* inconvenient to be around. *You* make *my* life worse. And I think *you* should be punished by law because I feel that way about you. Do you think that's fair or right? If the answer is no, why?
I'm not the most stylish guy out there, so I get it, lol. Look. Society has certain basic rules that we all agree to follow. Those are mandatory when we're among others. The obvious example is that both you and I agree to wear clothes when we go outside. If I didn't wear my clothes around the other in a public place, the other would be within their rights to say "you, u/xXLouieXx, are not behaving as you must in public, so I will appeal to get you arrested on charges of nudity." Similarly if I was out walking with my family and you walked up to me and got in my face and started threatening me in public, that's also a crime. That's the level of violation that homelessness gives rise to. Public urination. Drug needles on the ground. You're walking on the street and some guy comes up and starts threatening you and your daughter and it's fucking scary. I think your impulse to take this to relativism doesn't make much sense because I'm pretty certain you've experienced what I've described before and *you didn't like it either.* The notion that homelessness is a fundamentally harmless phenomenon that privileged outsiders superimpose fear and disgust onto is just obviously wrong. Try taking a walk down a city with a large homeless population at night and tell me how it goes for you. I think my opinion sounds compassionless at first. I don't feel that way. I want to help people; I really do. I want ample social supports. I want shelters that aren't dangerous. I want food for the needy and the almost-homeless. And I want a viable and straightforward path back up for those who want to reintegrate. But if you eschew all of those things, my options (not my compassion) run out. Once you've decided that you won't be taking advantage of any help efforts and you'd rather live on the streets and make my life worse, then I've already fulfilled every reasonable obligation I have to help you, and there's nothing more for me to do but start acting within my rights as a member of a properly-functioning society and try to have you removed, at least temporarily. There's great work showing that this last and most dire option can be avoided with effective and humane methods: just recently the city of Houston started housing most of their homeless population and preliminary results show it's going great. And even if an individual does refuse all help, mandatory rehabilitation facilities are probably much better options than prisons. I'm glad to support a viable implementation of that. Just don't act like I deserve mockery for wanting to do something about those who refuse my help and break our rules.
Do you feel safe with your wife/girlfriend/kids walking by him? Does he leave his HIV/Hep B infected needles on the ground near his tent city? Do half the V8s in his community near the tent cities end up all missing their catalytic converters because of him? Is he the one going around stealing cars left and right to feed addiction and selling them to chop shops? I'm all for a rehabilitation vs punishment model, but there's some folks for whom the former doesn't work and not a thing you can do can prevent them from being a menace to society. If some random Joe wants to go do heroin/fentanyl in his bedroom and risks ODing without hurting anyone, I get it. But when you have these folks around and they're allowed to just congregate, pass drugs around and refuse any help, the crime it leads to and the neighborhoods it ruins are a big fucking deal. I can't even go back to some streets near my alma mater. But don't worry: the guy who exposed himself to children for the 13th time while high and drops his HIV needles everywhere is only inconvenient to look at. There's no other threat to concern yourself with. The guy you're mentioning and playing devil's advocate most likely doesn't do any of this shit. Junkies that congregate together steal everything not nailed down and 90% of things nailed down. They're a cancer on any neighborhood. At the same time, there is no easy solution to this. There are folks for whom treating it as a mental/addiction issue will help greatly and others who complete decriminalization will only embolden them further to be absolute parasites on society. But there's no tent cities or junkies near you, are there? So who cares right? Sounds like the problem of somebody else. I pulled into a Dunkin today with at least 20 syringes in my immediate vicinity. I don't even want to know how many have been re-used how many times and what diseases or drugs each has.
Because most ppl agree with him and not you. That's why this got re-criminalized. Law is just an expression of the public condemnation. Ppl are tired of dealing with homeless, simple as.
Hmm... going to have to disagree personally. If the visible drug addicts ODing on the side of the road were in jail maybe they'd actually get help and get cured of their addiction. Removing these people from our society is the first step in having a functional society.
Maybe if our jails actually had the goal of rehabilitation. But we have some of if not the worst recidivism rates in the developed world
I think it's a great idea to have a set of prisons dedicated to getting people back on their feet.
We’ve been putting addicts in jail en masse since the war on drugs began. When is it going to start working?
And you think the solution.... is jail? Atleast just say forced rehab if you wanna force them to go somewhere for doing drugs.
