Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees).
Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong.
While I don't want to go back to locking people in jail just for being addicts, cities still need to be a place that people actually want to live in. Revenue prospects for the city are becoming horrid and there is not a lot of runway to continue throwing money at the problem.
"Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc."
This is not even remotely true.
Everyone in the city, from the mayor [1] to the head of the largest services non-profit [2] has been yelling from the rooftops about the glacial slowness to effectively spend the allocated funding for drug treatment. Until just months ago, Multnomah County has been sitting on tens of millions of unspent funds,[3] and has been perpetually criticized for spending on harm reduction instead of treatment.[4] We actually closed the only local sobering center in 2020!
The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either, while it will make life for everyone else substantially better -- and we should be prioritizing the welfare of the productive members of society who actually pay to make all of it possible. Right now way too many cities have lost the plot by being too permissive of violations of the social contract, and everyone suffers as a result.
> Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc.
Huge sums were collected, but they haven't really been spent. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the first detox center built with M110 money only opened two months ago, and only has 16 beds: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portl...
Former Portland native here: it hasn’t worked. I was back just a year or two ago and 5th ave near the waterfront was overrun with homeless openly shooting up and accosting folks.
All the food carts across from the building where I used to work left, the Indian buffet restaurant closed, walking up around 10th near the Target to check out other restaurants I loved many I saw many barricaded former businesses.
The city used to be beautiful. It used to be vibrant and bustling with people and tourists and working professionals but when I was there last retracing my steps as if I was working and living there again it was not the Portland I remember. It’s disheartening.
That’s not to say I’m blaming the homeless or those addicted to substances or dealing with mental
Health problems. I’m not. I believe in helping people when they can’t help themselves. But allowing open drug use, camping in front of businesses, etc., doesn’t do much for said businesses and people to invest in your city leaving you with less tax revenue to help these very same folks with.
I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it still fail horribly. That’s because it was never the laws that were working, but the society and culture as a whole. You can’t bring good laws to a place with a disintegrating social fabric and expect the same results.
It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with.
It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc.
It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies are fine and even privileged and therefore it’s fine to hurt them a little to benefit the “disadvantaged”. What I think we are seeing now that doubling down on druggies etc still doesn’t really help them (because frankly their problems are internal and a druggie by definition is in a baaaad place) while it also hurts the people trying to live a good life and who by the way pay for everything.
I do hope that people start to recognize this. We need to feel good making choices in favor of families over druggies, when we have to.
I live in the Seattle area, which is struggling with public drug use just like Portland.
Like Portland, we've lived for decades with very progressive politicians who have lead successful decriminalization efforts and spent huge sums of public funds on treatment and harm reduction programs.
Nowhere in these comments have I see anybody take the position that decriminalization is not enough; drugs need to be legalized and regulated.
I have a close friend whose relative is a heroin addict. According to her, a lot of overdoses are due to almost no "heroin" actually being heroin, rather its fentanyl cut to varying degrees of strength. Not knowing what you're taking, and not knowing how strong it is, can lead to a lot of problems. If people knew what they were getting, and it was legal, you could have "functional addicts" that cause little or no societal harm. My friend's relative was a functional addict on and off for 20 years. She held down a job, paid rent, paid taxes, etc. She decided to get clean only when she had a close brush with death thanks to fentanyl.
Think of it this way: My drug of choice is tequila. When I buy a bottle of 80 proof tequila, I buy it from a state licensed store. I have confidence that its 40% alcohol, and that its safe to drink. It is sold by a reputable company with a brand reputation. What we have today with illegal or "decriminalized" drugs is the equivalent of people dying from drinking bathtub gin during prohibition.
>> decriminalization is not enough; drugs need to be legalized and regulated.
This has been an increasingly popular argument here in Portland since decriminalization. It's deployed, generally, in terms of re-criminalizing hard drugs until there's a well thought out framework for safe, regulated legalization.
While I agree in principle [edit: let's say I did agree, but my views on this subject have shifted radically since I voted in favor of decriminalization - and I'll admit I was naive and wrong], I think that while decriminalization without regulation is clearly catastrophic, legalization with regulation would also not be desirable so long as it's confined to one local city, county or state, in the midst of a nationwide fentanyl crisis. Portland simply does not have the capacity or infrastructure to accept further waves of addicts from all over the country who come here to live on the street. Legalization means more regulatory burden, more services for out of town addicts paid by a dwindling local tax base that's quickly being displaced and/or opting to leave.
