Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-drug-decriminalization-results-overdoses/674733/

by slapshot • 3 years ago

476 1163 3 years ago

9g3890fj2• 3 years ago

jeffbee4• 3 years ago

This article has severe methodological errors. It fails to consider the Oregon stats in the context of other states. Oregon's change in OD rates have not been exceptional, and have more or less followed the trend of other states, while being greatly better compared to states like W. Virginia.

As always, states that are "tough on drugs" get a free pass regardless of how bad their outcomes are, and states that legalize it are scrutinized even when their outcomes are no worse.

mattzito• 3 years ago

The article seems to hit that straight on:

"The consequences of Measure 110’s shortcomings have fallen most heavily on Oregon’s drug users. In the two years after the law took effect, the number of annual overdoses in the state rose by 61 percent, compared with a 13 percent increase nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In neighboring Idaho and California, where drug possession remains subject to prosecution, the rate of increase was significantly lower than Oregon’s. (The spike in Washington State was similar to Oregon’s, but that comparison is more complicated because Washington’s drug policy has fluctuated since 2021.) Other states once notorious for drug deaths, including West Virginia, Indiana, and Arkansas, are now experiencing declines in overdose rates."

jeffbee4• 3 years ago

That is a highly misleading discussion though. The existing rate in WV is quadruple that in Oregon. Oregon was up a bit on a low denominator. WV was down slightly on a ludicrous prior rate. Fails to mention that other states with similar trends compared to Oregon are Wyoming, Maine, and Texas. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

anon2915• 3 years ago

while being greatly better compared to states like W. Virginia.

Typical Oregon response comparing Oregon, a fairly rich state, with West Virginia, one of the poorest states. If you can't do better than a poor state with your high taxes and high median incomes... that's not a good reflection on the state. Yet, most Oregonians seem to get some satisfaction that they do better than Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia, even if they're #49 in the ranking. It's gross.

I mean, Oregon has Intel, Nike, Adidas, a well-developed tech sector, etc, and West Virginia has coal mining, yet we're actually comparing ourselves to them.

I really wish people in this state would strive for something actually better.

jeffbee4• 3 years ago

But see that is exactly what I am talking about. You cannot — cannot — attribute a change in overdose rate to state policy without examining and controlling for the factors that we know influence overdoses: personal income, homelessness, etc. This article completely fails to examine whether Oregon's changes can be due to a shift in the income among its population.

kelnos4• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/rznQr

We've plainly seen over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an abject failure. All it's done is increase incarceration rates (without solving the problems of drug use and addiction), and many people caught in the system are just drug users, not distributors/traffickers. This really doesn't help much of anything.

State leaders have acknowledged faults with the policy’s implementation and enforcement measures.

And there you go, right there in the second paragraph.

As Morse put it, “If you take away the criminal-justice system as a pathway that gets people into treatment, you need to think about what is going to replace it.”

And clearly they didn't do that well enough, or at least didn't follow through well enough on what needed to be done.

It's good to see reporting on this, because clearly "just decriminalizing" doesn't help, and can make things worse on some dimensions. And some measures to replace prison sentences likely work better than others, and it's good to see the ones that don't work so we can refine policies like this.

But let's not take this as failure of the idea of decriminalization.

j_walter6• 3 years ago

Clearly they had the best of intentions, but Oregon's politicians are terrible at implementing anything properly. Open drug markets, increased property and retail thefts and a homeless population explosion are what happened...when <1% of people actually seek the treatment if they can even find it it causes problems.

They always claimed to follow other successful implementations like Portugal, but the law was no where near what they implemented as far as requiring treatment.

Whats funny is the Governor is telling the Portland mayor to fix the drug issues...like it didn't stem from measure 110.

https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/07/19/kotek-and-blumenauer-t...

kelnos4• 3 years ago

That's fair, and certainly a problem, but I don't think the solution is "let's just go back to throwing everyone in jail". We know from long experience that isn't working.

orangepurple2• 3 years ago

I disagree that the implementation is terrible. Having seen several interviews on the matter I think its implemented exactly as the people of Portland wanted it. The major outstanding problem is a lot of the homeless people on drugs need someone to genuinely be there for them and care about them. That's the primary message you will hear from them if you care to listen to their stories on The Soft White Underbelly. It seems that you can't possibly spend enough money to make that happen at a policy level. There were horrible abuses in the institutions where it was tried here historically.

rubyn00bie• 3 years ago

Ted Wheeler is a piece of shit, pushing policies that are completely ineffective. He's more interested in illegally gassing non-violent protestors than fixing issues. The police here are well-funded and by-and-large don't do anything, bringing up the real question "why are we funding them?" A family member of mine had someone ARMED and going through a very obviously psychotic episode enter their house and it was over week before the police showed up to remove them. The damage to the house was outstanding, and my family member obviously couldn't stay there during it, but the Portland Police couldn't fucking be bothered. For a fucking week. It's absolutely insane we pay for police in my opinion.

The biggest issue in Portland that's been ignored since COVID started is that downtown Portland never recovered after the shutdown. It has nothing to do with safety, I know I live there, and it has everything to do with prices. The city is too expensive for what you get and what opportunities are here.

I'm no fan of Kotek, but truly Ted Wheeler is among the most shit mayors the city has ever known.

lotsofpulp10• 3 years ago

Is it possible the probability of success of treating the use of certain brain altering chemicals is untenably low, even if treatment was "properly" funded?

kelnos4• 3 years ago

I don't think so. Portugal was famously very successful at drug decriminalization, at least until they slashed funding to rehabilitation programs.

If you have data that suggests some drugs just make rehabilitation impossible or unlikely, I'd be interested to see it, though.

Supermancho• 3 years ago

If there was a measure for success that was agreed upon, for a region, the probability of success would then be lowered to "untenably low". That isn't the case, when data collection is performed.

gremlinsinc• 3 years ago

Yeah, I see it as a failure in implementing a better road to recidivism for drug users that doesn't involve prison. It's a mental health issue after all. I think perhaps maybe even separate "mental" health from normal healthcare and make it free / universal might go a long way. Maybe insentivize it, like giving plasma. Go to therapy 4 weeks in a row get $100 cash. That way it's not "forcing" people into something which is still a sort of "prison" mindset, but it's more like "encouraging" them to be there, and drug users will do almost anything for money, right? So why not have them do therapy?

lotsofpulp10• 3 years ago

Why would mental health be separated from "normal" healthcare? Mental health involves chemical signals in the brain. Once a chemical dependency has been established, how possible is it to "talk" someone out of it in therapy?

anon2915• 3 years ago

We've plainly seen over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an abject failure. All it's done is increase incarceration rates (without solving the problems of drug use and addiction), and many people caught in the system are just drug users, not distributors/traffickers. This really doesn't help much of anything.

Given that Oregon stopped its war on drugs and has had a terrible experience, I don't see how anyone can honestly believe that the war on drugs did not reduce the rates of drug use and addiction. This is not a political issue. Come to Portland and see. It's not like any other city. People engage in drugs freely and with impugnity. Correspondingly, people overdose continuously.

It seems obvious to me the war on drugs kept addiction rates and usage rates at a much more acceptable level. At least, it ensured the dangers of drug use didn't spill onto the streets (needles in public parks; drug users in public restrooms... places kids go).

Thus, it correspondingly seems obvious to me that the higher incarceration rate is worth it.

agentofoblivion• 3 years ago

a.k.a., "that's not real communism".

AbrahamParangi2• 3 years ago

Is the war on drugs a failure in Singapore too? I mean, it is self-evidently obvious that at some level of enforcement, you can actually control the problem.

The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the level of enforcement necessary. Is the cure worse than the disease? That is a real question and a worthy one, but pretending that no tradeoff exists is just silly.

oatmeal12• 3 years ago

The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the level of enforcement necessary.

I think the question is how do we make prisons less cruel and dangerous, and lower recidivism. Of course there is a backlash against enforcement when the solution is locking people in cages.

pravus• 3 years ago

After the outrage I saw when a US citizen was caned in Singapore for a vandalism violation, I'd say no, the people here probably don't look to Singapore as a guide for enforcement.

chimeracoder7• 3 years ago

Is the war on drugs a failure in Singapore too?

Considering that thousands of people are arrested for drug possession every year in Singapore, to say nothing of the number of people who use drugs in Singapore and avoid legal action, then yes.

The question then is whether we are willing to tolerate the level of enforcement necessary.

Drug use is rampant even inside prisons, which are literally the most surveilled and draconian environments on the planet. If a carceral approach to preventing drug use doesn't work even within prisons, what makes anyone think it can work in society at large, even if people were willing to turn all of society into a police state?

whimsicalism2• 3 years ago

Singapore is a dictatorship, count me out.

cyberax5• 3 years ago

We've plainly seen

I have not seen that.

over the past several decades that the War on Drugs is an abject failure.

It was not. WoD helped to _control_ the amount of drugs. It certainly had not eradicated them, but it helped to reduce their prevalence.

ortusdux• 3 years ago

I was saddened to learn that Portugal slashed funding for their post decriminalization drug outreach programs. The shift from enforcement to treatment doesn't really work if you skip the treatment part.

After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

tracker1• 3 years ago

From the last time I drove through Oregon, it kind of felt like they had already done this.

d35007• 3 years ago

Oregon voted to decriminalize hard drugs in the 2020 election, according to the article.

sharperguy• 3 years ago

I always thought decriminalization was in some ways the worst of both worlds. On one hand, keeping the production and trade side illegal continues to perpetuate the underground culture and fund international cartels. Meanwhile their market base increases due to fewer people being afraid of being caught, the product quality is still completely unregulated. Users still need to stay embedded in an an unscrupulous underworld in order to maintain the connections necessary to obtain the product, increasing the chances of abuse and reducing their chances of getting help if they need it. Of course, it's nice not to send people to jail for small quantities, but failing to fully legitimize the market in these ways could cause a lot of other issues.

kelnos4• 3 years ago

I'm not sure that's exactly true. I do agree with you that some people will start using because they lose the fear of being caught, though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is.

Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment programs.

Alupis6• 3 years ago

though I'm not convinced this is as large a problem as you might think it is

Several states have legalized marijuana, and surprise, marijuana usage is at an all-time high (no pun intended). People who would have never tried it before now do so because the stigma is gone, and it's trivial to get.

This part is always lost on the "legalize everything" crowd. While marijuana might be relatively benign, other drugs are not. Removing the stigma and making it easy to get harder drugs is going to be a net-negative thing for society as a hole.

We can see this in-action already. Places like California have effectively de-criminalized most/all drug use if you are part of the homeless population. Surprise again - there's more drug use within that community than ever before. It's difficult to walk through the down-town area without seeing overt drug use these-days.

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

seanmcdirmid17• 3 years ago

Either way, there are also undoubtedly people with substance abuse problems who are afraid to get help due to the possibility of incarceration. Removing that fear can lead to more people getting into treatment programs.

There are also people that only get help due to the threat of incarceration (e.g. the judge says go to drug treatment or go to jail). Removing that fear can lead to more people not getting into treatment programs.

NoMoreNicksLeft3• 3 years ago

Without legal sales, opiate users get trash street drugs that vary anywhere between unsafe and catastrophically dangerous. Furthermore, there's absolutely none of the benefits like being able to encourage them to keep their used needles in sharps containers like you might be able to do, if they had to drop off the full ones before they got their next fix.

We don't get the reduction in violence we'd see from legal sales. None of it.

Decrim is what you get from cowardly legislators and imbecilic activists worried that Tweaky the Copper Wiring Thief isn't getting a fair shake at life.

morkalork2• 3 years ago

Without legal sales, cartels will keep doing cartel things. Also where will money for treatment programs come from? It will always be at risk of being cut by fiscally conservative governments, vs legal sales that can be taxed to fund amelioration efforts.

randerson• 3 years ago

I wonder: would be better or worse if states started giving out medical-grade Heroin to those who seek it? Perhaps with a prescription where one has to pick up a 1 day supply each day (less likely to OD) and the prescription gradually tapers off down to zero. It would put a dent in the illicit markets and reduce deaths of existing addicts, but could be too tempting for new people to try it out.

Herodotus38• 3 years ago

If you tried such a method people would probably be opposed to it because of concerns people would be tempted to obtain it and sell.

One would probably model it off of methadone clinics. In most clinics the methadone has to be taken by the person on site and witnessed to prevent issues of diversion. However a lot of places allow people to graduate to be able to pick up a multiple day supply after they have shown stability, etc…

tenebrisalietum2• 3 years ago

To prevent new people from doing heroin, just have them search for "Kensington Philadelphia" on YouTube and watch 1 to 3 videos.

classichasclass• 3 years ago

This is basically the methadone approach, but when I was in general practice, just try weaning people off anything they have a dependence on that they're not motivated to stop using.

Plus, harm reduction like syringe services (i.e., needle exchange) is already hugely controversial for "encouraging drug use." That sentiment is at best arguable and at worst a reductionist distortion, but it becomes even harder to argue against when you're in the business of handing out better dope.

willi59549879• 3 years ago

i think the only way it would work is to make it completely legal (also selling and production) with a lot of control on sales. I am not sure what would be best to control sales, guess it would need to be stricter than the control for tobacco and alcohol. But that way the government could at least get taxes from the sales of the drugs.

If only possession is legal then more people might try hard drugs that would have been scared away but drugs still have to be smuggled in. This also means that there is no quality control on the substances.

alphazard2• 3 years ago

As you mentioned, decriminalization is not enough. The effort that was spent on enforcement needs to be repurposed on quality control. It's much easier to enforce laws on businesses who want to sell their products openly than on individuals consuming substances in private.

The FDA and DEA should be entirely repurposed to randomly testing all food and drug products and ensuring that the ingredients list is accurate to within a certain margin. Having a single arbiter of good and bad substances has proven to be a failure again and again (remember the Food Pyramid?). I would much rather have access to everything, and know that it is labeled correctly, than have some dysfunctional bureaucracy "looking out for me".

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

That's probably true. Decriminalization is an imperfect first step that can be taken unilaterally by the executive branch while the legislative is deadlocked. In time society grows accustomed to decriminalization and the true legalization is more feasible.

In California the decriminalization of magic mushrooms has caused lots more people to start growing them, so price, quality, and diversity are better than ever. That probably wouldn't be the case with other drugs that aren't as easy to produce just anywhere. Although opium poppy field or coca greenhouses are definitely possible.

totalconfusion• 3 years ago

Completely agree, in for a dime in for a dollar. The reality is legalizing drugs is a politically untenable platform to get elected on because economic realities like supply and demand play no role in the deeply entrenched moral prejudice that is so prevalent in the (often older) voting population.

I don't mean to be offensive or ageist and I'm sure lots of older people have been touched both directly and indirectly by drug abuse, my experience is those that have been affected in some way have changed their long held views on drugs being a criminal issue as opposed to a medical one.

Thoeu388• 3 years ago

the first of its kind in any state, are now coming into view

Lets hope Oregon will be shining beacon of inclusivity for all drug users, anywhere in US! We should not rush into any conslusions for at least 30 years!!!

dang3• 3 years ago

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments.

Can you please not create accounts to break HN's rules with? It's not in your interest to vandalize this place, for the same reason one doesn't throw trash in a city park, or leave fires burning in dry forests, or pee in swimming pools: it destroys what makes the place worth visiting in the first place.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

runjake3• 3 years ago

From the areas I live and work, Measure 110 has, at best, made no difference whatsoever.

The current situation with hard drug use is that there are far more drugged out people in public, and far more open drug use in public since 2020. The exact causes, I'll leave to experts to determine. Measure 110 has certainly played a part, though.

j_walter6• 3 years ago

Don't forget that many of those people are fueling their drug habits with theft...theft that has gone largely unchecked. Oregon became a destination for addicts where they didn't have to worry about legal troubles that came along with drug use. All

runjake3• 3 years ago

This is an important point. While drugs are decriminalized, crimes such as theft are not.

Pro-drug decriminalization people often argue that stuff like theft is still illegal. However, there are so many drug-related thefts that our particular district attorney is unwilling to prosecute them.

As a result, law enforcement won't even take them to jail, let alone show up, most of the time. Typically, you file a self-report on your LE's website and then never hear about it again. The thieves know this, of course. (For myself, n=3 since 2020. Though, I did recover a stolen iPhone last week because I acquired enough evidence/telemetry/etc to warrant a response.)

wonderwonder15• 3 years ago

If you decriminalize hard drugs, all that happens is that addicts stay addicts, have a higher likely hood of becoming homeless and higher chance of dying. Hard drugs for the most part outside of controlled environments have almost no positive qualities. Drugs like cannabis have medical attributes and can provide benefits.