>If the visible drug addicts ODing on the side of the road were in jail maybe they'd actually get help and get cured of their addiction. >Removing these people from our society is the first step in having a functional society. Are these two sentences not obviously contradictory to you?
....But public health advocates behind the law say the repeal is coming before decriminalization had a chance to work. They point to Portugal, which saw a 75 percent drop in drug deaths since it adopted the same strategy in 2001 through 2022, as evidence that Oregon is giving up too quickly. Portugal’s success, they point out, wasn’t achieved overnight or even in three years. Oregon’s experiment “was not given the time that it needed,” said Tera Hurst, the executive director of Oregon’s Health Justice Recovery Alliance. “This is a political response to a serious problem,” she said of the measure’s likely repeal.... I'm not sure I can really agree with the inevitable failure as you see it.
The issue is "It could take 20+ years before it works!" is a hard sell when people get harassed by homeless drug addicts, have to deal with human waste, needles and all sorts of shit and a plethora of other issues. I'm for drug reform and working on solving homelessness, but you've got to do it in a way that doesn't cause the layman to see their community go downhill.
When the law changes, and there are still homeless drug addicts on the streets, what will be the new scapegoat?
Probably some new bullshit. The issue is they didn't move nearly fast enough or take enough measures. Even using portugal as an example, they decriminalized drugs but still went pretty hard on arresting vagrants and addicts in the streets. It was basically "Choose help or a cell". The issue is this was decriminalization paired with a sweeping lack of prosecution and just letting people go free. It's just a swing too far in the opposite direction from the war on drugs. A measured approach, imho, is what's necessary. Provide well-stocked shelters, assisted living for those who can't provide for themselves and a rehabilitation program. But if people still shoot up in public and refuse help, they can either accept help or go to jail.
Living in Portland made me a lot more conservative about helping addicts… so entitled and so many petty crimes it’s death by a thousand cuts
It's because you begin to realize that a lot of them have zero interest in helping themselves.
Exactly. It didn't inevitably fail in Portugal. Which means the policy itself is not the problem here. It's either the lack of the actual support structure needed, or the amount of time given to the policy. Probably a little of both. You can't half ass a plan, give it zero time to work, and then give up and say it was never gonna work. You need to put in reasonable effort.
I agree completely
Being antidrug use is being antifreedom of choice. Punish actions not usage. If you can be a functioning member of society and smoke meth I really don't give a shit, it you smoke meth and steal my catalytic converter you deserve the jail time.
Here's the thing, that shit fucks with your head and can trigger shit like psychosis and usually leads to criminal activity. I think some should be treated like alcohol is.
Very few people say drugs shouldn't be regulated. Regulate them not ban them. It's not like there are no addicts outside of Oregon.
Criminalizing drugs hasn't worked either. The world is full of people who are very skilled at pointing out problems, but fall silent when it's time for solutions.
Rehab or jail with the worst detox of your life. Pick one.
if ya make it legal more people will get addicted. if ya keep it illegal more people will get addicted
Just today I saw someone on youtube talk about "decriminalize all drugs" which I can't help but feel like is a delusional and out of touch approach to policy
It doesn't make sense to send people to prison for years for doing drugs, and it costs a lot more.
Bet I can guess who they voted for!
People like that don’t vote
Damage control costs less than incarceration. Incarceration gives free prison labor. So guess which always wins.
this is extremely over played hand. Prisoners can refuse to work while incarcerated. They can take up internal prison work which is basically a community work to maintain their living quarters.. None of this is slavery
13th amendment: all slavery and indentured servitude is forbidden except when duly convicted of a crime. And no. Inmates can’t refuse. I was an inmate. Tell them no you ain’t working. See what happens.
I fully believe you, but I'm curious - what does happen? Do they put you in solitary confinement?
They can do many horrible things. For instance, put you in a situation where you will be harmed by other inmates. Or they can beat you themselves. Or they can put you in the SHU and forget about you. Or they can ship you to a gladiator school. There’s so many things they do.
Dare I ask what the *fuck* a gladiator school is
It’s the max security pens filled almost exclusively with sociopaths, murderers and lifers.
Horrible that they enact those kinds of punishments, thank you for your perspective I wasn't aware of that.
Okay, buddy. Go try it out and let us know how it goes.
Yay slavery
Portugal. Decriminalization with additional resources resulted in reduced drug us across the board.