To do that experiment and do it right, it needs to be nationwide. In any case, Portland can't go it alone anymore.
And remember - we did have a long experiment with legally prescribed opioids, and their widespread availability contributed to the current addiction crisis.
Heroin is very different from Tequila, so I don't think it's fair to compare them just because they are both "drugs".
Prior to fentanyl, what was the percentage of high functioning heroin addicts compared to people living on the street? I can't find any research on that question, and I'm somewhat skeptical that your friend is the norm.
Your argument is tired. There is no such thing as a functional heroin addict. Most don't quit after a 20 year on and off relationship with it. They die and usually cause mayhem in the process - to society, their loved ones, the healthcare system, law enforcement, etc. I'm dealing with a very serious addict in my life right now and how "clean" the drug is makes no difference. They steal and lie non-stop. They cause massive amounts of anxiety and stress to people who love them. They disappear for weeks on end and every time you get a text or call, you think its someone saying they're dead. They treat you like a monster if you don't want to engage with their BS anymore. They claim to want "help" but when push comes to shove, they want to be enabled. After many years of this, you realize that some people simply want to live this lifestyle. The war on drugs was extreme in one direction, and your suggestion, is in the other.
> According to her, a lot of overdoses are due to almost no "heroin" actually being heroin, rather its fentanyl cut to varying degrees of strength.
Anyone knows that who followed current events during the opiod epidemic and read some Wikipedia on it.
And actually, it's not just fentanyl, but fentanyl-like compounds that, even if controlled to the same concentration, have varying degrees of strength.
"The structural variations among fentanyl-related substances can impart profound pharmacological differences between these drugs, especially with respect to potency and efficacy"
You don't know which fentanyl analog is in that heroin dose, and how much of it.
In Portland and generally agree. And the people saying alcohol isn’t comparable should look at the stats - death from alcohol is a huge, but normalized and largely invisible issue.
Legalizing will reduce violence, reduce accidental overdoses and poisonings, and give the state regular contact points with users (to hopefully funnel them to assistance). Safe use sites would go some way towards hiding the problem if managed well.
Legalizing will not solve the problem of addiction. It will not solve overdoses (many overdoses are not caused by surprise differences in dose; people often overdose after relapse, or deliberately seek out stronger than usual supplies).
We have to accept that legalizing will solve some problems, but will likely keep killing at least some people.
Housing is another solution to hiding the problem. But housing just hides the drug use problem. It will probably also kill people - people who overdose on the sidewalk are more likely to be narcaned than people using alone.
Free housing + free drugs for opiate addicts would go a long ways towards solving the issue for everyone who isn’t an opiate addict, and probably cheaper than imprisoning or healing addicts.
I’d prefer treatment but the local officials have already proven incapable of that. The county is already very good at handing out needles, smoking kits, and boofing literature, so handing out fetty should be a very light lift administratively.
You should watch what is happening in British Colombia, Canada right now.
They have decriminalized possessing less than 2.5 grams of
- Opioids (such as heroin, morphine, and fentanyl)
- Crack and powder cocaine
- Methamphetamine (Meth)
- MDMA (Ecstasy)
It's a trial basis from Jan 31 2023 until Jan 31 2026, so we should get a good amount of data and evidence to see if this leads to better or worse outcomes for people and society as a whole.
to me it seems like you need a strongly enforced social norm that doesn't include all the worst bits of drug abuse (crime, public defecation, graffiti, other public nuisance/problem things) regardless of whether you legalize and regulate or make it extremely illegal. My preference would be for legalize and regulate and social order enforcement because it would cause a lot less misery but I don't see how this works if people are going to be allowed to leave needles everywhere, routinely vandalize and break into cars and buildings, etc. We should have never gotten rid of the enforcement aspect for the bad behavior when we we getting rid of the criminal aspect of the drug use.
Decriminalizing test kits that let you identify the presence of fentanyl in other drugs would be a great start - but those are instead illegal and classified as “paraphernalia”.
Not all addictions are the same. Nicotine is extremely addictive but you will never have a total breakdown of your life which is essentially a guarantee with heroin, whether you get it legally or not. There is no such thing as a functional heroin addict (outside of extremely rare cases). Even if they received very pure heroin for free they would be dead within the next decade or two.