People addicted to hard drugs require treatment, leaving them to their own devices is likely to have negative results. Problem is, who is going to pay for that treatment and for how long? On top of that, is it ok for Bob the local heroine addict to shoot up in front of peoples homes in a local residential community or school? Do we really want to worry about Bob dropping his needles on the ground?

I'm not a fan of sending people to jail for drug use but when balanced against the very real repercussions to peoples lives regarding hard drug use and the affect on communities, not sure what the alternative is. Rendering down town areas unwalkable due to an infestation of addicts, and the associated uptick in property crime and robbery is not acceptable either.

Plus once drugs are legal, its very likely the first thing to be chopped in a budget crunch is going to be treatment programs as illustrated in Portugal.

Not sure what the answer is but just waving a wand and making hard drugs legal is not it.

soligern2• 3 years ago

They should couple decriminalization with stringent arrests for public use and public intoxication. It’s so damn simple, why won’t they do it. Set a limit above which you’re not allowed to be loitering on the streets like they do with alcohol.

wonderwonder15• 3 years ago

This is definitely part of the answer. Walking through the streets of San Francisco a while ago with my kids I was shocked to see people just lying on the side walk in pools of their own vomit. Also was very protective of my kids walking past people that were obviously on drugs and out of their minds. These people became not so much people but just a threat. It seemed inhumane to just leave them like that. With that said, I would not want the job of dealing with them for what I am sure is a relatively low salary with the reward of seeing most people you help back on drugs the next week.

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

That's one of the interesting things I noticed about Amsterdam. It is notorious for the availability of cannabis, but it's very clear that you don't consume in public or around the neighborhood. (Modulo a group of teens I saw passing a joint around in the park). The coffeeshops are clearly intended to contain the drug use. Unlike California where you smell weed everywhere.

01100011• 3 years ago

I hate to be that HN guy who nitpicks an otherwise spot-on comment, but anyway...

One correction: many opiate users, yes, even heroin users, can be functional members of society. There are many folks you would never know use H, at least until they accidentally get some fentanyl and die.

Same thing with meth(which is actually a prescription medication). I'll say that there is always a very high probability that some life stress transforms a casual usage pattern into full-blown addiction though. I've seen it first hand with a family member who used meth for years "on the weekends, to get things done" until some stress in their mid-40s turned them into a hallucinating IV meth user.

More or less though, I think we should maintain criminalization of public usage of most drugs, but I'm open to whatever pragmatic approach maximizes public health and safety while lowering crime.

wonderwonder15• 3 years ago

Fair point. This I think goes along with the idea of a functional alcoholic. People can be functional and fine for a very long time, until they aren't. This likely has less affect on the community during their 'functional' phase. I am for the most part against public use and intoxication.

goatlover• 3 years ago

You’re ignoring the right of someone to do with their body as they see fit, in favor of giving power to governments over people’s bodies. Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol despite’s its negative effects. Doesn’t work for prostitution or gambling either.

brightlancer19• 3 years ago

To add, I've known many folks who were infrequent users of cocaine, about once or twice a year during holidays or parties or the like.

I also knew one person who worked in finance and EVERYONE did coke; he wasn't addicted and stopped using when he switched fields (he hated the 80h weeks).

These anecdotes contrasted heavily with my experience in the Bronx in the 80s, where drug users were overwhelmingly drug abusers and generally awful people. I still won't use recreational drugs (other than caffeine and alcohol) but I don't judge people who do.

api• 3 years ago

My take is that we're going from a criminalization based "screw them, warehouse them in jail and ruin their lives with felony convictions" policy to a laissez-faire "screw them, let them die on the street" policy.

The part that hasn't changed is "screw them." Nobody really cares about these people. They're viewed as an inconvenience and the debate is over the least costly way to either warehouse them or shove them aside somewhere. Most people view addiction as a moral failing and think addicts deserve whatever they get.

I've never been in favor of drug criminalization except possibly in the case of the most addictive and deadly hard drugs (crystal meth, fentanyl, concentrated opiates), but I always hoped that legalization would come with a redirection of funding from prisons and police into treatment. The latter part just isn't happening, or isn't happening with any effectiveness. My take is that nobody gives a damn and decriminalization is more about saving money than freedom or better treatment approaches.

foobarian• 3 years ago

The movie Traffic already said it. "Treatment of addiction? Addicts treat themselves. They overdose and then there's one less to worry about."

collaborative2• 3 years ago

The problem as I see it is that any "treatment" requires the addict wanting to be treated

You could argue that the Taliban are the government that cares the most about addicts, because they are actually making addicts change the way a parent corrects a child

But addicts are grown ups with free will

taeric5• 3 years ago

Referencing Portugal feels weird. Most reports I see are still very favorable to the outcomes they are seeing, is that changing?

Decriminalizing doesn't change people with a drug problem into not having a drug problem, true. It does, at least, free them from also having a legal problem. Idea being that they can seek and get treatment for their drug problem, now. Something they can't do when it is criminal. (Indeed, reading the Wikipedia page for Portugal shows increased treatments as their first bullet in favor.)

I'd also guess that it makes it easier for treatments to be offered. As, right now, offering help there is basically aiding illegal activity.

fragmede5• 3 years ago

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36638752

chronofar8• 3 years ago

Not sure what the answer is but just waving a wand and making hard drugs legal is not it.

Make them actually legal (and thus more safe), tax them heavily, use a portion of said taxation to educate properly and then support and rehabilitate those who need it. Don't allow unsafe activities in public places that cause an unsafe environment.

This really isn't that complicated, we've just been under the spell of prohibition for so long waking up can be a bit disorienting.

hcks• 3 years ago

Yeah, it's not complicated when you can make up stuff with 0 evidence and have no responsability anyway.

ikrenji3• 3 years ago

problem with this kind of reasoning is that there is very little real data on a world where drugs are decriminalised / legal. while the things you listed could all be negative consequences of such a world, since it was never tried we don't know and its just a conjecture...

wonderwonder15• 3 years ago

There's also a genie out of the bottle problem. Once you decriminalize drugs and people start using them it's very hard to flip a switch and make them stop. To get the data could very well require a massive sacrifice if it turns out to be a very bad idea

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

In a later comment you ask ...how should I provide help & compassion?

I would say one-on-one as an individual walking the streets, you probably shouldn't, especially if you have children in tow.

We need to address our nationwide affordable housing crisis. California is disproportionately impacted and takes a lot of the blame for it, but I think they are basically the dumping ground and whipping boy for a national failure.

Decriminalization is helpful in part because if you criminalize use of the drug, it makes it harder to seek treatment. People who expect to go to jail for trying to get the help they need are more likely to not come forward and to continue to try to fix their problems themselves.

We need a better understanding of why people do drugs, what the underlying root causes are. It's hard to solve a problem without knowing why it exists. Given our long track record of not getting results, I think we have room for improvement in how we frame this problem.

wonderwonder15• 3 years ago

I agree with you for the most part. There is a massive housing cost crisis. I bought my house 5 years ago for $320k and its worth just under $600k now. For the same house. It makes no sense. Plus its not like I can sell it and get 2 more at the original price. I don't know how entry level salary people could even consider home ownership now.

I don't think decriminalization of hard drugs works without an ample amount of long term money set aside for treatment. Plus money for additional law enforcement to aggressively enforce existing property, violence and public intoxication laws. People should not have to endure a slipping down life because others choose to do drugs.

As far as the why people do drugs, I'm not sure we need that much study. It starts out fun, then it turns into something to numb the pain, then its something that is needed. I've done a myriad of drugs in my time, thankfully I never passed the fun phase. I don't presume to know what drove people to the 'numb the pain' phase and I do feel for them. I am not willing to upend my life or endanger my kids to find out. There is also a limit, how much money should society be expected to spend to constantly on an individual who keeps going through treatment and keeps going back to using? With that said, I do think the number is above zero.

My patience fails though at those that endanger others and commit crimes to further their addiction.

kepler13• 3 years ago

I maintain now (as I did when Measure 110 passed in Oregon, and in the discussions here in HN) that decriminalizing drugs would lead the state, and especially Portland of course, to a terrible and predictable outcome. Many supporters of the measure believed that it was the objectively right choice. Decriminalize, and get people to treatment instead of locking them up.

The sad thing is that you can make all the piecewise-correct A/B choices yet still end up having destroyed your city.

Yes, giving someone a ticket for using drugs and offering them treatment instead of locking them up might be temporarily more productive / more sensible. Yes, maybe it makes sense to put more resources to mental health.

Yet one day, you wake up and your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts.

Somehow, people forgot that once in a while there is a legitimate role for hard authority to punish people for doing things you don't want them to do. Lest your society go down some lawless path which step by step looked like the kind and charitable course to follow.

local_issues• 3 years ago

The people I fear the most are people who are 100% sure they're doing the right thing. This comment section is full of that - "no, this is a good policy and it's just the implementation that's wrong."

Sure, maybe? But maybe it's just a bad policy? Maybe we could adjust the implementation? Maybe we can look at other places were things are better?

Maybe a bit of shame could be helpful, too. SF and Portland have turned into a national punch line. That's shameful.

kepler13• 3 years ago

Agreed.

If a policy requires nearly perfect implementation, and follow through, and good behavior of the people, in order to succeed, and you rarely achieve / sustain the follow through by the community or police, etc. then it is not a good policy. Even though the concept was nice.

A policy is everything, start to finish. You can't just say a policy was good except for the implementation. No matter how good it makes you feel that you got the idea right, it just wasn't carried out the way you thought.

NegativeLatency• 3 years ago

your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts

This is hyperbole, I live in one of the rougher neighborhoods. The city gov especially the mayor and his cronies have done nothing to actually fix problems, they just do expensive sweeps and cleanup without addressing root causes.

retrac2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase in the number of homeless and the number of publicly intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells, smashing the first and second floor windows regularly, pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly. All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on my street.

kepler13• 3 years ago

So because you live on a street not affected by this, it's hyperbole?

And what root causes should they be addressing that they have the means to address?

jpadkins• 3 years ago

what are the root causes? how can the mayor address them?

RyanAdamas• 3 years ago

A lot of these drugs are used to get people into the sex trade; once you get someone on drugs to do things with/to their body they otherwise wouldn't the cycle of shame begins that often traps these people in the escape through drug induced pleasure. Just the sad truth.

mulmen• 3 years ago

Would we expect early results to be encouraging? There's a lot of inertia in something like this. The damage is already done for anyone locked up on a drug charge. And reallocating resources from prisons to diversionary programs will take at least a generation.

gspencley3• 3 years ago

It's working just fine.

I guess if you want drug use to go down, or to reduce deaths etc. if those specific metrics are you goals, and nothing else matters, that's one thing. Maybe it is not "working" by those standards.

But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies. It is a health/medical issue and, in a broader context, a liberty issue. It is not a legal issue in my opinion. Regardless of drug use statistics, no one belongs in jail or with a criminal record for no reason other than possessing and/or consuming an intoxicant. I don't even care if drug use goes up with decrminalization or legalization. In my opinion it is simply outside of the proper moral scope of a government to concern itself with such matters. Feel free to disagree. This is my personal political view.

_blz23• 3 years ago

Why do you think everyone should get voting rights if there is a section of the society who want to actively harm themselves. What are their votes reflective of?

gspencley3• 3 years ago

Why are you assuming what I think about voting rights? I never brought that up.

ikrenji3• 3 years ago

why do you want to create a policy for everyone based on actions of the few? the tails should be disregarded. so what if 5-10% of the people abuse a system that otherwise benefits the other 80-90% ? cost of doing business

tenebrisalietum2• 3 years ago

Anyone who consumes sugar, trans fat or smokes cigarettes should be unable to vote as well?

andybak3• 3 years ago

This is quite frankly, a bizarre take that shows little understanding of drug use or society.

the_cat_kittles• 3 years ago

i agree with no criminal penalties for drugs, but your justification seems ignorant of the negative externalities. i think a better justification is simply that the tradeoffs from legalization are worth it

nemo44x4• 3 years ago

But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies.

Because we invest in people. We pay money to educate them, in many cases feed, shelter, and clothe them and in a variety of other ways. We expect citizens to contribute back into society. Having millions of zombies interested in nothing else than getting high is self destructive not only for the individuals we have invested in but also to our societies general longterm health.

So yes, government does have an active interest in having a healthy populace.

ddtaylor2• 3 years ago

By that same logic more people are dying or ruining their lives from poor diet and lack of exercise. Should the government be mandating diet and enforcing exercise quotas?

thegrim33• 3 years ago

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

However, that's not the world we live in. We share our cities with fairly unintelligent, irrational people, that have no interest in higher ideals. Our cities are being destroyed and made unsafe by these people that are just out of their minds on drugs / mental issues, completely disconnected from society, vandalizing, breaking and entering, hurting other people. They obviously, demonstrably, can't be trusted to partake responsibly.

I guess the debate is to what level the government needs to step in to control such people and the actions they take. I'd say that since they've already demonstrated they can't be trusted to coexist with peaceful society, that some level of action needs to be taken. But it's tough because in an ideal society I'd say the correct thing is for the government to stay out of it. But we live in a far from ideal society.

zmgsabst2• 3 years ago

Regulate the anti-social behavior, not the substance.

The problem is the places which legalized drugs also legalized anti-social behavior.

locallost• 3 years ago

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

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

joefigura• 3 years ago

A person who becomes addicted to opiods, methamphetamine, or other "hard" drugs will with some probability require medical treatment, and and some people who uses those drugs will cause other costs to society. I don't know what those percentages are, but for opiods it's definitely not negligible. Many people begin using opiods and become addicted without intending to, and later need medical assistance. So there is a public interest in how much these substances are used, and it's legitimate for government to regulate them.

In other words, there's a tradeoff between the autonomy to do things to your body and the real costs that drug addiction imposes on others.

davorak2• 3 years ago

Feel free to disagree. This is my personal political view.

How do you address the argument that drug users go on to be a burden to society?

But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies.

It seems like it should if the result is a burden on society, though there are many potential solution to ameliorate the problem other than outlawing or restricting substances.

Rapzid• 3 years ago

How do you address the argument that drug users go on to be a burden to society?

I think there are point of views that are a much larger burden on society, and yet people are free to have them.

mitthrowaway2• 3 years ago

But I don't want a government having any opinion on what people put into their own bodies.

I agree with this in principle, but only to an extent. It's not the government's business to intervene when people fill their bodies with, say, ice cream, which makes them happy but has some health consequences borne by the individual. But on the other hand, the government should certainly not permit people to fill their bodies full of explosive substances like nitroglycerin, which might detonate when they are outside walking around public spaces, taking out innocent bystanders.

Hard drugs fall somewhere in between these extremes, because in addition to their first-order effects on the user's health and happiness, they also seem to cause second-order consequences on innocent bystanders. Under the influence of drugs, some users can become aggressive and violent, and lose control of and -- importantly -- responsibility for their actions. Under the influence of addiction, some users also resort to robbery or theft to fund their habits. Many also end up unable to care for themselves. Statistically, this occurs with enough likelihood that it's a predictable, although not inevitable, consequence of substance abuse. Punishing the crimes committed under the influence of drugs does not act as an effective deterrent. Much of the harm from hard drugs does fall on people with no direct relationship to the drug users themselves, and they will have a strong and legitimate self-interest in having these substances banned.

fragmede5• 3 years ago

I absolutely want my government to have an opinion on what people put into their bodies. If I go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, and instead I get a loaf with a high concentration of bleach, used to clean the machines at the factory, and it kills me, I think the government should have an opinion on it. I think they should do what it can to prevent that from happening. I do want a government that regulates drugs so that if I buy Tylenol, I'm going to get Tylenol and not melamine pills. If someone is selling a pill and says it makes me lose weight or regrow hair, I want the government to have the opinion that if they make that claim, they must have scientifically run studies to back that up. I'm not saying the FDA is perfect, far from it! But the government's duty is to its people, so I, personally, think that government should play some role in what goes into people's bodies, to make sure people know what they're getting, and they're getting what they paid for.

That the government has extended their reach to criminalize things people choose to put into their bodies, and the resulting problems that's caused and causing, is a travesty, but I think saying the government should have _no_ opinion on that is going too far.

gspencley3• 3 years ago

I absolutely want my government to have an opinion on what people put into their bodies. If I go to the store and buy a loaf of bread, and instead I get a loaf with a high concentration of bleach, used to clean the machines at the factory, and it kills me, I think the government should have an opinion on it.