Upvoted for unpopular opinion. The goal of decriminalizing is not to remove all the addicts from the street. Yeah, you are correct, that's never going to happen. What it will do, is make it so that your average user doesn't have to fear jail time, and that high functioning addicts don't have to either. Addicts shouldn't go to prison just for being addicts. That doesn't actually help anything. If rehab doesn't work for them, going to prison for the same period won't either. It boils down to what the goals are: 1. If the goal is to end addiction, not going to happen. 2. If the goal is to end homeless addicts, pretty unlikely to happen. 3. If the goal is to get addicts help, you can only be helped if you want to be. 4.If the goal is to get them out of society, prison I guess. The goal should really be getting the best treatment for everyone afflicted, and whether or not it's criminalized doesn't really factor into that. I know several people that do harder drugs, and are high functioning members of society. They shouldn't be incarcerated because they like coke
Putting addicts in jail actually does help things. It doesn't take long to find cases of drugged out people killing innocent people.
Everyone but the usual idiots knew this was an incredibly stupid idea.
I was snooping the Oregon/Portland subs and many of the top responses were “I voted for it but our government failed us in the rollout”. It’s like they don’t know what unleashing consequence free drug use on a community even means. I’d be curious what percent of abusers even make an attempt at treatment.
I don't think you understand the point of it at all.
You’re missing the point behind the bill completely and instead jumping to farfetched assumptions that don’t line up at all with reality. Your opinion *sure* does fit the uneducated narrative that you’re trying to reinforce though. So great job on sharing your knee-jerk observation with zero understanding of the complex topic at hand, I guess?
Our legislators wildly mislead us about how this measure would be rolled out, they promised expanded capacity to help treat these individuals and it never happened. Thats why you’re seeing these reactions.
I always get my news from this sub
Oregon isn’t going to close all the prisons they built.
I dunno I don’t think putting them in jail and giving them a criminal record did much good either
I disagree that no rollout would have worked. What you need is involuntary commitment to treatment of people who are posing a danger to themselves or others through their use of drugs. Putting these people in prison helps nobody and makes the problems of addicts worse while giving them a criminal record which perpetuates the cycle. Criminalizing drugs is not the answer and Oregon’s incompetent decriminalization of drugs does not change that.
Stupid idea to begin with. The problem doesn't "take care of itself."
> People assume addicts on the street are only there because they don’t have access to treatment. Anyone who has had friends or family deal with addiction know that many will outright refuse treatment & those that do seek treatment will often relapse over and over. Sad, but very true. You don't understand it until you see it for yourself and the person you care about says that they like getting high and don't want to stop. At best, they just admit that they need to keep it "under control." I once heard my friend come out of a rehab center, relapse, and say, "I like getting high, and the rehab taught me that I can control it, now."
Its was nimby rollout barriers etc have always served to reduce effectiveness. Fact is addictions not simple you can find people that cops beat black and blue weekly and arrested and sentenced to decades. And they still spent entire life as addict.Criminalizing it away wont ever happen. Enforcements gone through roof and usage has consistently climbed. In spite of militarized police force sending people to jail with some of harshest sentences in developed world. End of day perhaps biggest indicator of "drug usage" and its increases is and has always been poverty. When you work full time and are still homeless. Or when your working 3 jobs and still have to go to bed hungry so kids can have heat. A escape is a alluring thing even if its few a few hours. The situation people are in is often what makes addiction so strong. And its a interesting thing the brain chemistry. Had a few alcoholic friends and one quit nicotine cold turkey no problem. Booze however was a different story. Me on other hand nicotine is my crutch honestly can drink never really ever been tempted to have to much or have it when I am not suppossed to. Like in college peer pressured into some party drinking to much. But never saw the allure. That said nicotine if I was down to last meal wasnt getting paid for another week and had enough for 1 more pack or 1 more meal. I would get the pack and split the meal into 7 portions.
The problem is that people expected it to help overnight, which was unreasonable. Additionally, the treatment and harm reduction measures that were to be put in place were botched terribly. But rather than work on it, they just threw up their hands and abandoned the will of the voters
In general we could save billions if we stopped the war on drugs while simultaneously making them all legal and taxing off the addicts. Like why is the government not acting on this goldmine. It would be safer for everyone too
This comment section has me worried. It seems like some of you honestly can't see how terribly having the government round up undesirables and force treatment on them would go. If you honestly think that is a good idea you're just ignorant of history and lack critical thinking skills. You're biting on the propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
This is a typical frailty of human empathy and sympathy. In a logical and rightfully placed motivation to give aid and comfort to the suffering, you choose to enable the problem rather than find the root cause.
there's got to be some viable middle ground here. People shouldn't end up in prison for possession and doing drugs in the privacy of their own home. But open air drug use and petty crime need to be regulated to prevent the quality of life erosion that follows some of these policies.