> She decided to get clean only when she had a close brush with death thanks to fentanyl.
Under your system she would've never decided to get clean then? Also dying much earlier than she would've had to and probably adding a bunch of burden to the health system. People chastice cigarete smokers for much less.
I think the actual problem is people can’t seem to just use enough to stay functional. Given the legal opportunity to purchase heroin, most people will absolutely overdo it.
> you could have "functional addicts" that cause little or no societal harm
Yeah, I don't know about that – plenty of "functional alcoholics" around, sure, but also plenty of not-so-functional alcoholics around, as well as the wife-and-kid-beater alcoholics.
Heroin is not alcohol and doesn't induce aggression in the same way, but it's also a lot more addictive, and especially at low wages getting your daily dose can be a challenge – so "junkies" will not be eliminated outright. I consider it an open question whether they will be reduced – it's very possible (perhaps even plausible), but I certainly wouldn't consider it a forgone conclusion.
> My friend's relative was a functional addict on and off for 20 years.
Dick van Dyke was a chain-smoker until well in to his 70s and he's currently doing well at the age of 97.
These are the sort of things where you really need to look at overall effects and statistics, rather than individual cases.
Hard disagree. Decriminalizing drugs has skyrocketed schizophrenia and homelessness. Drugs should only be legalized in specific, medically necessary situations. Recreational use should be stigmatized and dealers should be handled as Duterte advocated.
The crime of the War on Drugs was that we had double standards, not that we had a War on Drugs.
I mean, I remember how things were before fentanyl came around (as an outside observer, not as a user) and heroin was a horrible, life-destroying drug addiction back then as well. And I think it was and is convincingly argued that it is much more addictive than alcohol.
Surely we can solve this inability to regulate with even more regulation. Just one more regulation bro... trust me bro. Just a bit more power and money to the government bro. It's all gonna be great! Just give a little bit more in taxes, bro. It's going to be a utopia, you'll see!
Has there been any research into how to measure potency (of fentanyl) and cut it properly? Maybe we could keep the government out of it, and instead give information and supplies to measure the potency correctly? I've heard that one way OD's happen is the substance is not homogeneous, so they can consume half the bag fine, then one dose is super-charged and puts them into OD (because fent can be up to thousands of times stronger than a morphine equivalent). Maybe teach addicts how to dissolve their dope in a liquid and reconstitute it so it's homogeneous in potency? Addicts can be extremely cunning with their drive to get money for dope, so I dont see why they can't use that will power to their advantage. I wonder if they could also get a primitive CPAP machine to keep them breathing if they do OD? IIRC death comes from lack of breathing, not acute toxicity or anything.
Considering that alcohol is, by far, the most dangerous drug and it's completely legal, I think there's something to be said for your point.
I gotta say though, it's sort of complicated when you're talking about legalizing things that are already legal as prescription drugs (like opiates and benzos). Alcohol is different because it doesn't really have any medical use outside of disinfecting things (it's fairly terrible as an anesthetic or as a tranquilizer), but there's something kind of weird about having former prescription drugs just be legal over the counter. How many people might bypass their doctor and start using strong opiates for pain that might not need it and end up in a bad spot?
I don't think you can go so far as like w/ alcohol where you just show an ID and buy whatever you want, but it does seem like there needs to be some way to ensure the product is safe. Maybe a compromise might be some sort of free testing kits, or something like narcan on hand in a safe space.
It's really frustrating to see this headline. The officials decriminalized drugs, wiped their hands and backed off from any follow-up legislation to keep it working correctly. It reminds me a lot of the ACA. Officials got the bill passed and have collectively stopped making updates to the program to keep it healthy, but then constantly criticize its faults. American politics are sad in that it's hard to celebrate any victories when you know those victories are doomed to mismanagement anyway.
As someone who used to represent drug addicts in a past career...
Drugs are illegal for a reason. Making drugs legal just makes the problem worse; the reasons most drugs are illegal is because of the many negative side effects they impose on users...and others.
Voluntary rehab and counseling don't work. Permissive policies don't work. There are literally thousands of shelters beds empty each night in LA, SF, and Portland because drug addicts would rather keep their drugs and paraphernalia than have a warm, safe space. The rare rich person who can control their habit or the consequences of their drug use because they've got a wealthy family to take care of them shouldn't be the basis for determining policy for the hundreds of people who can't.