I don't think you intended it, but this is shifting the goal post.

My position is that I think an individual has the right to choose to kill themselves by any means of their choosing. Which means if someone chooses to drink a cup of bleach, I don't think the law should step in to stop them.

Murdering someone by offering them bleach disguised as something innocuous is a completely different matter that has nothing to do with what I am talking about.

_blz23• 3 years ago

The HN/reddit stance on "war on drugs" and drugs in general is proof education and common sense don't have as much correlation as is commonly thought of. These forums kept bringing up Portugal for more than a decade and when finally the results were seen, the new favorite psyop they're shilling is "the govt isn't doing enough" and "we must do more". Lol.

Ajay-p2• 3 years ago

I resided in Portland for two years and volunteered at a free medical clinic. We saw many individuals who were addicted to hard narcotics and it was the same people, repeatedly in our clinics. Then new drugs would emerge on the street and it seemed a never ending cycle of drug addiction, poor health, homelessness, and death. It wore me down because the tide of addicts never slowed, and I questioned if such legalization is beneficial.

Prison is not the answer but decriminalization removes incentives against powerful narcotics.

frandroid• 3 years ago

...Do you have evidence that the disincentives worked before?

calibas• 3 years ago

There's already powerful incentives against narcotics, you mentioned three of them: "poor health, homelessness, and death." If that's not enough to dissuade someone, laws aren't going to make much difference.

3minus1• 3 years ago

Your unbacked assertion is disputed by the facts cited in the article. In the year after Oregon got rid of criminal penalities, drug overdoses increased significantly more compared to the US average and nearby states. So yes laws do in fact make a difference.

BSEdlMMldESB• 3 years ago

on the other hand. the very 'late' results of criminalizing drugs are also really terrible.... e.g. latin america

damnesian• 3 years ago

A sea change like this, especially when it comes to substances people take to feel some relief from the bullshit of our bullshit-heavy world- and involve physical dependance- isn't going to look awesome overnight. We have to wait until some of the dust shakes off. and this is a major problem with public initiatives in this polarized day and age. If they aren't immediately effective and amazing, we demonize them immediately.

Slow down. Let's not just toss it out just yet.

Tiktaalik• 3 years ago

From what is written here in the article it sounds to me that unlike the Portugal jurisdiction they are trying to emulate, Oregon really hasn't followed through on building out the required health measures, that is treatment, that is required to go hand in hand with decriminalization for the entire concept to be a success.

It's very easy to change legislation and deregulate. A lot harder to actually spend the money to build out a robust system of healthcare.

Deregulation is a necessary step in order to treat addiction as a disease best fixed with healthcare, but it can't be the single only step.

It's dispiriting that people are looking at Oregon struggling through the implementation details and thinking that the whole idea was a mistake and we need to go back to decades old drug war tactics. Not clear at all how those approaches would succeed in this moment as the new problem of fentanyl and toxic drugs has made things worse than it has ever been.

The notion that we need to give up and go back to the old ways seems more like a knee jerk reaction and flight to safety of what we've always done.

dadjoker• 3 years ago

Uh, yeah "early results aren’t encouraging" is the understatement of the century for those of us who live here.

71a54xd• 3 years ago

I recently visited Portland and is was shocking. Sad because aside from stunning homelessness and crime out in the open it's actually a beautiful quirky city. 1br luxury apts / condos are well designed and reasonably priced. Restaraunts and culture are incredible and feel deeply grounded in community - a far cry from what Austin (my home town) now considers "weird" or cool.

I'd live there in a second if the state / city cleared up the nutty violent "activists" and homeless all over the place.

nemo44x4• 3 years ago

The activists make a living on it though. There are massive funds allocated for these programs that don't solve the problems but rather manage them. In fact, a larger customer base will only increase their funding.

squarefoot• 3 years ago

Decriminalization has nothing to do with limiting the use of drugs. The main purpose is to bring down costs so that criminal cartels will see their profits eroded through competition. This will also reduce other crimes, especially violent ones, because less people will need for example to rob a shop to buy drugs. Of course more easy drugs around mean that initially more people will use them, however that is just the immediate result of having at hand something that once was harder to find. Give it time. We all know that whoever is on drugs won't stop searching for them, no matter the cost, and no matter if that cost is on someone else's life; the choice is between prohibiting something that can't be prohibited effectively, or destroying profits for criminals, which can be very effective.

And then there's the stance by some politicians furiously in favor of prohibition, which smells of conflict of interests to say the least, but that's another story.

bozhark• 3 years ago

That only happens when the source becomes cheaper than black market.

The only way that happens is gov. Subsidies.

It’s why CO and WA and others still have such a large black market for weed.

tlogan5• 3 years ago

I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.

But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll say the numbers are wrong, or focus on wedge issues like transgender, guns, but they're not going to do anything on hard issues like this one.

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP payments?

anotherhue2• 3 years ago

I suggest the drug user equivalent of an insane asylum. If you've shown you're a danger to yourself and/or others you get a place in a retreat/monastery/rehab centre/prison island where you get the care you need.

Fraught with opportunities for abuse but not arguably more than the current situation and at least the rest of us can have our public spaces back.

brightlancer19• 3 years ago

I suggest the drug user equivalent of an insane asylum. If you've shown you're a danger to yourself and/or others you get a place in a retreat/monastery/rehab centre/prison island where you get the care you need.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." - C.S. Lewis, "God in the Dock"

To be fair, I used to think it would be best to use the courts to force medical treatment; the problem is that it invariably leads to labeling folks as "ill" and using courts to imprison them for their own safety.

sniglom• 3 years ago

For other possibly dangerous things in society there are things like taking a license and renewing that license. Perhaps that should be a requirement for buying hard drugs where it's legal.

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

Exactly. You can buy pseudoephedrine or codeine at the pharmacy, but not too much or too frequently. Party sized amounts of safe drugs could be made available. People who go to far get directed to treatment.

antisyzygy6• 3 years ago

I think we're missing part of the equation there.

Decriminalization isn't legalization. Legalization would mean controlling purity, and strength where the drug is licensed to be sold.

Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems. People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.

Beyond that simply throwing people in prison doesn't mean that we reduced the number of drug addicts. It just means you don't see them anymore.

Decriminalization actually would mean you see more of them out on the streets because they're not being locked away in prison.

Drugs will always be a part of the human experience. People will continue to use them whether it's legal or not.

The other side of it is most cities don't spend much money on harm reduction strategies or treatment options because of the stigma associated with drug users. Tax payers look at them as subhuman and don't do the math.

It costs more to let a drug addict run around town stealing and breaking things, or getting sick and going to the ER, than it does to mandate they spend some time in a State funded mental hospital.

Prisons also cost a lot. It costs a full time job's worth of money ~35k to imprison 1 person per year.

Not only did you take a potential worker out of the work force, but now you're sinking a full time jobs worth of money into keeping them in prison.

For a murderer, that seems worth it because they literally cost the world a full time worker and maybe more. But for a homeless drug addict it really doesn't seem worth it to me.

adamredwoods2• 3 years ago

> Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems. People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.

This is actually bigger than people realize.

Fentanyl lacing is a MASSIVE problem. With purity, people can rely that there's no fentanyl.

https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html

https://www.colorado.edu/health/blog/fentanyl

https://wellbeing.missouri.edu/wellness-services/substance-u...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/programs/opioid-and-fentan...

bayindirh• 3 years ago

Your focus on monetary matters is well on par with how alarm-equipped hospital beds are marketed: "Consider the cost of a patient who had skin tissue compression due to wetting themselves. Use our calculator below!". Not kidding, seen almost the exact copy on a hospital bed vendor.

While the numbers may be true, it's a very inhumane way to think about people.

mtalantikite• 3 years ago

People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal.

The unlicensed weed bodegas popping up on every other block in NYC beg to differ. People might not text a delivery service anymore, but they're definitely not going to legal recreational dispensaries here in NYC.

oatmeal12• 3 years ago

Decriminalization actually would mean you see more of them out on the streets because they're not being locked away in prison.

Decriminalization means the government cannot mandate people enter treatment. If people are out on the street and addicted, the government needs some teeth so they can treat even those that are in denial.

hn_throwaway_992• 3 years ago

Marijuana legalization hasn't lead to any major problems. People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal. They go for what's convenient.

This is actually really not true at all, and it's important to be honest about the reality. First, in many places where weed is now legal, black markets have continued to thrive because there are high taxes on legal weed, and thus black market weed is considerably cheaper. Totally fine to argue that this is then a problem with implementation, but it is definitely not correct to say "People don't even bother getting it on the black market anymore where it is legal." - that's just wrong, and it's not hard to Google for lots of articles discussing this.

Also, while I agree with legalization, I would state that I underestimated some of the downsides. A couple years ago I was in downtown Denver, along their 16th St pedestrian mall, and it's not really a nice thing to see tons of people stoned out of their minds walking around like zombies. Also not great when you get in an Uber and your driver seems totally baked.

Can't emphasize enough that I think the alternative (throwing people in jail) is much worse. But I don't think it's honest to minimize the downsides.

Edit: Save you a google search, https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/06/california-illicit...

ecf• 3 years ago

I don’t have any evidence to back this feeling up so take it with a grain of salt: San Francisco has a drug problem simply because it’s one of few places in the country where it’s safe to have a drug problem. Other states pay for addicts/homeless to be shipped off to California and all of a sudden it becomes our taxpayer problem.

If drugs were legalized country-wide then SF wouldn’t have the concentration it does and it would seem like a nice place.

burkaman2• 3 years ago

This is a common theory but it isn't true. There are a lot of homeless people in San Fransisco because there are a lot of people there and it's hard to afford a home.

From a huge recent survey of homelessness in California:

Nine out of ten participants lost their last housing in California; 75% of participants lived in the same county as their last housing.

https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CA...

Hermitian909• 3 years ago

Other states pay for addicts/homeless to be shipped off to California

This has happened but it's not substantial, most homeless in CA were living here and homed before becoming homeless[0]

San Francisco has a drug problem simply because it’s one of few places in the country where it’s safe to have a drug problem

I've spent a lot of time volunteering with the homeless in SF. This doesn't match the data or anecdotal experience. Many drug addicts follow the path of becoming homeless (overwhelmingly because of cost of living) and transitioning into hard drugs to cope with the pain of living on the street.

[0] https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/califor...

2OEH8eoCRo02• 3 years ago

If drugs were legalized country-wide

No thank you. I don't want to catch what SF has. I'll vote against anyone who suggests we need to legalize in my area.

rvcdbn11• 3 years ago

We have built a society where the best options for these people are to do what they are doing. Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide. Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you. It won’t stop anyone from using but it will make using more dangerous. There is no easy solution. We need societal change. Making it illegal would be like criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.

tlogan5• 3 years ago

I understand. But what is the solution? Just wait for them to all die? Here in San fransciso we have 3 overdose death per day. That is 40% spike from last years. In 2017 we had 222 overdose death for entire year and we reached that number by march 15h this year.

[1] https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/2021%2005_OCME%20...

z0r2• 3 years ago

I think you're oversimplifying things a little bit. Some people will try e.g. heroin and get hooked due to curiosity. Some people do derail otherwise promising lives with drug and alcohol use.

kljasdlkjfsd• 3 years ago

That's an interesting take but I think it's mostly reasoned from flawed first principles, as if everyone is a rational actor. For starters, some people do meth just because their friends are doing it. Some people aren't able to see the consequences clearly.

And even if you assume it's only people having a bad go at life, every life includes bad parts, despair, etc. We're all vulnerable to irrational acts in those times.

Legalizing drugs just makes access a little bit easier during those times. Once they're addicted, though, no rational amount of jail time will dissuade anybody.

serf• 3 years ago

Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked. They do it because there’s no better life path open to them.

that's pretty obviously wrong. Look at the demographic sample of meth users; it's not just down-and-out on-the-street folks.[0]

it's not some "i'm going to try heroin on my deathbed" drug; affluent people try/use it routinely and it's fairly common in vacation destinations/sex-clubs/bars/'adult-venues' across the U.S.

Some 100k+ salary earner who frequents sex clubs every weekend while on meth isn't doing it because 'there's no better life path open to them'; they're doing it because they're bored and it is entertaining, which is essentially the raison d'etre of all recreational drugs.

One could also note that the existence of such casual users belittles the idea that it forms such addictive bonds as to guarantee a ruined life.. but personally I think that's a person-to-person thing; some people don't get addicted to things like others.

[0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/trends-...

atomicfiredoll• 3 years ago

I had a friend who had tried several substances and thought they were above addiction... until they were eventually hooked on heroin. It's anecdotal, but having watched people (more than him) get addicted, I don't have much doubt that even people with a good life get hooked on bad drugs.

Hopefully, as society becomes more honest about drugs and stops scheduling every drug as equally dangerous or criminal, friends like that will be able to better trust that dangerous drugs do exist and know which ones to avoid.

You'll never find disagreement on the need for societal change. My impression is that the U.S. doesn't really have tools in place to help people caught in the grip addiction back from the brink. Best case, it seems like something that that is being dealt with city by city without a national framework. Therefore, addicts largely end up on the street, hurting others, and/or in a prison system that's not designed to help them.

LawTalkingGuy7• 3 years ago

Nobody starts using because they have a great life but they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like and then accidentally get hooked.

No, I know people who've been hooked meth and heroin (all different people) who not only tried them for the high, but used them "safely" for years before they lost control.

EDIT: Here's a post from an HN user who followed exactly this path - no intention of self harm at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965442

This single anecdote disproves your "nobody starts" claim.

They do it because there’s no better life path open to them. It’s really a form of suicide.

No, less than one in twenty at most wants to die or has circumstances that would make the average person want to be dead if they had the addiction treated. (Which with modern drug-based methods is actually pretty easy.)

Criminalizing will make the suicide process faster and less visible to you.

It's not suicide though, that's just want you're saying. It's your opinion. Given that most people recognize this isn't suicide, and most users did not and do not want to die, it should not be treated flippantly and the responses shouldn't be denigrated.

Banning hard drugs is like banning unsafe food or medical products - it's what we expect our government to do.

Making it illegal would be like criminalizing sugar because of the obesity epidemic.

That would work and would save a lot of lives. And fwiw, the argument isn't if we should criminalize sugar which we already do in many goods and forms, it's about at what point the FDA should set the allowed value.

rvcdbn11• 3 years ago

I was wrong to say that “nobody starts using because they have a great life and they’re just curious what a bit of meth feels like”. The point I was trying to make was that many people do know exactly what they’re getting into and do it anyway because they also know they have nothing better to look forward to in life and this is really a form of suicide. I was wrong to suggest that this pattern fits everyone, it is indeed an oversimplification and I apologize for minimizing different experiences.

kouru225• 3 years ago

How does this compare to Portugal’s wild success when it comes to decriminalizing hard drugs? Seems like SF is a way less useful example.

tlogan5• 3 years ago

Portugal is disaster. I went there but here is a link [1] :(

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

I suspect there may be a network effects / regulatory arbitrage problem. If only a small number of places decriminalize drugs, that will attract lots of drug addicts without being able to support them. The policies need to be more universal in order for them to bear fruit... Though I realize this sounds like doubling down on failure. It would explain why a country wide program like Portugal could be more successful.

epolanski4• 3 years ago

It backlashed in Portugal in recent years actually.

brightlancer19• 3 years ago

San Francisco doesn't have a problem with marijuana, it has a problem with store robbery, muggings, crazies smoking/ shooting "hard" drugs on the metro and on sidewalks, etc.

For too long, San Francisco and California more broadly have rejected The Stick in favor of The Carrot -- and they didn't improve the balance, they just through it out of balance in a different direction.

If folks want to fry their brain on whatever, I think that's their right. They don't have the right to do that on the sidewalk in front of my house, in the park where kids play, on the subway, etc. SF and CA lost the plot.

sixQuarks• 3 years ago

Exactly, some cities don’t even allow smoking cigarettes in public parks, we can surely make it difficult to do hard drugs in public.

runako• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults

Is this true? The US consumes a lot of hard drugs, but my perception is that most users not have their lives fall apart as a result. Curious if there are estimates on the % of e.g. cocaine users who are recreational vs those who eventually end up on the street as a result of their use.