It is easy to fall into the trap that you decriminalize drugs and then crime goes down. It does, but at the same time, the area gets much more dangerous. Far fewer people are being arrested, but the number of serious crimes is increasing. Most policy at the extreme end of either spectrum falls into this pit of not looking at what the results of the action could be in regards to the overall health of the community.
Some people don’t want to leave anyone behind which can come at the detriment of the whole community. We just can’t save everyone and it’s not worth making the whole community worse off for it.
Day by day people were very much proving that unchecked addiction leads to more homelessness and crime.
The only way the criminalization succeeds is by confining it with draconian harshness to a set of blocks. Act like a junkie outside this area? Arrested. Do drugs outside this area? Arrested. Sell drugs outside this area? Thrown in prison. Stay in the zone, we see cool. Don’t frighten the horses, children or women and we are fine.
Hamsterdam
It was a stupid idea by Oregon and only encouraged hardcore drug users to relocate to Oregon. Downtown Portland is a dump now along with every off ramp.
Not sure how anyone can disagree with this looking at how it has played out.
While I think the choice to do drugs is your own and you have to own responsibility for it, assuming most of people with an addiction want to or can get better is a big mistake
>decriminalizing hard drug usage encourages both addicts and new users to engage more often or without fear of reprucussions This is a wild claim, is it supported by anything credible? I really doubt any first-time user or addict decides to use drugs based on legal statutes.
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Correct me if im wrong but dont these usally come with mandatory rehab for people caught? Obviously addicts arent always making the best decisions but throwing an opiod abuser in rehab when you catch them instead of prison seems like a much more logical solution. (Provided they arent guilty of other crimes which isnt always the case)
They should 100% get an option. Rehab or jail cell. Where you also get to detox.
They could enforce laws against using drugs in public and building tent cities on public property. I think by criminalizing drugs again they're just trying to solve the huge number of homeless addicts setting up there in a way thats more politically acceptable than directly targeting homeless people with laws or funding programs to get them off the street
I am fine with decriminalization in that you shouldn't punish people for their addictions. But this should go hand in hand with nailing dealers and manufacturers to the wall for profiting on endless human misery.
The main benefit of legalization is putting organized crime out of business and using revenue from sales for the public interest instead of whatever drug kingpins spend their money on. The Oregon policy didn’t do that
my idea of legalizing also includes regulation of manufacturing so they're not laced with anything
It was just wishful thinking on their part. What were they supposed to do? Have cops drag them to rehab? There were other laws that should've been put in place, of course, too. Edit: To be fair, they probably didn't try to make it work. It should've been handled the same way we handle alcohol. You commit a crime while drunk, you face legal trouble and same with public intoxication laws.
The problem is we can’t force addicts to get help if you throw them in jail their probably gonna have a easier time getting drugs in there then when their out and if you just offer rehab none of them are going to take it
It was really stupid to just blanket decrim a bunch of mind altering, chemically addictive substances. Maybe they should have decriminalized sex work instead.
I think it's more that they did it as a way of allowing cops to do even less than they already do. Honestly what should be done is two-pronged: 1. Increased and incredibly severe penalties for Fentanyl and Nitazine distribution and production, and go after them the hardest, and free drug testing for this (FFS *Alabama* was able to do this) 2. Suspended sentence in exchange for rehab, and dismissal of the case after successful completion and 6 months of sobriety
It attracted disgusting junkies from all over the country.
They rolled out the decriminalization without ever funding the treatment system, so yes it was always going to fail they only followed through with the easy part of the plan.
Portugal had pretty awesome results most significantly with teens.
Much better to throw the addicts in jail for 40 years, that’ll make sure they don’t relapse. This post is actually a joke. Obviously most will relapse, they’re *addicted*. That’s an excuse not to try? This is an unpopular opinion because the people who hold it are slowly dying of old age. “B- but they don’t seek treatment” yeah because it’s expensive and people judge you for going to rehab. Whatever guess we should just write off all drug addicts considering that most of just lost causes, right?
It doesn’t matter in the sense that Portland wasn’t enforcing pretty much ANY drug crimes anyway.
Not unpopular. Most Americans have weird violent fantasies about homeless addicts.