Forced rehab works. Imprisonment works. Losing custody works. Some amount of externally-inflicted mental pain is necessary to overcome addiction to serious drugs like meth and cocaine because without it an addict will never develop the mental fortitude to stop using.
I lived in Portland before the decriminalization laws passed in 2020, and from my perspective, drugs were already effectively decriminalized for the in-your-face-homeless, which I think is the most obvious social problem that people in Portland are trying to fix. At least that is my view based on the very common observation of people doing hard drugs in public.
The people drugs weren't decriminalized for before 2020 were the mostly normal citizens. After all, if someone has a house or a job or a car, you can take that away from them by punishing them, and that is what the cops would do. But if someone is already sleeping on the street, is arresting them and having them spend a few nights in jail and then going back out the streets going to change anything?
A cop might walk right past a man smoking meth in the street, but if you get pulled over for a broken headlight, and the cops might call out drug sniffing dogs, find a small amount of heroin in your possession, and throw you in jail for months.
There’s got to be some middle ground between locking up people for substance use disorder and allowing people to make public spaces unusable with their antisocial behavior.
In my mind it’s something like “drugs are legal but public drug use and public intoxication are strictly illegal.” It’s just hard to enforce that when people don’t have a private place to use in.
Drug use is a mental health issue. People take things that make them feel good when they don’t feel good. They’re just self medicating and we need to start treating it as a symptom of an underlying issue rather than the issue itself. Same with the obesity epidemic. It’s not the what, it’s the why.
I commented a few times here over the years criticizing decriminalization as it came up as an option, against loud / vociferous people saying, how can you continue to embrace criminal penalties that clearly aren't working. As if it were crazy to believe that people need laws to obey.
I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've made drug use not a crime, and find yourself in a drug-problem-overwhelmed city.
Lo and behold, we find years later, people awaken to the fact that decriminalization might not work, and countless people having left the city because of it, and probably more importantly, tons of people falling victim to the scourge of drugs.
Sometimes, as unkind as it sounds and expensive as it is, you need to enforce some harsh laws and have people understand that you won't tolerate certain behaviors, lest your society fall apart.
So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users?
I was beaten nearly to death (in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood) in Seattle in 2020 by two men enabled to descend into meth addiction by permissive policies. In my victim support group I met so many people - innocent people - permanently injured & disfigured like me, or raped, or psychologically destroyed by meth users who had been allowed to live in tents in their neighborhoods and use hard drugs undisturbed until it was too late.
It's easy to treat this like a philosophical topic when you've had the privilege not to pay any personal price. For some of us it's more than an argument on the internet. If you think we should allow people to sell/buy/use meth please have the courage to attend a support group for victims of violent crimes. I doubt you'd claim a moral high ground for decriminalization to the faces of victims like me who have had our lives destroyed by meth users.
> And in Portugal, no distinction is made between “hard” or “soft” drugs, or whether consumption happens in private or public. What matters is whether the relationship to drugs is healthy or not.
Interesting.
Of course Portugal has a stronger social safety net, indeed stronger social fabric (though sometimes it feels a bit too strong)
One of the unfortunate side effects of criminalizing drug use has been the muddying of the ethical landscape around law breaking. The argument that drug use laws are unjust has bled into a belief that other illegal behavior is somehow excusable when committed by an addict.
So it's not that Portland made a mistake in decriminalizing public drug use. Their mistake was that they stopped enforcing other laws around the misbehavior addicts engage in.
I'm from Portland. And, recently moved to Florida. This issue feels a lot less cut and dried than people make it out.
One thing I've noticed in Florida is that there are no public spaces. Every park has explicit hours, where it is illegal to be there after 10 pm. And, there are blue lives matters signs everywhere, so I'm sure that the police round up anyone who doesn't comply.
Also, Florida has a low prison population rate, only 900 per 100k. Low when you compare it to other states that is. Northern states are much lower, like Oregon at 550. Taking 40,000 people off the street is one way to solve homelessness.
I bet there are lots of people in Florida who live cheaply away from any population centers because of the police presence and to avoid imprisonment. Those people probably would be homeless on the West Coast.
There was an extremely high people case in Portland recently where a man attacked two young black men on the train. His name is Adrian Cummings. Supposedly he was let out of jail in Oregon and that's indicative of a failure of the criminal justice system because he should have been in jail long before that assault.