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

I interpret that to mean, "people who use drugs habitually" not just those who dabbled in particular contexts.

seattle_spring9• 3 years ago

No, but there seem to be a lot of folks in this thread who get their information on this exclusively from DARE and Jordan Peterson.

altacc• 3 years ago

No, it’s not true. 13% of Americans over 12 are recent drug users but 13% of Americans aren’t living on the streets due to drug abuse.

https://drugabusestatistics.org/

And let’s not forget that the drugs that are considered ‘bad’ & illegal are done so totally arbitrarily. Alcohol is the drug with the most negative effects on society but is culturally, politically and legally acceptable whilst something like LSD, with very low rates of harm, is considered a hard drug and very illegal.

alphazard2• 3 years ago

Why is there something to do? Your questions seem predicated on a false assumption that no one likes to say out loud: Drug users have a better life waiting for them after they stop using.

Daily drug use may actually be the correct way for some people to maximize the integral of happiness over their lifetime. Especially for those at the bottom with limited prospects. I don't think most of HN can fathom what it's like to actually be completely useless. You're delusional if you think the homeless problem is a bunch of software engineers who tried heroin once, and left FAANG to get high every day.

Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP payments?

This is a great idea. If you want society to invest in you, you have to take basic steps to be a worthy investment. But even this is predicated on the idea that what these drugs users are doing is wrong, and that they should instead do something that lets the rest of us reap the benefits of their productivity. Who are we to demand someone be more productive for our own benefit? We're right to want something in exchange for our investment, but there's no place to stand and say a drug user is wrong for not taking the deal.

sbierwagen• 3 years ago

Okay, then build a camp for them out in the desert. There's no reason to have them shitting on the streets of downtown SF.

selimthegrim5• 3 years ago

You're delusional if you think the homeless problem is a bunch of software engineers who tried heroin once, and left FAANG to get high every day.

Replace heroin with meth and FAANG with MS and I can definitely state it’s happened in Portland at least

singpolyma3• 3 years ago

The point is that putting them in prison doesn't solve the problem and giving power to police results in inconsistent enforcement harmful to communities.

The point isn't that using some of these substances is "fine" but that it should be treated as a public health problem (like smoking) not a criminal problem.

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

Isn't prison one of the easiest places to get drugs??

GeoAtreides3• 3 years ago

I used to strongly support people getting fat. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.

But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently. Most people who get fat eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make fast food illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require weight tests for homeless people to receive government help like CAAP payments?

basicoperation• 3 years ago

This but unironically

styren• 3 years ago

Not sure what point you're trying to make here? Policymaking to limit access to unhealthy food isn't particularly controversial and if there weren't more pressing issues were I live I'd love for politicians to push it further.

tomp• 3 years ago

People should be allowed to be fat. But if you're so fat you need 2 airline seats, you should pay for 2 seats, just like a non-fat person who wants 2 seats.

People should be allowed to use drugs and be drug addicts. But if you're so drugged up that you shit in the street and attack other people, you should go to jail, just like a non-drug user who shits in the street or attacks people.

downvotetruth2• 3 years ago

I used to strongly support people getting guns. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.

But what I've seen in the US has made me think differently. Most people who get guns eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll say the numbers are wrong, or focus on wedge issues like LBGTQ or drugs, but they're not going to do anything on hard issues like this one.

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make guns illegal and force people into rehab? Should we require background checks for homeless people to receive government help?

unethical_ban2• 3 years ago

Is your attempt at satire trying to say "being against legal hard drugs is like being against legal obesity"? Are you saying that trying to curb hard drug use is as immoral in a free society as trying to curb unhealthy eating?

imgabe5• 3 years ago

Most people who get fat eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

This is where your analogy falls apart.

Most fat people are able to live like normal adults. They do not get fired from their jobs and lose their homes because they're camped out on the street eating McDonald's all day.

Many of them do willingly get help or treatment. There is a multi-billion dollar industry of helping people lose weight.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

A robust public health system that includes treatment for drug and alcohol addiction as part of the services offered to the public would be helpful. It's true that many people won't use such services because of distrust, however (would you want a medical record stating you were a recovering drug or alcohol addict, or mentally ill?).

Legalizing and quality controlling drugs would also help - but the problem there is that we live in a advertising-driven consumer society. Alcohol, tobacco and sugar-laced soft drinks are all unhealthy, but that's a profitable enterprise, so people are incentivized to block public health campaigns, restrictions on sales, etc.

At some point, the problems become so deeply entrenched and societal in nature that passing laws and setting up government programs doesn't really help. For some reason in the USA, a lot of people are really miserable and their only relief is to turn to drugs and alcohol. That's the more fundamental problem.

hmmokidk• 3 years ago

If drugs were legal, two of my friends would not be dead from fentanyl.

That’s already enough of a case to legalize. Make it safe.

Then address the root of the issue.

patrickmay3• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

Got a cite for that? I doubt it's true.

We're seeing the same problems with drug prohibition that we saw with alcohol prohibition. It's time for the government to stop destroying people's lives.

throw__away7391• 3 years ago

I have suffered tremendously from the drug use of family and friends. Way too much attention and undeserved sympathy is given to drug users while basically nothing at all to the people around them whose lives they derail for no fault of their own.

As far as what to do, half of this is cultural. People in the US need to grow up, we can’t have a nation of people who require perpetual care of their community, there just aren’t enough “adults” to go around anymore. The US is super rich compared even to other “first world”/G20 countries, even so-called poor people in the US have US dollars to get drugs smuggled to them, creating endless human misery outside the country as well as in.

buttercraft• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

Maybe you just don't notice the ones who live like normal adults because... they live like normal adults.

mock-possum• 3 years ago

Is it really ‘most people’ that end up that way though?

Or are those people simply the most visible?

I mean, how can you tell if someone is a functional user - you can’t, they look just everybody else, you know?

It’s not about the substances themselves, it’s the way that they’re used - and abused. It’s helplessness in the face of addiction that’s the problem - addiction will drive the afflicted to trade the rest of their life to get a fix.

lacy_tinpot• 3 years ago

I think the main problem is that we lack the other side of this equation. Namely that we don't have an avenue for addicts or even "functional users" to go to when things get tough. No way to prevent their addiction. No way to take these people in and actually really rehabilitate them into society.

Instead we throw these people into jail. And if even that gets too burdensome we let people rot in the streets. So yes. Decriminalize addiction because addiction is NOT a crime. It is an illness.

icpmacdo• 3 years ago

Same for 'no one willingly goes to get help or treatment'

epolanski4• 3 years ago

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do?

Tackle the issue at the root: mental health.

It's an error to focus too much on the substance (illegal drugs) when alcohol, legal drugs, food and many other forms of abuse and dependency can lead to similar or worse outcomes.

BizarroLand3• 3 years ago

The phrase "mental health" makes light of the realities of addiction.

From what I understand, an addict can't mental health their way into being someone who isn't an addict.

If that is the case, after they have become an addict, they can only mental health themselves into being someone who refuses to indulge in their addiction.

If they refuse to indulge long enough, the craving loses its power over their reasoning, but they still have the capacity to be immediately back to where they started if they indulge a single time.

In my opinion, the best thing is to never use a drug you don't have to use.

The next best thing is to use them extremely sparingly or for a specific purpose.

If you go past this point, you begin to run the risk of becoming addicted.

deepsun• 3 years ago

Can you make the same argument for children?

Children don't know the world yet, cannot contain their urges, and can get their brain chemistry permanently altered after trying heroin.

Now here's the trick -- all adults are children, just older. Some can contain the emotions better than others.

chrisweekly• 3 years ago

"Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults."

Many drugs are incredibly dangerous, addictive and harmful, but that's still a wild overstatement.

bsder• 3 years ago

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do?

Heathcare facilities for the mentally ill is a really good start.

But, you know, that's, like, expensive.

alfalfasprout• 3 years ago

Part of the problem frankly is that not all drugs are created equal.

There's very little reason for opioids to be freely available.

But weed, psychadelics, mdma, etc. why not?

happytiger• 3 years ago

I think the lessons are there in what Portugal has done with their insane heroin wave (it was reported that 1 entire percent of the population was reported to have an addiction to hard drugs).

The parallels in Van, SF and Portland are striking, except now it’s not Heroin it’s Fentanyl.

Here’s a good primer: https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/portugal-heroin-decrim...

stouset2• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

This isn’t even remotely true. The number of people in SF who use marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ketamine, MDMA, GHB, 2-CB and/or a laundry list of other substances would astonish you.

The majority of them successfully hold jobs: many of them highly paid ones as tech company engineers and execs.

What you associate with “not living like normal adults” is poverty plus opiates.

whycome2• 3 years ago

I support making drugs legal. But, it also requires an extensive framework around that legalization. Social supports. Information. Safety nets/healthcare. Without that, it's gonna fails.

unethical_ban2• 3 years ago

I'll pick your comment out of the pack to pick on, though I think we agree.

Yours, and dozens of others, talk about "drugs".

That's like talking about banning "food" when there is a problem with people eating five cheeseburgers a day.

---

The problem is not with cannabis, or mushrooms, or aspirin. It's with meth, heroin, fentanyl, and prescription opioids.

Drugs need to be *properly* ranked by government and restricted accordingly.

* How easy is it to acutely overdose on a substance?

* How chemically addictive is the substance?

* How damaging is chronic use of the drug over time to the body and mind?

* Is there any medical benefit?

The fact that cannabis is federally ranked as the most controlled level of drug in the US shows we have a broken system.

I support the legalization/decriminalization of many drugs too, but our Congress, the Biden administration and the DEA are too inept or corrupt to make reform a priority.

pkulak• 3 years ago

The assumption behind your entire post is that temporarily putting people in prison for drug use limits their use. I'm pretty sure it just makes people do drugs where you can't see them. That's probably good enough for most folks though.

AtlasBarfed• 3 years ago

The most heavily abused drugs are the legal ones.

That is the primary argument against legalization / decriminalization. MJ legalization has led to a 20% increase in use already. It's a very good argument.

The only argument I have for legalization is the current situation we have with Mexico (and Guatemala, etc). Our inability to not control/treat drug addiction has led to a fundamentally destabilized country in a de facto civil war (against cartels we trained in the School of the Americas, an entirely different nutso side). Those cartels are supported by the economics of illegal drugs.

Not just that, with the fall of our puppet regime in Afghanistan, we will be enriching the Taliban regime by paying for the output of their poppy fields.

What is mindblowing is listening to all my right leaning relatives scream at the top of their lungs about the illegal immigration flood, but they are the ones supporting the side that most opposes dealing with the drug problem in a constructive way.

IMO the fundamental way to fight illegal drugs is to decriminalize, replace the supply / undermine the economics with medically or governmentally supply (at prices that undercut mafia economics), and make treatment zero-cost available as part of the drug availability.

Of course that will probably lead to something like Purdue Pharma and painkillers / Medicaid fraud.

But the War on Drugs has to end.

mptest3• 3 years ago

Mj legalization has led to increased use already

Has it also reduced the consumption of any other substances? I wonder what % replaced a different habit.

dr_dshiv• 3 years ago

1. Licenses or prescriptions should be required for all drugs; either can be taken away. Also, people need education.

2. Start a better public works program. Employment is good for mental health.

3. Maybe require a month of service or something, just to have a way to resocialize people when they break.

4. Have people pick up their benefits somewhere not in the city. Some reason to move.

5. Forced rehab to those engaged in harm; nature and nutrition.

6. Need to avoid cultures of homelessness. Need good policy. Look to Amsterdam, a city with virtually no homelessness.

7. Make better drugs available? Fentanyl seems like the worst.

seattle_spring9• 3 years ago

I'd vote for you.

androidbishop3• 3 years ago

Wow, legalizing across the board and requiring licensing was the idea I had. Force some kind of education requirements, pay into funds to provide treatment, and revoke licenses for those that abuse the privilege. This is what we do for other high risk activities like driving, skydiving, scuba diving, etc., it just makes sense to do it for drugs. This list is fantastic, it should be shouted across the nation. You have my vote.

DyslexicAtheist• 3 years ago

keep them legal. but also invest in social workers. finally a model like the Portugal approach won't yield results if the basics aren't there (healthcare, housing, etc)

lm28469• 3 years ago

you should be able to do what you want.

I'm still baffled at how this argument makes it anywhere paste high school. Living a single second makes it plain obvious that no, you don't do what you want. Living in any type of society or even the most basic and smallest community will tell you that

havblue• 3 years ago

I've heard that this is a generational difference: xers thought of free speech as being an essential value and to hell with the sanctimonious totalitarians who are telling you that you can't listen to rap music.

This gave way to accepting any and all behavior, social contact be damned. So social stigmas themselves are repressive and it doesn't matter if you're hurting your heath, that's your choice as an individual. La vie boheme!

4gotunameagain• 3 years ago

It is clear that the need/desire for drugs will not disappear. Not only that, but drug usage seems to be on quite the incline.

One of the biggest problems with drugs is the paraeconomy that is created, funnelling millions to the wrong hands, and ending up with fentanyl spiked dope on the market. If we accept that the need for drugs will not go away, then they need to be legalized, controlled, taxed, and regulated so that not only the cartels aren't funded, but the state receives their profit and turns it into measures for controlling drug abuse, for offering help, etc.

Now how do we handle the general lack of meaning that the west is experiencing which is turning people into mice hitting the dopamine level forever running on the hedonistic treadmill, that's a different question.

rqtwteye• 3 years ago

It was clear that making drugs legal wouldn't solve all problems. What needs to happen is that the budgets that got spent on prosecuting and imprisoning drug users now gets spent on treatment options.

sircastor2• 3 years ago

Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP payments?

I think this is dealing with the problem far too late for it to be effective. Rehab treats the drug as though it's the problem. The drug is not the problem. The person using the drug is trying to manage some sort of stress or situation that they otherwise can't deal with. If you get a person off drugs but don't address their health, home-security, childhood trauma, abusive relationships, etc. At best they're simply going to shift to dealing with that issue through some other way: Food addiction, sex addiction, video games, abusing a loved-one, etc. And if it's not obvious, this is a repeating cycle.

We need to do a better job of taking care of people in our communities. Before they end up using drugs (or other types of dangerous coping mechanisms). If we can't get to them before, we need to pick them up and start taking care of them. The trouble is (at least in the US), our approach to community support is contrary to our sense of individual freedoms - we don't want the government to support struggling individuals at the cost of individual freedoms (see healthcare, food and housing subsidy, etc)

antihero• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

Most people who use drugs function like completely normal adults or eventually get bored or reduce usage as they age. You are seeing the fringes.

darkclouds• 3 years ago

And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

I trust health experts as much as the Nasa scientists who lost contact with voyager2 and the nasa scientists are working under much less pressure than an ER room!

pyuser5832• 3 years ago

The solution is simple: we treat Im drug addiction as a disease.

This means using testing as to detect outbreaks. Schools should be allowed and encouraged to test students, as long as a positive test results in a trip to the doctor, not prison.

We shouldn’t force law abiding adults into treatment, but if they break the law, like vagrancy, treatment should be an alternative to gradually increasing prison time.

Treat it like we treat COVID. Test and treat. Vaccinate and manage. But if you refuse testing and treatment, you’re on your own.

MisterTea2• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

I have a close family member who has been addicted to heroin for most of their life and they are in their late 60's. They go to a clinic and receive methadone which they can then go outside and trade for whatever else. Basically a flea market of intoxicants and they are found around every major rehab clinic.

The problem is they are so used to being in a stupor most of the day that reality is something they cant handle anymore. When they become sober they are faced with a loud, bright world of sensory overload along with physical discomfort, pain and headaches (I had addiction issues so this is my perception). You want to go back to lala land and forget about all the bullshit seemingly clawing at you.

These extreme cases become hollowed out vessels - the person becomes a kind of animal that knows only one thing: defend the mind against reality. They don't care about family, friends, jobs, hobbies, ad nauseam. They need SERIOUS help - help that I don't think we can provide as how do you rebuild a human mind and life?

glonq3• 3 years ago

I fully support decriminalization of all drugs, as long as it's far away from me and from anybody else who is just trying to live their best life.

Let's go build a 10-acre island that is full of free housing and free drugs for anybody who wants it.

terminatornet• 3 years ago

I assume you're being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd bet giving drug addicts stable housing would probably help at least some people with rehab.

seattle_spring9• 3 years ago

Interesting, I feel the same way about MLM salespeople, Jordan Peterson fans, gun nuts, Elon Musk fans, and a whole other host of behaviors that are pretty objectively harmful.

Actually, I don't at all, but see how asinine it sounds?

irthomasthomas• 3 years ago

I'm not surprised. Since the market is still controlled by drug dealers. Legalise the whole supply chain and let people buy opium and cocaine at the apothecary, like they did in olden days, see how things are then.

barbs6• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

Citation needed.