But he's a Floridian. He had a lengthy criminal record before reaching Oregon and his drug addiction didn't start in Oregon. The transformation of his face over a short period due to drug addiction is crazy to see in his mug shots.
ITT: lots of people who seriously believe (or pretend they believe) that you can fix a deep and complex social problem as drug use, in 3 years, with a couple of laws.
The war on drugs is three-generations old; it will take at least a generation after abandoning it to see good results. Of course there will be mistakes on the way (and allowing brazen drug use in public spaces is probably one of those - a lot of stuff that is absolutely fine to do in private is not allowed on the streets). That doesn't mean you throw away the baby with the bathwater.
The police in Portland usually won't even show up when people call from stores being (nonviolently) stolen from. How would they suddenly have the bandwidth (and/or will) to enforce this?
I have no more sympathy left for drug users after my wife was attacked in daylight in downtown Portland on the way to work. Enablement is not compassion.
It was great up through the early 90s, and then turned into an absolutely bonkers shithole run by people too dumb and too extremist to be considered even progressive (I support many progressive polices and causes fwiw).
I basically was ran out of my own town when the politicians, police, and moonbat locals – many of whom were not born there – started thinking of Portland as some sort of weird test bed, layering on all kinds of experimental policies and governance. It hollowed out the downtown area, made it nigh on impossible to start a business, and made everything bonkers expensive.
I'm sad to say I had no choice but to leave. All of these decisions left very little opportunity to build a career (many of the businesses left) own a house (NIMBY 'urban planning' made housing unattainable) and of course the streets became as gross as the Mission in SFO.
It's like the worst of the Hippy Boomers were able to enact all of their worst policies in one small town and now it's a microcosm of their weird blend of laissez-faire social policies mixed with maximcally-extractive taxation and fiscal policies.
[+] [-] legitster|2 years ago|reply
Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong.
While I don't want to go back to locking people in jail just for being addicts, cities still need to be a place that people actually want to live in. Revenue prospects for the city are becoming horrid and there is not a lot of runway to continue throwing money at the problem.
[+] [-] swalling|2 years ago|reply
Everyone in the city, from the mayor [1] to the head of the largest services non-profit [2] has been yelling from the rooftops about the glacial slowness to effectively spend the allocated funding for drug treatment. Until just months ago, Multnomah County has been sitting on tens of millions of unspent funds,[3] and has been perpetually criticized for spending on harm reduction instead of treatment.[4] We actually closed the only local sobering center in 2020!
1. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-mea...
2. https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-l...
3. https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-trac...
4. https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementin...
[+] [-] CydeWeys|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdminhbg|2 years ago|reply
Huge sums were collected, but they haven't really been spent. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the first detox center built with M110 money only opened two months ago, and only has 16 beds: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portl...
[+] [-] gigatexal|2 years ago|reply
All the food carts across from the building where I used to work left, the Indian buffet restaurant closed, walking up around 10th near the Target to check out other restaurants I loved many I saw many barricaded former businesses.
The city used to be beautiful. It used to be vibrant and bustling with people and tourists and working professionals but when I was there last retracing my steps as if I was working and living there again it was not the Portland I remember. It’s disheartening.
That’s not to say I’m blaming the homeless or those addicted to substances or dealing with mental Health problems. I’m not. I believe in helping people when they can’t help themselves. But allowing open drug use, camping in front of businesses, etc., doesn’t do much for said businesses and people to invest in your city leaving you with less tax revenue to help these very same folks with.
[+] [-] dougmwne|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzelement|2 years ago|reply
It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with.
It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc.
It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies are fine and even privileged and therefore it’s fine to hurt them a little to benefit the “disadvantaged”. What I think we are seeing now that doubling down on druggies etc still doesn’t really help them (because frankly their problems are internal and a druggie by definition is in a baaaad place) while it also hurts the people trying to live a good life and who by the way pay for everything.
I do hope that people start to recognize this. We need to feel good making choices in favor of families over druggies, when we have to.
[+] [-] jmcphers|2 years ago|reply
Like Portland, we've lived for decades with very progressive politicians who have lead successful decriminalization efforts and spent huge sums of public funds on treatment and harm reduction programs.