Seriously though, the amount of unsubstantiated opinions that get thrown around as facts on HN whenever drugs are discussed is ridiculous.

P_I_Staker2• 3 years ago

With a more controlled supply, softer drug options, and social supports, it’s not a stretch to say there’s are important options being neglected.

Lots of people get pushed into harder options, when it becomes a race to the bottom. Meth and hard opioids are massive problems in the US.

AFAIK most similar counties have lower usage of meth, and fent, though I’m sure opioids are in the picture. Don’t underestimate how many of these cases are deaths of despair, due to our cultural issues, not just poverty. I suspect we’re seeing the costs of our toxic culture, income inequality, and lack of safety nets.

Oregon IMO was set up for failure. Decrime is overrated. In some ways it may be the worst of both worlds. Even moreso when you do it during a drug poisoning pandemic… that’s a really good time to start distributing verified product.

laverya2• 3 years ago

The Singapore (and rest of Southeast Asia) solution set might work here, but there's no way we have the political will for it. If we won't execute the vast majority of murderers, there's no way we'll do it for people just running a kilo of coke or weed.

Not to mention "works" and "worth it" are not quite the same thing.

throw16180339• 3 years ago

Singapore can do this because they're a city state without jury trials, a bill of rights, or the Kennedy v. Louisiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_v._Louisiana) decision. It's doubtful that the Supreme Court would allow a similar policy. If they did then the cost of appeals make this approach too expensive to implement it.

causality0• 3 years ago

It's principles vs pragmatism. We have an example of one approach that works: Singapore. Mandatory execution of drug dealers, carried out three years after conviction, not three decades. That obliterates drug addiction as a societal ill.

On the other hand, the philosophical stance I agree with is that one human being does not have the right to dictate what another human being does with their own body, so long as they are an informed adult.

Our unwillingness to truly commit to our beliefs and values, whatever they are, gives us the worst of both approaches.

matheusmoreira2• 3 years ago

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults.

Yes. Claiming people can use these things without consequences is just wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never dealt with addicts. The only possible argument for drug decriminalization is getting rid of all the violent crime surrounding it. That's a worthy reason but must certainly be weighed against the significant risks presented by drugs. Lots of people out there have literally never witnessed the extent an opioid addict's drug seeking behavior.

seattle_spring9• 3 years ago

Dealing with addicts is proof that all people who use drugs will become addicts?

balderdash• 3 years ago

The legalization of drugs (alcohol included) comes with catastrophic consequences.

The benefit is that it allows for 1) freedom of choice and 2) it is (theoretically) better than the alternative (defunds criminal gangs, provides tax revenues to fund treatment, etc.)

However, we seemed to have completely dropped the ball on #2, just look at the untaxed marijuana sales on New York City streets, where are all the new rehab facilities paid for with drug tax revenues. Why are gangs and cartels still making so much form the drug trade and still commuting violent crime?

andrei_says_• 3 years ago

Gabor Mate who has worked with patients dealing with addiction for decades speaks of drug addiction as a symptom of other issues, mostly trauma, hopelessness etc.

What we could do is shift our priorities from turning the country into a feudal system pressure cooker scenario and provide opportunities and resources for most.

No wait that’s just crazy. On another thought maybe we should just make harsher punishments for drug users and “clean the streets” by moving all the homeless to jail cells at $80k/year/person in taxpayer money.

Because mentioning a similar UBI amount is also crazy.

StanislavPetrov• 3 years ago

I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want.

I agree with this statement, but it should only hold true in your own home, on your own property, or on the property of someone who is amenable to whatever behavior you are engaged in.

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do? Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab?

Very simply we cannot have a functional society if we don't have rules about what behavior is allowed in public spaces. Just because every adult should be free to do drugs that doesn't (or at least shouldn't if we want a functional society) give license to these adults to break the rules we have set up for public spaces, whether or not their rule-breaking is a result of their drug use. I don't believe anyone who isn't breaking the rules of our public spaces should be locked up or forced into rehab for their drug use. But if they are stealing, harassing others, vandalizing, doing drugs on public property or engaging in a variety of other illegal behaviors, then they should be arrested and offered the choice between jail and rehab (in a locked facility).

theptip2• 3 years ago

One important observation is that drug use is largely downstream of homelessness. Being homeless is awful, and drives people to self-medication/-numbing. (Of course some homelessness is caused by prior drug addiction but I’ve seen compelling analysis suggesting it’s mostly the other way around.) SF primarily has a cost-of-living problem, which produces a homelessness problem, which produces a drug problem.

Programs that address homelessness (like housing-first, or work training) will also reduce drug abuse/deaths. And upstream stuff like really buying into building housing stock will also help with homelessness.

Part of the whole package of drug legalization is that if you actually dismantle the war on drugs machinery, you will have a huge budget to direct to social programs that can reduce the upstream causes of drug abuse, not just providing treatment after the fact. It sounds like Oregon didn’t get those programs in place yet.

starkparker2• 3 years ago

you will have a huge budget to direct to social programs that can reduce the upstream causes of drug abuse, not just providing treatment after the fact. It sounds like Oregon didn’t get those programs in place yet.

If anything, Portland's actively pushed back against the county's efforts to put programs in place because the mayor wants the money to instead sweep ad-hoc encampments into city-run encampments:

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/12/portland-mayor-t...

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2023/05/mayor-ted-wheele...

whiddershins7• 3 years ago

Citation needed. What you are saying is the precise opposite of everything I’ve ever observed or heard.

protastus• 3 years ago

But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment.

The U.S. healthcare system is deeply broken, so it's tremendously difficult for someone who is poor and sick/mentally ill/addicted to drugs to regain control of their life. Irrespective of the legal status of hard drugs.

acchow• 3 years ago

I wouldn't be opposed to exploring the idea of an alcohol+drug consumption license. Mandatory checkins every few months to make sure you're doing ok

Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults

It is definitely not "most". There are people who are highly prone to drug addiction. Add on depression or lack of a stable life/job/community/friends/family and the risks go way up.

There are tons of people who do plenty of drugs recreationally, and it is safer than alcohol for many.

AnthonyMouse6• 3 years ago

Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab?

You should make the negative behaviors associated with drug abuse illegal and force those people into rehab.

Use all the drugs you want until you go to break some other law, then you get arrested and don't get to go home until you're clean.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 3 years ago

Might it not be smart to prevent those crimes from happening by preventing drug use/abuse in the first place?

ryukoposting• 3 years ago

Measure 110 (and the Republican platform on drugs, for that matter) assumes that rehabilitation and punishment cannot coexist for petty drug crimes. I believe they can.

As the article mentions, Measure 110 specifically prohibits recepients of funding from requiring abstinence in their programs. I'm not a psychologist, but it's probably a lot harder to get people to stop doing drugs if you aren't allowed to tell them to stop doing drugs. Hard drugs have to be seen in a negative light in the social zeitgeist, period.

On the other hand, the sheriff's quote basically says "we don't think these rehab programs will work, so we aren't going to give tickets to drug users." That's just as counterproductive as anti-abstinence.

The criminal-justice reform side of Measure 110 is pretty good. Small amounts of drugs shouldn't be punishable with incarceration or huge fines. IMO the asinine rules for rehab programs, and the broken bureaucracy surrounding them, seem like a good place to start.

whiddershins7• 3 years ago

Just because something is legal doesn’t mean bad behavior related to it should be. Or that it should be legal in all or most or any public areas.

This distinction allows us to keep alcohol legal, but punish people for getting into bar fights or urinating on the sides of buildings.

We could legalize all drug use while criminalizing illegal behavior around it, such as shoplifting, littering, etc.

Might not work but what if we just tried that. Only make things illegal that overtly affect other people negatively.

burnte• 3 years ago

Decriminalization is 25% of the problem. Lack of universal healthcare, well funded housing support, and rehab-to-work programs are the other 75%. Source: I worked in chemical dependency rehab for 5 years. We had a great in-patient residential program that didn't use suboxone as a substitute, but as a bridge to not taking ANY drugs. 7-14 days for most patients and that's it. And we had a huge success rate, but our patients tended to have great support in their lives. The ones who failed were the ones who had no support. Not putting people in jail isn't enough, putting them into treatment is the goal.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

Supporting legalizing drugs across the board is so naive. If you’ve ever had a family member who’s had addiction problems, you know how much a person’s addiction can wreck the lives of so many people. In some ways, they’re like a sinkhole that just keeps expanding. I include alcohol addiction in this.

That said, I don’t think Portland was wrong with the decision to decriminalize. I think they just did it in the wrong order. They should have had strong support set up _before_ ever going the route of decriminalizing.

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

It's possible for drugs to be legal and for it to be illegal to turn parks and sidewalks into your personal drug den.

If people want to do drugs, that's one thing.

If people want to turn the few nice outdoor spaces in the city into their personal camp - that's a separate issue.

You also don't need to be like SF and stop enforcing all crimes just because you make drugs legal.

ryanSrich• 3 years ago

The solution is what measure 110 was _supposed_ to be. Not what it turned into. At least that was my understanding when I voted in favor of it a few years ago.

The problem is that is has now manifested into default legal possession and consumption. That was not the idea.

What should happen is that if you’re caught doing drugs like meth, fentanyl, etc. you either go to rehab, or you go to jail.

Instead, at least here in Portland, the police LITERALLY doing absolutely nothing. Partly because they are genuinely understaffed, partly because they despise the voter base (understandably so). That still doesn’t excuse the complete lack of enforcement.

This isn’t specific to just drug use either. Day time camping is illegal now in Portland. The police won’t enforce it. Stealing a vehicle is illegal in Portland. The police tell you over the phone it’s not worth looking for your stolen vehicle and they refer you to a Facebook group that tracks stolen cars (I shit you not). Traffic stops, missing tags, no insurance, etc. anything related to traffic is unenforced to a laughable degree. I know people who haven’t registered their vehicles since 2020. They somehow still have a valid drivers license.

rjbwork2• 3 years ago

We haven't made drugs legal. We've just stopped locking people up for doing them. It's a very different thing. I'm still 100% for full legalization. Decriminalization just causes what we're currently seeing. It's a nonsense policy that is only slightly better than prohibition.

Legalize it, produce it in pure dosages of known substance and dosage, and encourage people to get treatment. That's the best we can do. It was the solution to alcohol prohibition and history will show that it is the solution to the bulk of negative externalities from drug prohibition. We'll always have problems stemming from substance use, as consciousness modulation appears to be a drive inherent to humans as a species, but we are choosing as a society to inflict a far greater harm upon both individuals and the society collectively by pursuing a policy of prohibition, including destabilizing our second biggest trading partner into a near-failed narcostate.

Gustomaximus• 3 years ago

I've felt legal was bad, while decriminalisation was for the best, at a personal level as it focuses resources to dealers and importers and leaves social serves for the addicts as jail doesn't seem to be a working solution, but that probably to do with the prison system also.

I recall decriminalisation worked well in Portugal, and maybe it's not repeatable but I wonder if there are other variables beyond the drugs here. I couldn't read the article as behind a paywall but US seems to have other more significant issues where crimes themself are not getting dealt with in these areas. You don't charge addicts for drug use, but when they are stealing or fighting etc they need to be caught and charged. Also there needs to be social support which seems lacking in US compared to other western countries.

And bigger picture, when I watch iterviews with people caught in this life so many grow with parents and communities like this. This cycle needs to be broken somehow but doing so going into ethical grey zones, like Project Prevention, where I feel it's a difficult positive to push for but for the best outcome (in my view) but respect that people can be totally valid feeling otherwise.

At the moment it really seems one of those unsolvable issues. Such a shame it can't be stopped at the supply side.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

Decriminalize in a few non productive regions far from everything. Boot down everywhere else except soft stuff. Push all the users to Hamsterdam / Escape from LA.

TheBigSalad• 3 years ago

I feel like people wouldn't overdose if drugs were legal. They could be cheap with no fentanyl. You'd know the exact dose you are getting.

blake929• 3 years ago

I'm not sure SF is a good example. It's not a healthy city, but it's problems go way beyond drug use and it doesn't have the same policies as what Oregon adopted.

blablabla123• 3 years ago

I never thought much about legalization of hard drugs. While for Marijuana there are direct benefits like drug tests, health checks so people don't wake a latent psychosis, for hard drugs it's more complicated. But the people who take those, don't they usually suffer from very serious problems anyway? Probably it's true, if systemic problems don't get solved then fully legalizing hard drugs might make things worse. But if things get legalized in a controlled way, that's actually an opportunity to create a social net for these people.

godelski15• 3 years ago

Does anyone have ideas on what we should do?

How I see it is the main problem exists because the dog and pony show is allowed to persist. The reason it persists is because we humans like to believe things are simple. That we'll ignore any evidence of complexity to justify such simplicity. And that when complexity is added (such as in conspiracy theories) the basis is functionally equivalent to "wizards did it." The whole "if it weren't for <insert opposing tribe> then everything would be great." Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The problem is that the simplicity of a lie is unbounded, but the simplicity of truth is. There is a minimum floor for critical thinking and knowledge required to understand truth. That the precision of the understanding of the truth is proportional to that floor (thankfully this usually asymptotically approaches full precision).

So what do we do? We don't let people sell us the snake oil of simplicity. We don't let non-experts wildly conjecture about things without demonstrating understanding (which would turn them into experts). We ourselves stop personally pulling things out of our asses and make assumptions. Especially when there is evidence to the contrary. We ourselves seek out possible counter arguments to our own predispositions rather than expecting others to do it for us. We ourselves stop being lazy.

I suspect this is a tall order. I suspect this is possibly one of the many great filters. I don't suspect that this is an impossible task. I do suspect such a notion can be codified into localized groups and propagate through the system due to no groups being adjoint to any other group (can be pockets, but I suspect quite rare). Accountability may only be possible at a local group level, but I see no reason this accountability can't propagate. It definitely should be possible within such parent-groups like Hacker News. I suspect that this tall order would resolve a lot of other issues as well.

ignoramceisblis• 3 years ago

Hold those who support destructive policies accountable.

spoonjim• 3 years ago

Drugs have destroyed many societies and we look like we’re allowing it to happen to us.

indymike• 3 years ago

Addictions and incarceration have three things in common: they both rob a person of vast amounts of time, society of whatever that person's output is and impose vast hardship on the people around the addict/incarcerated.

AbrahamParangi2• 3 years ago

The thing that's craziest to me is that the people who believe in decriminalization are typically totally against deregulating pharmaceutical drugs, but all the arguments in favor of one are in favor of the other as well! My body, my choice? Applies equally to experimental cancer therapies and to crack. You might say "oh well the pharma companies are manipulative, they're liars, they can't be trusted" - dear reader, do we really think the street dealers are better?

porkbeer• 3 years ago

Legalizing theft was the problem. So much actual crime is happening, the drugs are not the primary issue here.

ecshafer3• 3 years ago

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

Personally: drugs should be illegal, but the punishment should be rehab and life stabilization not prison. Drug selling, production, and smuggling should have the harshest possible punishments.

anon8487362813• 3 years ago

Clearly the prohibition on drugs is not preventing those people from accessing them. Obviously rehabilitation would be ideal. But all else being equal, it would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer.

kcb• 3 years ago

It's not so hard to believe that lack of access prevents some from getting hooked.

bobthepanda• 3 years ago

The real root issue, is that we drastically underfund rehabilitation.

There are generally just not enough rehab spots, therapists, psychiatrists, etc. to address the unmet need. There are not enough of them in the health system because we don't pay for them enough.

There are also not really resources in the prison system either. A lot of the prison-reform movement was actually supported initially by conservatives, because low-tax governments cannot afford to lock large numbers of people up for petty crime.

No matter what the solution is, it requires spending money.

darth_avocado5• 3 years ago

would be better if the drugs were cheaper and safer.

Drugs are never going to be safer. If FDA approved painkillers can get you addicted, I am not sure how much safer can Fentanyl get. And making them cheaper is only going to create more problems.

Prohibition doesn’t prevent people from accessing drugs. But that doesn’t mean we make it easily accessible. Theft is illegal, but it doesn’t stop people from stealing. That doesn’t mean we legalize it. Because if we do, we’ll have a free for all like we have in SF and other parts of California.

toomim2• 3 years ago

That's not true. If that were true, then decriminalization wouldn't be making them easier to access. But since drugs have been decriminalized, they have gotten much easier to access. There are open-air drug markets in SF and Portland. You can walk through and say "fent?" and get offers to sell right there. You couldn't do that 10 years ago.

dan_mctree• 3 years ago

Can we all just be honest and just agree that prohibitions do in fact make access to the prohibited thing harder and reduce the prevalence of it. This is true whether your topic of choice is drugs, guns, abortions, alcohol, some form of sex, vpn access or whatever you want to talk about.