After several decades and many, many millions of dollars spent, the problem is, by every measure, absolutely the worst it's ever been. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/health-safety/safety-inju...
[+] [-] drewg123|2 years ago|reply
I have a close friend whose relative is a heroin addict. According to her, a lot of overdoses are due to almost no "heroin" actually being heroin, rather its fentanyl cut to varying degrees of strength. Not knowing what you're taking, and not knowing how strong it is, can lead to a lot of problems. If people knew what they were getting, and it was legal, you could have "functional addicts" that cause little or no societal harm. My friend's relative was a functional addict on and off for 20 years. She held down a job, paid rent, paid taxes, etc. She decided to get clean only when she had a close brush with death thanks to fentanyl.
Think of it this way: My drug of choice is tequila. When I buy a bottle of 80 proof tequila, I buy it from a state licensed store. I have confidence that its 40% alcohol, and that its safe to drink. It is sold by a reputable company with a brand reputation. What we have today with illegal or "decriminalized" drugs is the equivalent of people dying from drinking bathtub gin during prohibition.
[+] [-] noduerme|2 years ago|reply
This has been an increasingly popular argument here in Portland since decriminalization. It's deployed, generally, in terms of re-criminalizing hard drugs until there's a well thought out framework for safe, regulated legalization.
While I agree in principle [edit: let's say I did agree, but my views on this subject have shifted radically since I voted in favor of decriminalization - and I'll admit I was naive and wrong], I think that while decriminalization without regulation is clearly catastrophic, legalization with regulation would also not be desirable so long as it's confined to one local city, county or state, in the midst of a nationwide fentanyl crisis. Portland simply does not have the capacity or infrastructure to accept further waves of addicts from all over the country who come here to live on the street. Legalization means more regulatory burden, more services for out of town addicts paid by a dwindling local tax base that's quickly being displaced and/or opting to leave.
To do that experiment and do it right, it needs to be nationwide. In any case, Portland can't go it alone anymore.
And remember - we did have a long experiment with legally prescribed opioids, and their widespread availability contributed to the current addiction crisis.
[+] [-] cpncrunch|2 years ago|reply
Prior to fentanyl, what was the percentage of high functioning heroin addicts compared to people living on the street? I can't find any research on that question, and I'm somewhat skeptical that your friend is the norm.
[+] [-] Eumenes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|2 years ago|reply
Anyone knows that who followed current events during the opiod epidemic and read some Wikipedia on it.
And actually, it's not just fentanyl, but fentanyl-like compounds that, even if controlled to the same concentration, have varying degrees of strength.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fentanyl_analogues
"The structural variations among fentanyl-related substances can impart profound pharmacological differences between these drugs, especially with respect to potency and efficacy"
You don't know which fentanyl analog is in that heroin dose, and how much of it.
[+] [-] n8cpdx|2 years ago|reply
Legalizing will reduce violence, reduce accidental overdoses and poisonings, and give the state regular contact points with users (to hopefully funnel them to assistance). Safe use sites would go some way towards hiding the problem if managed well.
Legalizing will not solve the problem of addiction. It will not solve overdoses (many overdoses are not caused by surprise differences in dose; people often overdose after relapse, or deliberately seek out stronger than usual supplies).
We have to accept that legalizing will solve some problems, but will likely keep killing at least some people.
Housing is another solution to hiding the problem. But housing just hides the drug use problem. It will probably also kill people - people who overdose on the sidewalk are more likely to be narcaned than people using alone.
Free housing + free drugs for opiate addicts would go a long ways towards solving the issue for everyone who isn’t an opiate addict, and probably cheaper than imprisoning or healing addicts.
I’d prefer treatment but the local officials have already proven incapable of that. The county is already very good at handing out needles, smoking kits, and boofing literature, so handing out fetty should be a very light lift administratively.
[+] [-] grecy|2 years ago|reply
They have decriminalized possessing less than 2.5 grams of
- Opioids (such as heroin, morphine, and fentanyl)
- Crack and powder cocaine
- Methamphetamine (Meth)
- MDMA (Ecstasy)
It's a trial basis from Jan 31 2023 until Jan 31 2026, so we should get a good amount of data and evidence to see if this leads to better or worse outcomes for people and society as a whole.
[1] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/decriminalizatio...
[+] [-] legitster|2 years ago|reply
There was a lot of illegal OxyContin use but most of it was well regulated and under the control of doctors and pharmacists.