Sometimes the prohibition can make obtaining illegal things more difficult and risky, and many of us are too lazy or risk avoidant to push through that. Sometimes accessing a prohibited things requires social contacts not everyone has access to. Sometimes people will just straight up respect the law and not obtain the illegal thing even if it is easy or avoid providing it. Prohibitions can be very effective in reducing the incidence of some thing, especially if enforcement is draconian

Prohibitions can have negative effects, obviously especially for those who like the thing that is being prohibited, but it just seems dishonest to try to pretend like prohibitions don't change behavior whenever that happens to suit some political preference

mike00632• 3 years ago

Doesn't the same apply to alcohol?

varjag2• 3 years ago

Alcohol use exerts enormous tax on society which chose to tolerate it for historical adoption reasons. Adding hard drugs is going to exacerbate the situation, and a number of those are worse than alcohol by any metric imaginable.

ecshafer3• 3 years ago

Sure. I wouldn’t be against a ban on alcohol also, with the same prohibitions.

epolanski4• 3 years ago

Delusional.

The drug that kills and ruins most lives on the planet is alcohol followed by food (diabetes). And the abuse of alcohol and food has the same root that drug abuse does: mental health and education.

And let's not even start talking about the damage of legal drugs (medicines) on society at all age tiers.

polski-g• 3 years ago

Per capita?

thehappypm2• 3 years ago

Interesting that junk food and alcohol are legal and the most heavily abused

ecshafer3• 3 years ago

Great. Let’s ban alcohol and sugar too. I am totally fine with taking the idea of something being harmful to society and it being banned. Though for sugar, I haven’t personally seen people pawn off their childrens possession or rob people to get a fix, so it might not be as bad as drugs. But it’s subsidization should stop.

ericmcer• 3 years ago

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

hnthrowaway8493• 3 years ago

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

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

whimsicalism2• 3 years ago

People in less affluent communities also see the violence when criminalization drives this stuff underground.

ClumsyPilot8• 3 years ago

Supporting legalization / decriminalization of hard drugs is a luxury belie

Supporting a real criminal justice system is a luxury belief. Many societies don’t have the resources to have 2 years of evidence gathering, investigation, court process, free lawyer for the defendant, then appeals. Then years of incarceration, feeding no clothing inmates, and rehabilitation.

“Every child should go to school” is a luxury belief

The question is, where do you set the bar?

giraffe_lady• 3 years ago

This the most openly bloodthirsty and triumphant comment section I've seen in a while. Given the context and implications, the power of the consensus and emotional tone here is chilling.

hitpointdrew• 3 years ago

Decriminalization is mostly pointless step and won't work to fix the "drug" issue. It only solves one piece of the puzzle, jailing non-violent people. You still have black markets, you still have stigmatization, you still have unknown and mystery substances (users don't know what they are actually getting).

To "solve" the drug issue we need full legalization and regulation of all drugs, and safe centers/locations where drugs can be used under medical supervision.

adamredwoods2• 3 years ago

I partially agree with this. Not all drugs should be legalized, but rather, handled differently. In Seattle, the latest "drug enforcement" failed because the judicial system knew they didn't have the people-power to process the inflow of repeat offenders, who are cycled through the system and let go, only to repeat again. It may keep them off the streets for a bit, but it doesn't solve anything.

Police should be able to enforce drug abuse, but it's a different path.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/what-s-next-for-seattle-drug-la...

code_runner• 3 years ago

There will always be black markets for the people who don't trust the government and certainly for people who don't want to go to some supervised location.

Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good etc, but some of it feels like just make the gov't complicit in people absolutely ruining their own lives. Its a tough nut to crack.

brightlancer19• 3 years ago

Rubbish.

Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for the mere _use_ of a substance. (Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction, physical or psychological.)

If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly regulated, sold only to adults in very limited stores, and folks can enter treatment without fear of arrest.

The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking and shooting on BART, smoking and shooting in public parks, smoking and shooting on sidewalks in front of residences -- and taxing the legal pot industry so highly that it was miles cheaper to buy stuff illegally no the corner.

darth_avocado5• 3 years ago

I generally agree with the sentiment that drugs should be treated like we treat other addictions like alcohol. Drugs should be decriminalized, anti social criminal behavior should stay criminalized. If I’m drunk and pee in public or assault someone, I’ll go to jail. That is what should happen if I do it under the influence of drugs.

The one difference though between alcohol and some of the drugs is potency and how quickly one can be addicted to it. Therefore, treatment should be much more easily be available and it should be much easier to have an intervention.

toomim2• 3 years ago

Driving drunk is illegal because you're likely to kill someone, and then it'll be too late to say "let's just prosecute the crime of manslaughter, and not prevent future manslaughters by prosecuting drunkenness in the car."

In the same way, we should make it illegal to do drugs in situations where you are likely to cause irreparable harm.

If we legalize drugs, let's create safe situations to do so. Many drugs are being legalized under the supervision of a doctor. We could also allow drug use within a safe space where you can't OD, and where you won't leave needles on the ground for kids to step on.

brightlancer19• 3 years ago

The one difference though between alcohol and some of the drugs is potency and how quickly one can be addicted to it.

This is a good point.

If I go to the liquor store, I can buy bottles that are 90% alcohol or bottles as low as 3% alcohol.

If we legalize "hard" drugs like opiates, meth, etc. then we'll get a similar differentiation along with the benefit that the drugs will be checked by Trusted Sources (both government and industry) to effectively eliminate certain adulterants.

And for the folks who become addicts (physically or psychologically), there's no legal risk in telling their doctor or therapist or anyone, and they can better enter treatment.

There are folks who drink 750ml (~24oz) of 40% liquor every day. It's rare but they have an addiction. They can also get treatment, while the rest of us enjoy 5% beers and 13% wines more moderately.

bandrami• 3 years ago

One big problem is that while the US has finally wrapped its brain around the fact that incarceration doesn't fix drug addiction, we have mistakenly fallen into the belief that treatment does. But even the absolute gold-standard treatment program (residential group and individual therapy with chemical assistance where appropriate) has about a 25% success rate (meaning still clean after 5 years).

Literally no matter what we do we are going to have a large number of people who have drugged their way out of society and will not be able to come back. And we need to figure out what to do about that.

Terr_3• 3 years ago

I often like to bring up a thought-experiment involving a drug (or brain-parasite) where one dose makes the person willing to commit any crime or violence in order to secure another hit, even selling their kids into slavery and cutting off their own leg. Also multiple doses kills the person, and it has no medical value whatsoever.

IMO this helps highlight the spectrum we're dealing with, where one point is "taking that is a bad choice but I support your freedom of choice and autonomy", and another might be "holy shit this doom-substance so irredeemably anti-freedom that banning it is obviously the best practical choice."

Even if you look at such a drug as a roundabout form of suicide, it's one where the person must be blocked from harming others on their way out.

mcphage2• 3 years ago

The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking and shooting on BART, smoking and shooting in public parks, smoking and shooting on sidewalks in front of residences

Not being from California—when/how did they do that?

Volundr• 3 years ago

Also not from California; my understanding is some municipalities either don't enforce these laws, or don't do it to the extent people would like.

stcroixx• 3 years ago

It was this way when I first came to the Bay Area around 2008. Police simply ignore all of these criminal behaviors. They know the DA is not interested in prosecuting. It’s shocking at first. I came from a city where none of that is tolerated.

svnt2• 3 years ago

They didn’t, but the police force stopped enforcing those laws, generally in response to defunding or threats of defunding.

The police forces in these cities are in the majority comprised of individuals who live outside of the city and commute to perform enforcement in an area they don’t want to live in.

This is the difference that never translated between the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter/Thin Blue Line groups: in one, in the majority the enforcers are not and have never been part of the community. In the other, the deputy’s kids go to your elementary school and they volunteer at the pancake breakfast.

etc-hosts• 3 years ago

taxing the legal pot industry so highly that it was miles cheaper to buy stuff illegally no the corner

the legal pot industry's problem is it's impossible for it to turn a profit. they can't deduct operating expenses from their tax liability like other businesses can, because of federal law. items like rent, payroll.

they also can't use the same systems of credit management and bank accounts, because of federal law.

state taxes are a very minor part of the story.

FormerBandmate3• 3 years ago

The legal pot industry’s problem is that it’s a legal no-man’s-land because pot is actually illegal at a federal level but states just ignore it and the government ignores them ignoring it. It should be legalized at a federal level because that’s already true de facto

Incidentally, the second that happens Altria/BAT/whoever will swoop in and make it a consumer product. This will probably have a serious impact on mom and pop guys, but also cartels

chaosharmonic2• 3 years ago

The bank accounts thing also makes them bigger targets for theft, because of all the extra cash that stores end up handling when they can't use standard payment methods.

bhewes• 3 years ago

As someone who runs four stores in the legal pot industry in Oklahoma and turns a profit yeah not true. You can make plenty of money playing by State rules. If a company has expansion plans that rely on the interstate commerce clause then yes the feds are your problem.

dmode• 3 years ago

But doesn't alcohol trigger a wildly different reaction than hard drugs ? Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucination and make you violent ? And these are triggered very very easily by using a small amount of meth or fentanyl. To get to a comparable state with alcohol, you would have to drink copious amount, but then you are more likely to be passed out than exhibit violent behavior.

I agree with your other point though - permissiveness of use shouldn't come with ignoring all societal norms, just because you are a vulnerable drug user. In fact, permissiveness of use should be paired with stricter enforcement of quality of life laws

mattnewton• 3 years ago

Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucination

Sounds like acute ethanol withdrawal aka delirium tremens https://g.co/kgs/BHB6p9

and make you violent ?

People getting violent with alcohol doesn’t need a citation I trust?

These are basically all the arguments for prohibition. Temperance movements work but legal prohibition doesn’t seem to.

WesolyKubeczek• 3 years ago

But doesn't alcohol trigger a wildly different reaction than hard drugs ? Which alcohol triggers schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucination and make you violent ?

Every one of them does. Except triggering schizophrenia maybe, which is barely comforting.

And these are triggered very very easily by using a small amount of meth or fentanyl.

But you're replying to a comment about pot, thereby shifting some goalposts.

stouset2• 3 years ago

Are we just ignoring the whole thing about violent drunks right now? Alcohol and violence are highly correlated.

chlorion3• 3 years ago

I have used amphetamines extremely heavily for many years and I have never at any time been violent, with or without substances. I also didn't steal, or scam people, or otherwise harm anyone.

When I did meth, I stayed at home and talked on IRC, worked on programming projects, like an IRC bot written in Python. Sometimes I tinkered with Linux stuff, I had a raspberry pi that I ran the IRC bot on.

I played video games sometimes, mainly TF2, insurgency (standalone not sandstorm), a little bit of CS:GO. Probably some others too that I can't remember.

Other than doing that, the only other thing I did is go to work or go shopping or whatever was required. I did not have any problems at work or at the stores.

I actually almost never left my house except to go to work, I have been diagnosed as agoraphobic but I'm not totally sure about it.

Anyways, why exactly should I be put in prison for doing amphetamine and hanging out at home? Who exactly am I harming, or putting at risk of harm?

I do realize that not all cases are like mine, and there are cases where users put other people at risk, but you can't make blanket statements like this and just say "put those violent amphetamine users in prison!" without harming a lot of people who don't deserve it.

I think that the level of antisocial behavior the person exhibits should be taken into account before punishing them is my point, rather than just labeling them as bad because they use $scary-drug.

paiute• 3 years ago

I think another big mistake was prescription painkillers and that whole story. Get everyone hooked on cheap low grade painkillers, it definitely caused problems but they were manageable if they got more pills. Then there was a huge crackdown on them, and the price shot up ending with fentanyl being the cheap and accessible option.

danielovichdk• 3 years ago

I think you should contribute a valid source for the subjective claim of this statement.

"Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction, physical or psychological."

I would, and that is not based on subjective opinion, call your statement - rubbish.

I will even throw you a bone.

https://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Madness-Deepak-Cyril-DSouza...

gochi2• 3 years ago

You did the exact same they did, but linked an inaccessible amazon book. Surely you can do better.

VerminOctopus1• 3 years ago

It’s amazing you can log onto this website and spout utter bullshit like “assault and theft have been decriminalized in California”. It’s a totally laughable thing to say and I don’t know why no one else has called this poster out for this blatant lie.

culopatin2• 3 years ago

But you can’t ignore the struggle to enforce in the Bay Area.

Just moved here and I feel like an idiot paying for the Bart when most people just jump the gates in and out.

Take your dick out and just pee while you walk. No worries. Cross the street naked throwing stuff around, normal. Dogs in parks? Leash optional, right under the sign that says “dogs must be on a leash”. Break into cars, no one cares. Steal a Kia, doubt you’ll get caught.

Yet there are rules like no eating in the Bart. What? $250 fine if you drink something in the train? Who comes up with that crap?

I come from a red state and I can tell you that the conservatives out there don’t want “th government telling them what to do” but they are more tightly controlled than the people in the bay. People in the bay experience real freedom, almost to the point of anarchy by far.

Red state: Back into your driveway? Tag can’t be seen from the street = ticket. Look aggressive in the street or take your dick out? Arrested, if not shot. Break into a car in a public space? I wanna see that one go as smoothly as in the bay.

tjalfi• 3 years ago

I'm not sure about assault, but Proposition 47[0] in 2014 substantially reduced the penalties for shoplifting, grand theft, forgery, fraud, and other crimes. Stealing under $950 is a misdemeanor regardless of how often someone does it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

xienze3• 3 years ago

Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for the mere _use_ of a substance.

Are you under the impression that cities like SF, Portland, Seattle etc. were arresting drug users who went to treatment centers at any point in the last 20 years or so? Ever heard of methadone clinics?

pyuser5832• 3 years ago

Legalizing pot didn’t eliminate illegal markets. They’re still going strong.

Same with tobacco, but that’s because of taxes.

fnord77• 3 years ago

The big mistake California (and other Leftist faux-topias) made was decriminalizing THEFT, ASSAULT, smoking and shooting on BART

This is exactly it. The problem is letting the drug use impact other people's quality of life, access to common resources like parks, etc.

mech765• 3 years ago

Let's take fentanyl for example. It kills so many people that there isn't any good reason for it to be a legal drug off prescription.

The difference between fentanyl and other drugs is a matter of degree.

hathchip• 3 years ago

But the only reason fentanyl is a prevalent recreational drug is prohibition.

Heavy users vastly prefer heroin, casual users much prefer oxy or similar. Fentanyl is just cheaper to obtain and easier to traffick.

Furthermore a lot of fentanyl deaths are caused by mislabeling and misidentification of the drugs which would not happen without prohibition. Fake painkiller pills with fent in them, fentanyl poorly mixed into heroin or filter, etc.

dumpsterdiver4• 3 years ago

To be fair though, you don't really hear much about people selling their bodies (or other similar behavior, I.e. stealing from friends and family, etc) in order to obtain marijuana or alcohol.

This kind of behavior is primarily encountered when hard drugs are part of the equation.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

I live in a country with a lot of alcohol abuse, and there are many many cases of huge damages due to alcohol. And yes, that includes stealing. And stealing usually comes after all the money is used up, and there's none left to pay the bills or food, even for a spouse and possibly kids.

There are a lot of secondary costs too (traffic fines for drunk driving, especially if they cause an accident, stuff destroyed while drunk, etc.)

But yeah, our national anthem is a part of a drinking song... so yeah.

bottled_poe• 3 years ago

The government must never, in good conscience, open up the use of extremely physically addictive substances. Decriminalisation for users, I can support, but legalising and selling is a terrible idea. Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are not in the same league as heroin and other opiates. It’s extremely dangerous to equate all drugs in this debate.

4RealFreedom2• 3 years ago

Alcohol is physically addictive - ever heard of DTs? Decriminalization enables the black market. Legalization would lower prices, too. The black market should be enemy number one.

HAL3000• 3 years ago

In 1970 and 1971, in New York City, more adolescents died of heroin-related incidents than any other cause. Watch what you wish for. Hard drugs are not pot or alcohol; anyone who has used all of them at least a few times will tell you that. As someone who had heroin addicts in the family, and as someone who did a lot of alcohol, pot, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamine, etc., in his 20s, I'm strongly against legalizing hard drugs. You need to experience it firsthand to understand what it's like.

trobertson• 3 years ago

Hard drugs are not pot or alcohol

In point of fact, alcohol causes more deaths per year than all other drugs combined:

CDC [0]: Alcohol causes over 140,000 deaths per year according to data between 2015 and 2019

CDC [1]: All other drugs caused 100,000 deaths in the twelve month ending in April 2021

There's a lot of arguments to be made as to why (different legal status, different cultural norms around use, etc.) but the fact is that, currently, alcohol use is more lethal than all other drug use combined.