[+] [-] snapplebobapple|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazyasciiart|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xkjyeah|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huytersd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 23B1|2 years ago|reply
Sincerely, Portland Native
[+] [-] vasco|2 years ago|reply
Under your system she would've never decided to get clean then? Also dying much earlier than she would've had to and probably adding a bunch of burden to the health system. People chastice cigarete smokers for much less.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|2 years ago|reply
1. Public drunkness is still a problem 2. Drunk driving still kills a lot of people. Legalization of alcohol doesn't help.
[+] [-] xenospn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arp242|2 years ago|reply
Yeah, I don't know about that – plenty of "functional alcoholics" around, sure, but also plenty of not-so-functional alcoholics around, as well as the wife-and-kid-beater alcoholics.
Heroin is not alcohol and doesn't induce aggression in the same way, but it's also a lot more addictive, and especially at low wages getting your daily dose can be a challenge – so "junkies" will not be eliminated outright. I consider it an open question whether they will be reduced – it's very possible (perhaps even plausible), but I certainly wouldn't consider it a forgone conclusion.
> My friend's relative was a functional addict on and off for 20 years.
Dick van Dyke was a chain-smoker until well in to his 70s and he's currently doing well at the age of 97.
These are the sort of things where you really need to look at overall effects and statistics, rather than individual cases.
[+] [-] achates|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonygler|2 years ago|reply
The crime of the War on Drugs was that we had double standards, not that we had a War on Drugs.
[+] [-] davesque|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] perryizgr8|2 years ago|reply
Surely we can solve this inability to regulate with even more regulation. Just one more regulation bro... trust me bro. Just a bit more power and money to the government bro. It's all gonna be great! Just give a little bit more in taxes, bro. It's going to be a utopia, you'll see!
[+] [-] xkekjrktllss|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gosub100|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] overgard|2 years ago|reply
I gotta say though, it's sort of complicated when you're talking about legalizing things that are already legal as prescription drugs (like opiates and benzos). Alcohol is different because it doesn't really have any medical use outside of disinfecting things (it's fairly terrible as an anesthetic or as a tranquilizer), but there's something kind of weird about having former prescription drugs just be legal over the counter. How many people might bypass their doctor and start using strong opiates for pain that might not need it and end up in a bad spot?
I don't think you can go so far as like w/ alcohol where you just show an ID and buy whatever you want, but it does seem like there needs to be some way to ensure the product is safe. Maybe a compromise might be some sort of free testing kits, or something like narcan on hand in a safe space.
[+] [-] jsbisviewtiful|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamblor956|2 years ago|reply
Drugs are illegal for a reason. Making drugs legal just makes the problem worse; the reasons most drugs are illegal is because of the many negative side effects they impose on users...and others.
Voluntary rehab and counseling don't work. Permissive policies don't work. There are literally thousands of shelters beds empty each night in LA, SF, and Portland because drug addicts would rather keep their drugs and paraphernalia than have a warm, safe space. The rare rich person who can control their habit or the consequences of their drug use because they've got a wealthy family to take care of them shouldn't be the basis for determining policy for the hundreds of people who can't.
Forced rehab works. Imprisonment works. Losing custody works. Some amount of externally-inflicted mental pain is necessary to overcome addiction to serious drugs like meth and cocaine because without it an addict will never develop the mental fortitude to stop using.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|2 years ago|reply
The people drugs weren't decriminalized for before 2020 were the mostly normal citizens. After all, if someone has a house or a job or a car, you can take that away from them by punishing them, and that is what the cops would do. But if someone is already sleeping on the street, is arresting them and having them spend a few nights in jail and then going back out the streets going to change anything?
A cop might walk right past a man smoking meth in the street, but if you get pulled over for a broken headlight, and the cops might call out drug sniffing dogs, find a small amount of heroin in your possession, and throw you in jail for months.
[+] [-] coffeecloud|2 years ago|reply
In my mind it’s something like “drugs are legal but public drug use and public intoxication are strictly illegal.” It’s just hard to enforce that when people don’t have a private place to use in.
[+] [-] deepfriedchokes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kepler1|2 years ago|reply
I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've made drug use not a crime, and find yourself in a drug-problem-overwhelmed city.