---

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...

throwaway20374• 3 years ago

Thank you to share this personal story. What are your thoughts on trying to reduce harm? You sound like someone who will have valuable opinions about this important matter.

Manuel_D• 3 years ago

If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly regulated, sold only to adults in very limited stores, and folks can enter treatment without fear of arrest.

I can tell you firsthand that minors have no problem acquiring alcohol and tobacco.

seattle_spring9• 3 years ago

I can tell you firsthand that, when I was a minor, it was far easier to obtain fully illegal marijuana than it was regulated substances like alcohol and tobacco.

NotSuspicious3• 3 years ago

Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana.

Maybe those people were right? Prohibition decreased the amount of people addicted to alcohol and the number of people who beat their wives. If we had a more hard-line response to alcohol instead of the half-in/half-out wishy-washy nonsense that was Prohibition enforcement maybe less people would have their lives ruined by alcohol to this day. Singapore famously goes hard even against cannabis and they are a vastly more functional society crime-wise than Oregon. I know from personal experience that when cannabis was decriminalized where I am the drivers in my area became much worse. I don't use Uber anymore here because almost every time I enter a car now it's too often clear that the driver is high.

I wonder if Americans are ever going to realize their incessant penchant for 'freedoms' with regards to drugs/guns/speech/ certain corporate policies / etc are harmful to the only goals that matter to a society: the flourishing of the population. I wonder if America will ever have an adult in the room.

droopyEyelids• 3 years ago

Pre-prohibition society dealt with alcohol in an extremely dysfunctional way, and the problems that prohibition addressed are now invisible. This sucks because it makes prohibition seem like a comically stupid policy, when really it was a great step forward and an overreaction to a serious problem.

A lot of this is detailed in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which remains an entertaining and educational book to this day. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/upton-sinclair/the-jungle

Post prohibition we were left with the states being able to control liquor sales, and license liquor establishments. We were able to set a drinking age, establish three tier systems to separate the production, wholesale, and retail of alcohol, and alcohol was regulated and taxed nationally too.

These changes helped curb many of the most predatory abuses of the alcohol industry, and stopped other predatory industries from using alcohol as a way to immiserate their workers.

throwaway20374• 3 years ago

    every time I enter a car now it's too often clear that the driver is high

Do you report this to Uber? Also, you should also your local police department how to handle that kind of situation.

tayo422• 3 years ago

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

dang3• 3 years ago

You broke the site guidelines more than once here, including:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36961993.)

dahwolf• 3 years ago

Some have the belief that hard drug users are temporarily down, but with the proper help can be converted back into productive citizens.

I think we overestimate for how many of them this is a realistic path. Quite a few of them will struggle for life. Have no family or a dysfunctional one, no marketable skills or ability to gain them, mental issues and cognitive shortcomings, wrong kind of friends/network, a whole host of issues.

Miracle comeback stories will grab the attention, but shouldn't be seen as the normal path. The normal path may be dedicating enormous resources for very little return.

I don't have the answers. You can't do nothing but you can't babysit somebody for their entire life either.

alphanullmeric• 3 years ago

Like with most things, I would strongly support decriminalizing all drugs on the condition that other people are not held responsible, financially or otherwise, for the actions of drug users. Your body your choice, my money my choice.

1letterunixname3• 3 years ago

Decriminalization isn't a panacea (no pun intended.) If there's no integrated treatment, social services, and medical system to support this, then it's doomed to fail.

OTOH, militarized and racist Nixonian prohibition also doesn't serve a public good. One easy change: the US schedule of substances should go away because it levies unfair and unequal punishment on users. Psychoactive substances don't need the regulations, controls, or expense of monitoring highly enriched uranium: it's spending money and effort on the wrong parts of the public health situation. There is already a template for dealing with other substances, i.e., alcohol and tobacco. Focusing on healthcare and mental healthcare for all, with substance treatment being part of it, would lead to better outcomes and probably reduce the costs of policing.

janalsncm• 3 years ago

Expecting legalization to fix drug-related social issues was never realistic. What it does fix is mass incarceration of people who are ill.

So you need to compare the effects of legalization with the effects of criminalization. First order effects might seem bad: more drug users in public, more crime. But you also don’t see the drug users who weren’t imprisoned and were able to get help and turn their lives around.

What Oregon tells me is that deinstitutionalization doesn’t work. You can’t just kick drug users to the streets and expect that to fix the problem. Sick people need help.

lampshades• 3 years ago

I support decriminalizing/legalizing hard drugs. But you need to have the force to quickly and harshly deal with crime that it causes.

I keep hearing of people on the west coast committing small crimes constantly and being let out. We can't blame it all on the drugs, people still need to be required to act responsible. Right now we're letting people become junkies on the street and not even doing anything when they rob all the stores.

Make robbing the fucking store illegal, not doing drugs.

hintymad2• 3 years ago

Funny. Chinese people were plagued by opium more than a 100 years ago. The Qing government, no matter how corrupted and useless they were, were willing to go to wars with British for fighting opiums. Pictures like this are national stigma even today: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2011/10/29/be-caref.... Yet, the US, the lighthouse of the nations on earth, thought it was okay to tolerate drugs, and it's certainly okay to have streets like in SF or like Kensington in Phili.

wittenbunk• 3 years ago

Opiates arent decriminalized in Philadelphia, seems like your argument is more based in bias then logic

hintymad2• 3 years ago

I was talking about the general tolerance towards drugs.

abotsis• 3 years ago

I’m not familiar with the bill and specifics, does anyone know if it improved access to rehabilitation if sought?

michaelteter3• 3 years ago

I don't even have to read the article.

The US military is, if anything, serious about understanding cause and effect. They studied and learned about drug addiction during and after the Viet Nam war.

What they found might seem counterintuitive. Addicted soldiers could break the habit easily once they returned home. Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance has a lot to do with behavior.

Given that, if you don't change the circumstances, then changing the details (criminalization, penalties) won't change the behavior.

WHY are people using drugs (or alcohol, as many of us do?) What is being avoided or intentionally clouded?

sircastor2• 3 years ago

Any time we have a conversation about this, my wife brings it up: People are using drugs to deal with something - often trauma of some sort. That trauma might be anything from childhood abuse to homelessness. Our society (The USA, generally speaking) is not particularly interested in helping people deal with their trauma before it becomes a problem.

carpet_wheel2• 3 years ago

We create misery and then distribute poison to escape it. Ugly way of disposing of the unwanted, but it can serve as a warning to the rest.

Exuma• 3 years ago

Tell your wife it’s because it’s fun

plantwallshoe• 3 years ago

Right, in Vietnam soldiers could use with relative impunity.

In the US they would be jailed or socially ostracized.

The circumstances changed such that there were serious consequences for doing drugs, and many were able to get off them when presented with consequences.

Removing consequences for antisocial levels of drug use does nothing to encourage people to get clean.

michaelteter3• 3 years ago

Not at all, at least not from what I read a few years ago about this. The war situation there was frankly unfathomable to us privileged folk. Beside the obvious physical pain and injuries there were psychological influences which are normally so far removed from our lives that we cannot deal with them. Drugs are an escape from the physical injuries and pain, and then they turn out to be an escape from the mental awareness.

Shooting at other humans, killing them, is not something we are designed psychologically to handle. But obviously if you feel you must kill another to avoid being killed, you may do it. And then your mind must reconcile that memory. Drugs can help you avoid it.

The change of attitude has absolutely nothing to do with laws.

idiotsecant• 3 years ago

Your partially stated assumption here is that soldiers stopped using drugs because of the punishments. I think this is a case of post hoc fallacy. Yes, punishments create a disincentive for some behavior, but only in the case of rational actors who have the means to act on that motive. Some soldiers who left Vietnam had the necessary support systems to overcome addiction or were never addicted in the first place or weren't in an environment where those drugs were available at home. Others did not and stayed addicted, even when they came home. Heavy penalties don't necessarily cause a proportionally smaller addiction problem. They just punish heavier. The only rational path to reducing drug addiction is to improve the conditions that cause drug addictions. Very few people become drug addicts for no reason.

mouse_2• 3 years ago

Experts and the educated class will say it's a complex and multifaceted issue. I say it's because the fraction of the sweat of our brow we are entitled to is shrinking ever smaller into nothingness.

michaelteter3• 3 years ago

I think you could expand on this a bit, because I want to understand... I think I might be close...

amw• 3 years ago

Absolutely. I feel like the most important infographic for understanding the last fifty years or so of our economy is the one where productivity skyrockets to the moon while wage stays put.

And the most important _book_ for understanding that _infographic_ is Capital Vol. 1.

brundolf• 3 years ago

There's treating the root cause (totally agree with, except that as a task it's almost impossibly large/complicated to solve at a societal level), and then there's deciding not to do additional harm (prosecution) on top of the harm that's already happening

I don't think the main expectation of decriminalization is to solve the drug issue, but to stop adding fuel to the fire. But, maybe that will turn out to have been wrong

MisterTea2• 3 years ago

Of course this is an oversimplification, but the idea is that circumstance has a lot to do with behavior.

This is why rehab clinics seemingly "work" - you remove the person from the environment driving them to seek refuge from reality. They relapse very easily once back in the same situation that got them addicted in the first place.

Ive experienced it myself on a vacation during an addiction long ago: I was not worried about my situation, I had positive people around me and we did fun things. During that time I realized I had no interest in being high but felt the withdrawal so I wound up dosing as little as possible just so I wasn't jonesing. I realized breaking the addiction meant making life changes which weren't easy but I managed to get over it.

mdgrech23• 3 years ago

There was also a pretty famous study w/ mice I believe. One of them had a good world w/ plenty of food, plenty of toys to play with and ample people to hang out with and have sex with. They had two feeding tubes, one contained drugs and other didn't. The mouse repeatedly took the drug free version. Then they created a shit mouse world. I think it was just overcrowded and didn't have any toys or that shit they borrow in. Low and behold the mouse in the shit world chose the feeding tube w/ the drugs.

thehappypm2• 3 years ago

This study has been widely debunked as junk science

gooseyard• 3 years ago

I recently read Peter Turchin's "End Times" (the title is sorta clickbaity I think, as it's not a doomsday book), and in it, he describes a model of societal instability which features "popular immiseration" as a factor. Essentially he claims that the percentage of a population who respond negatively to the question "are you happy?" is correlated with the degree of instability of the social order.

Obviously, the idea of unhappiness is pretty broad, like from "my 401k is doing badly" to "I am unlikely to survive the day", but I suspect that it's true that if a certain threshold of the population answers yes to this question, that you can expect that a pretty large percentage of the respondents are probably in a pretty bad place, and if you have nothing left to lose, finding some way to soothe the pain of the end is at least understandable even if it's what nobody would prefer.

I am nothing even approaching a serious student of these issues, but I do fear that the lack of opportunities for Americans today to find a path to fulfillment with dignity means that many of us will wind up in situations where we are basically riding out the days until our death, and even though so many of the people consigned to this fate are not what we would consider ideal, I think we should judge ourselves as a society by how we address their issues.

Anyhow, Turchin himself comments on this matter in https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societa... , it's an interesting read.

buzzert• 3 years ago

The drugs available now, for example fentanyl, are nowhere near the same league as the drugs that were available after the Vietnam war. It's a completely different level of addiction.

carpet_wheel2• 3 years ago

The opioid epidemic is at the heart of these issues. Maybe Oregon voters were naive, or maybe fentanyl is just too poisonous to really be considered a drug.

If you grew up in the rust belt, none of this is new. Kids were ODing in middle school in the 90s. Tragic of course, but someone is getting rich so inevitably the root cause is not bothered with.

ttul• 3 years ago

Oregon decriminalizes drugs for a couple of years and we expect that the toxic drug crisis, homelessness, violence, poverty, petty crime, and child abuse will all magically disappear overnight. Yet the prohibition on drugs has been in force for decades and has accomplished none of its goals.

It’s fine to critique a new approach and work on improvements, but let’s not be too hasty here. We are trying to undo decades of harm caused by ridiculous policy failures.

jeffrom• 3 years ago

Is Oregon leading the US fentanyl crisis? At a glance, it doesn’t look like it. Has West Virginia decriminalized as well?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...

FredPret2• 3 years ago

I thought legalization was the way due to libertarian reasons. Who is the gov to regulate my behaviour?

But then I met addicts. People who made one (fatal) mistake and are now hooked for life, and careening through life completely out of their own control.

In the past, we had strong social institutions like the church, and mass participation in the army, and insane asylums for the bad apples. The problem there was over-control and abuse of disempowered people.

Note I don’t agree with the above, but now we’ve swung so far the other way that there are people doing hard drugs 100m from where I’m typing this, and there are seemingly no answers.

I hope we find an enlightened way to guide those who need help because neither the old nor the current way is working perfectly.

droptablemain• 3 years ago

China, not Oregon, has the right idea regarding junkies and pushers.

glonq3• 3 years ago

Vancouver BC says hello, where the same experiment is also failing.

On a related note, anybody got a quick turn-around on a Hyundai Veloster rear window? Ours was just smashed out for the fourth time, because local fentanyl zombies somehow believe we are stashing a treasure trove under the back hatch.

alex_lav• 3 years ago

It's funny to me that governments (and citizens) aren't realizing you can't simply _do less_ and expect things to improve. As in, deciminalizing drugs could work if the effort that was formerly spent mindlessly arresting and prosecuting smalltime drug offenders was instead spent on increased efforts in community outreach and rehabilitation, but that's not what happened. What we got was a society in which drugs are no longer criminalized but no additional resources. Literally just a government and society _doing less_. Who thought this would work?

Speaking as a person in Portland OR, it's not the decriminalizing that isn't working, it's the absolute dipshit of a mayor in Ted Wheeler and the total apathy from the local PD that are our largest failing.

counterpartyrsk• 3 years ago

Make prescription drugs legal, it's stupid that I need to get a prescription for asthma medicine for the rest of my life.

AYBABTME• 3 years ago

On an individual point of view, being easy on drug makes sense. We ought to have the right to do what we please to our bodies. But if you zoom out and look at the collective outcome, this is the sort of stuff that takes down millenium-old empires and keeps them down for centuries - China.

Being so bold to think that a good dose of superior modern intellectualism is going to make up for the fundamental flaws this introduce in a society, is a special type of belly button observationism.

As a society, we shouldn't stop our inquiry by looking at the personal tragedy that this causes on the individuals. The real long term issue is at the higher order level, where a society's fabric is torn apart by the debilitating nature of many drugs when deployed at scale on a society. Addictive debilitating drugs are a powerful force bringing a people down, taking others along with them.

Softness on drugs from a high minded perspective boils down to a decoupling mistake similar to the mispricing that carbon taxes attempt to correct. Drugs impose a high social cost that's hidden from sight when we just look at it from first-order individual right's perspective. But if we dig deeper, our collective individual rights are all put in jeopardy.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

If you legalize it, you need to have a system in place to get to that objective on why you wanted to legalize it in the first place.

simonh2• 3 years ago

What was done in Oregon, based on the successful policy in Portugal, was decriminalising use and possession of very small quantities. Distribution and sale are still just as illegal as before.

Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically criminals. It ends up with grossly distorted demographic distributions of those that suffer legal consequences in deeply unfair ways. Criminalisation on use also aligns the interests of users with those of dealers, where differences in criminal liability help drive a wedge between them.

The 3 year old policy in Oregon looks like it was fumbled. They didn’t put in place essential social and health care support services that a policy like this relies on for 2 years. Portugal has a national health care service, so a co-ordinated approach seems like it was far easier to implement and co-ordinate. Still, Oregon seems to have made much needed improvements in this area.

Policies like this are not silver bullets. Drug abuse is a severe issue with deep roots in individual lives and society, and manifests differently in different societies. I hope Oregon sticks with it and works on trying to get this policy to work, and tailor their response to their needs. 50 years of the war on drugs has failed utterly, let’s give an alternative a chance.

fooker8• 3 years ago

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

wobbly_bush• 3 years ago

Isn't the opposite also true?

troutwine2• 3 years ago

Sure, and if you're ideologically opposed to a policy you can make a comment like this. What's needed is data on many alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions taken as one promote better outcomes? Over what timeframes? Otherwise it's just all shouting into a windstorm.

livinginfear• 3 years ago

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

lossolo• 3 years ago

based on the successful policy in Portugal

There are doubts about success of that policy now. Article from a few weeks ago:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

wpwpwpw• 3 years ago

Portugal had more than 1% of its population addicted to drugs in the 80's. Check today's stats and compare it to other countries.

jorvi• 3 years ago

Tolerating use but keeping sale / production illegal means you are creating a billion dollar market that by default can only be serviced by criminal organizations.