Lo and behold, we find years later, people awaken to the fact that decriminalization might not work, and countless people having left the city because of it, and probably more importantly, tons of people falling victim to the scourge of drugs.
Sometimes, as unkind as it sounds and expensive as it is, you need to enforce some harsh laws and have people understand that you won't tolerate certain behaviors, lest your society fall apart.
[+] [-] felizuno|2 years ago|reply
I was beaten nearly to death (in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood) in Seattle in 2020 by two men enabled to descend into meth addiction by permissive policies. In my victim support group I met so many people - innocent people - permanently injured & disfigured like me, or raped, or psychologically destroyed by meth users who had been allowed to live in tents in their neighborhoods and use hard drugs undisturbed until it was too late.
It's easy to treat this like a philosophical topic when you've had the privilege not to pay any personal price. For some of us it's more than an argument on the internet. If you think we should allow people to sell/buy/use meth please have the courage to attend a support group for victims of violent crimes. I doubt you'd claim a moral high ground for decriminalization to the faces of victims like me who have had our lives destroyed by meth users.
[+] [-] somewhereoutth|2 years ago|reply
> And in Portugal, no distinction is made between “hard” or “soft” drugs, or whether consumption happens in private or public. What matters is whether the relationship to drugs is healthy or not.
Interesting.
Of course Portugal has a stronger social safety net, indeed stronger social fabric (though sometimes it feels a bit too strong)
[+] [-] bentt|2 years ago|reply
So it's not that Portland made a mistake in decriminalizing public drug use. Their mistake was that they stopped enforcing other laws around the misbehavior addicts engage in.
[+] [-] xrd|2 years ago|reply
One thing I've noticed in Florida is that there are no public spaces. Every park has explicit hours, where it is illegal to be there after 10 pm. And, there are blue lives matters signs everywhere, so I'm sure that the police round up anyone who doesn't comply.
Also, Florida has a low prison population rate, only 900 per 100k. Low when you compare it to other states that is. Northern states are much lower, like Oregon at 550. Taking 40,000 people off the street is one way to solve homelessness.
I bet there are lots of people in Florida who live cheaply away from any population centers because of the police presence and to avoid imprisonment. Those people probably would be homeless on the West Coast.
There was an extremely high people case in Portland recently where a man attacked two young black men on the train. His name is Adrian Cummings. Supposedly he was let out of jail in Oregon and that's indicative of a failure of the criminal justice system because he should have been in jail long before that assault.
But he's a Floridian. He had a lengthy criminal record before reaching Oregon and his drug addiction didn't start in Oregon. The transformation of his face over a short period due to drug addiction is crazy to see in his mug shots.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2017/03/07/deputies-man-chok...
How the hell did this guy get to Oregon? I doubt he was a drug tourist. Makes you wonder.
[+] [-] port914|2 years ago|reply
Enforce the laws.
My car was broken into in San Francisco, robbed in broad daylight. The police told me to just turn it in to my insurance.
Who pays insurance? We do.
So I got robbed and you all who pay for insurance got robbed.
I wonder why.
[+] [-] physhster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|2 years ago|reply
The war on drugs is three-generations old; it will take at least a generation after abandoning it to see good results. Of course there will be mistakes on the way (and allowing brazen drug use in public spaces is probably one of those - a lot of stuff that is absolutely fine to do in private is not allowed on the streets). That doesn't mean you throw away the baby with the bathwater.
[+] [-] neonate|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jeff_Brown|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CedarMills|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 23B1|2 years ago|reply
It was great up through the early 90s, and then turned into an absolutely bonkers shithole run by people too dumb and too extremist to be considered even progressive (I support many progressive polices and causes fwiw).
I basically was ran out of my own town when the politicians, police, and moonbat locals – many of whom were not born there – started thinking of Portland as some sort of weird test bed, layering on all kinds of experimental policies and governance. It hollowed out the downtown area, made it nigh on impossible to start a business, and made everything bonkers expensive.
I'm sad to say I had no choice but to leave. All of these decisions left very little opportunity to build a career (many of the businesses left) own a house (NIMBY 'urban planning' made housing unattainable) and of course the streets became as gross as the Mission in SFO.
It's like the worst of the Hippy Boomers were able to enact all of their worst policies in one small town and now it's a microcosm of their weird blend of laissez-faire social policies mixed with maximcally-extractive taxation and fiscal policies.