Legalize and harm reduction have been the tenets for so so long. No one does it.

caddemon5• 3 years ago

What is harm reduction though? The catch with severe addiction is that those suffering actively fight against treatment as a result of the disease. Is there a point of functioning at which we can force an opioid addict into treatment? Or is harm reduction just to let those folks live in oblivion indefinitely?

I'm genuinely asking because I've mostly thought of "harm reduction" as actions to prevent issues like the spread of disease through needles or the lacing of street drugs. Which are important no doubt, and perhaps legalization (w/ heavy regulations) + harm reduction would be better than the current highly flawed system. There are just some drugs that are so destructive to their users that I don't see how they can be sufficiently fought without some force at some step.

dvt6• 3 years ago

Basically I think this is the right approach. Drug use at low levels in endemic. I don't think it makes sense for huge swathes of otherwise law abiding citizens to be technically criminals.

While I do agree that prohibition is probably not the answer, calling the Portuguese policy a "success" kind of misses the forest for the trees[1]. The most obvious problem is funding (which Porto is running out of): life-long support for a drug addict is going to be significantly more expensive than throwing them in jail for a few years. Not to mention that the latter is also more popular with voters.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/once-hailed-for-decrimi...

fireflash38• 3 years ago

Do you think the person pops out of jail completely cured of their addiction? Or would they consume more societal resources afterwards.

Turskarama2• 3 years ago

life-long support for a drug addict is going to be significantly more expensive than throwing them in jail for a few years

Citation needed, you might be underestimating how much it costs to jail someone. If a drug user actually manages to get clean (which with proper support, most can) then the cost of support is basically checking up on them a couple of times a year. Meanwhile they can hold down a job and live a normal life.

That's as opposed to the significant costs of keeping someone in prison, which is significantly more than they would be earning if they were free.

monocasa4• 3 years ago

life-long support for a drug addict is going to be significantly more expensive than throwing them in jail for a few years.

There are plenty of drugs in jails. Sticking someone in jail is a very expensive and unlikely to be effective way to treat their addiction.

jasonfarnon• 3 years ago

"based on the successful policy in Portugal"

How are you defining successful? The linked article links to a recent wapo article from last week "Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts". I don't know one way or the other, I'm just trying to collect more data points. Didn't Vancouver BC try something similar?

(Seems a little odd that this Atlantic article, the Wapo article questioning Portugal's policy, and yesterday's Times article about weed addiction have all appeared in a week's span. Since none of them seems triggered by an external reporting event.)

inferiorhuman3• 3 years ago

Beyond the headline Portugal is having doubts because they decided to gut funding. Where it was seen as promising or successful, now it's basically decriminalized drug use and no treatment or enforcement. Which kinda sounds like what Oregon is doing now and what Reagan did with mental health care in California.

lambdasquirrel• 3 years ago

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

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

AlwaysRock2• 3 years ago

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

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

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

This cycle happens constantly.

reissbaker• 3 years ago

Portugal's program is very different than Oregon's. It's "decriminalized," sure... But with nonetheless strong state-enforced repercussions for doing hard drugs. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal):

The [Portugese drug offense] committees have a broad range of sanctions available to them when ruling on the drug use offence. These include:

Fines, ranging from €25 to €150. These figures are based on the Portuguese minimum wage of about €485 (Banco de Portugal, 2001) and translate into hours of work lost.

Suspension of the right to practice if the user has a licensed profession (e.g. medical doctor, taxi driver) and may endanger another person or someone's possessions.

Ban on visiting certain places (e.g. specific clubbing venues).

Ban on associating with specific other persons.

Foreign travel ban.

Requirement to report periodically to the committee.

Withdrawal of the right to carry a gun.

Confiscation of personal possessions.

Cessation of subsidies or allowances that a person receives from a public agency.

Meanwhile Oregon's (and much of the West Coast's) idea of "decriminalization" is just... No consequences for doing hard drugs! Here's Oregon's law, from the article:

To achieve this goal, Measure 110 enacted two major changes to Oregon’s drug laws. First, minor drug possession was downgraded from a misdemeanor to a violation, similar to a traffic ticket. Under the new law, users caught with up to 1 gram of heroin or methamphetamine, or up to 40 oxycodone pills, are charged a $100 fine, which can be waived if they call a treatment-referral hotline. Second, the law set aside a portion of state cannabis tax revenue every two years to fund a statewide network of harm-reduction and other services.

You don't even have to pay the fine! You can just call a hotline. No follow up, no ensuring that you go to treatment... Just a phone call.

The idea that you can have no consequences for hard drug use, and that people will just voluntarily check themselves into "services" (or that "harm reduction" services will dissuade people from using hard drugs) is I think at this point dead in the water.

I used to be in favor of broad drug decriminalization. But the opioid epidemic changed my mind: some drugs are so bad that even when administered by a regulated medical system, large numbers of people's lives can be ruined simply by giving them access to the drug. Allowing street usage of similar drugs like heroin, fentanyl, etc can't be safer than that. I don't necessarily think jail is the best option, but zero-consequence + entirely-optional treatment for opiate abuse is not a working policy, and IMO jail is actually a better policy than that: at least in jail you have a chance at forcing them off the drug. My preferred policy at this point would probably look more like mandatory state-enforced rehab in a confined setting without long-term legal implications like a criminal record, though.

Less-addictive drugs like marijuana, ketamine, MDMA, etc I think probably should be legal for adults, with some guardrails around access similar to e.g. Sudafed. But effectively having an open season for using opiates is asking for trouble.

horns4lyfe• 3 years ago

Portugal also forces people into treatment if they can’t function as a member if society. Oregon will never do that. The treatment is there but people won’t voluntarily go to it. If they continue this policy they’ll see the same degradation of public spaces that I’ve seen living in Portland since this was enacted.

richardanaya2• 3 years ago

Oregon enabled public drug use is the problem, just like drunk driving and public intoxication, it should be made illegal.

jiggyjace• 3 years ago

“We’re building the plane as we fly it,” Haven Wheelock, a program supervisor at a homeless-services provider in Portland who helped put Measure 110 on the ballot, told me. “We tried the War on Drugs for 50 years, and it didn’t work … It hurts my heart every time someone says we need to repeal this before we even give it a chance.”

Saying this is not the logical conclusion one might think it is. It's not a problem where there are only two solutions.

richardanaya2• 3 years ago

Oregon enabled public use of drugs is the problem without consequence, just like drunk driving and public intoxication, it should be made illegal.

badlucklottery• 3 years ago

So Oregon started a two-pronged approach (reduced criminalization coupled with low-/no-cost treatment centers) and weren't able to actually get the treatment side of it working.

Statistically jail is a very bad drug treatment center. But it's likely better than no treatment at all.

throw7• 3 years ago

paywall and the archive is down.

did oregon have a unified intervention program where there was one point of contact who knew and tracked the patient from initial contact through all ups, downs, sides, and arounds? that p.o.c. would have access to full patient history (in a social sense also), and be able track the progression and punishments and rewards the "system" offers.

airocker• 3 years ago

extreme freedom leads a democracy to tyranny -- socrates

coding1234• 3 years ago

I have two minds on this:

1) I'm kind of against nanny state stuff.

2) From looking around, and seeing the state of things - a lot of people are going to turn to drugs. So people passing these laws... kindof have blood on their hands?

All that said, I'm getting older and realizing something that I don't think young people like to admit or thing about: not everyone is fit to live on this planet. There is only so much resource you can pass out but at a certain point there's not much to do for people just screaming into the wind 19 hours of the day.

We have a society, we can't just turn that off so everyone feels special.

theptip2• 3 years ago

We need to decriminalize drugs but this doesn’t mean we need to tolerate public intoxication. It’s a big confounder because we also saw a big increase in homelessness over the last few years due to Covid-related economic impacts; a housing-first anti-homelessness policy would complement drug decriminalization by moving drug use off the streets where it is maximally dangerous, in addition to being maximally unsightly.

I think it’s also really important to carefully weigh the cost/benefit; maybe a 60% increase in OD rate is actually preferable to jailing people in terms of harm inflicted? This is alluded to in the article but not actually analyzed. Repealing (rather than tweaking the implementation as they are doing) might do more harm, even though “think of the children” leads voters to want to roll back the change.

Finally, there is a market composition issue - fentanyl is increasingly common because it’s much easier to smuggle (more doses per gram) than heroin. But the potency also makes it extremely dangerous as it is easier to accidentally OD, even assuming you have known quality / evenly diluted concentration. Heroin on the other hand is much safer, especially if it’s regulated to be consistent and known quality. If we had decriminalized supply of safer versions of drugs, we’d probably see a dramatic reduction of usage in the more dangerous ones (and therefore a reduction in harm). Most drug ODs are accidental due to unknown potency, but simply decriminalizing possession doesn’t resolve this problem. My summary here would be “cheap, quality heroin would displace fentanyl and reduce ODs”.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

And Oregon’s drug problems have not improved. Last year, the state experienced one of the sharpest rises in overdose deaths in the nation and had one of the highest percentages of adults with a substance-use disorder.

Hardly shocking. I would be interested in seeing data -- if it's available -- on how much that uptick is due to people with addictions moving to the state in hopes of reducing the odds of ending up in jail over their uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.

But three years later, with rising overdoses and delays in treatment funding, even some of the measure’s supporters now believe that the policy needs to be changed.

Three years is not a lot of time to give this a chance to work, especially with delays in funding. If you aren't even really providing the programs you said you would, then declaring it a failure is a joke. You never gave it a real chance.

The new approach emphasizes reducing overdoses, stopping the spread of infectious disease, and providing drug users with the resources they need—counseling, housing, transportation—to stabilize their lives and gain control over their drug use.

Not enough emphasis on identifying the actual root cause of the drug use which may be infection. They are probably worried about things like spreading HIV by needle sharing, not "So, does this person have an undiagnosed infection for which their drug of choice is medical treatment?"

Also: Are they building substantial amounts of new affordable housing with good access to transit and essentials like nearby grocery stores? Without that, trying to help homeless people get housing is a joke. If the housing they need simply does not exist, no amount of acting like homeless people are merely badly behaved and need to try harder fixes fuck all.

nickff• 3 years ago

"Three years is not a lot of time to give this a chance to work, especially with delays in funding. If you aren't even really providing the programs you said you would, then declaring it a failure is a joke. You never gave it a real chance."

This isn't an academic study; if people are dying and the treatment funding is not being increased immediately, keeping this 'experiment' going seems very unethical.

dumpsterdiver4• 3 years ago

Agreed. Without the requisite funding already secured, this policy basically amounts to a half-baked pipe dream. Declaring the policy a failure really isn't a joke. The policy was not implemented as it was proposed (perhaps "imagined" is a better word), and the end result is that it failed.

When we talk about "not giving the policy a real chance", what are we talking about exactly? Are we referring to an idealized version of the policy, in which everything goes exactly as it was imagined? Or are we referring to the actual implementation of the policy, in which "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" (Mike Tyson quote)?

chrstphrknwtn• 3 years ago

People are disenfranchised all over the United States, dying deaths of poverty, abuse, and alcoholism.

Keeping the status quo seems very unethical.

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

Three years is a lot of time.

tanseydavid• 3 years ago

To me it does not seem like much time at all.

That is, considering that it has been 52 years since President Richard Nixon first declared the "War on Drugs."

starkparker2• 3 years ago

Three years is not a lot of time to give this a chance to work, especially with delays in funding. If you aren't even really providing the programs you said you would, then declaring it a failure is a joke. You never gave it a real chance.

Even if it had been funded, Oregon wouldn't have been starting from zero, it's been in a deficit for mental health and addiction treatment for almost 20 years prior. It didn't have enough people and beds for chronic treatment against demand at any point in the 5 years before Measure 110 passed, even if you only consider the demand for them from housed people with health insurance and serious-but-not-hard-drug addictions,[1] nevermind the 2020 meth problem, then the 2021 fentanyl problem, and now the 10x larger 2022 fentanyl problem that's made it the cheapest drug available.

Aside from all that, the death rate spike steeper than the US average's spike or neighboring Washington spike over the same timeframe, but not by much, and Oregon's per-capita death rate is still lower than either; it's #35 out of the 50 states and DC.[2]

So even if Measure 110 had been passed, say, 5 years prior and had the time to fully distribute funding to and staff the existing need for treatment measures across the board before taking effect, the sheer scale of the fentanyl crisis since 2022 would've overwhelmed those resources anyway.

But I think it's still important to call Measure 110 itself a failure because Measure 110 included the policies defining how funds were distributed, which has been an abject failure by all accounts. The authority to distribute funds went to an unqualified council that lacked the resources to vet agencies, so most of the allocated money's just sat there unused. Everything — from the council membership to its administrative structure to its term limits to its lack of data collection to measure any outcomes from the funding — has made distributing the funds harder than it needed to be, and determining if the funds have had any effect impossible.[3]

I would be interested in seeing data -- if it's available -- on how much that uptick is due to people with addictions moving to the state in hopes of reducing the odds of ending up in jail over their uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.

For opioid deaths, most of the rise came in the last three months of the 2022 and first three months of 2023, defying the typical trend of declining during the winter.[4]

It's also nearly all fentanyl. If there's been an uptick in decriminalization-specific drug tourism, it'd be dwarfed by the totality of fentanyl use (or if all the new fentanyl use is tourism, Oregon's population would've grown by a half-million people or so over a few months). Seizures of fentanyl went from fewer than 1 million dose-equivalent units in 2020, to more than 4 million in 2021, to 32 million in 2022. Meth and especially heroin dropped over the same span and coke stayed level.[6]

Measure 110 also didn't change the Portland metro police response rate to calls, but who knows what to make of that with PPB being a giant crib of whining babies since 2020.[5]

1: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/24/oregons-measure-110-i...

2: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/opioid-overdose-de...

3: https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2023/01/audit-oregons-drug...

4: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/SUBSTANCEUS...

5: https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/10/11/initial-research-on-me...

6: http://oridhidta.org/annual-report

djur• 3 years ago

If I could upvote this a hundred times I would. Oregon's social services are a disaster and have been for decades. Governance here is a wreck, in part because of badly designed programs implemented by initiative. If there is a constituency for good government here, they haven't been showing up to elections. If Measure 110 was designed to fail it wouldn't have been much different. Unfortunately I think it's going to set back the cause of drug law liberalization by decades.

DoreenMichele5• 3 years ago

Thank you.

But I think it's still important to call Measure 110 itself a failure because Measure 110 included the policies defining how funds were distributed, which has been an abject failure by all accounts.

This sounds like a very reasonable conclusion and I hope people who want real solutions can make this nuanced distinction going forward and advocate for decriminalization as part of a broader solution to the problem while saying "This specific law doesn't work. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water."

srcreigh• 3 years ago

Hardly shocking. I would be interested in seeing data -- if it's available -- on how much that uptick is due to people with addictions moving to the state in hopes of reducing the odds of ending up in jail over their uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.

I don’t think there’s any safe injection sites in Portland either, or some safe supply system.

There has to be something in the policy which discriminates between “wrong direction entirely” and “not doing enough”.

Decriminalization on its own seems to be just everybody turning a blind eye and otherwise doing nothing to help, so I’m not surprised that it doesn’t work.

K0balt8• 3 years ago

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power.

Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract.

Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created a significant subclass of infantile or openly hostile actors.

Without shame, many people unfortunately need an authority figure to step in and moderate their behaviour. It is an unfortunate side effect of what I can only describe as the infantilisation of society that I have watched happen over the last few decades.

It will likely result in people reaching for a paternal “strongman” figure and a subsequent slide into (probably) fascism.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Affric• 3 years ago

Well said.

Shame is making a comeback in a big way with restorative justice. Hopefully enough of us get there so we can see meaningful change.

jmspring2• 3 years ago

The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession.

This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked him to change for her, he wouldn’t. His daughter’s counselor basically told her to decide how to remember him, it’s unlikely he will make it a year.

Personally, I feel the individual is a PoS and hope he suffers but it’s heart wrenching to see the affect it’s having on his daughter.

Addition: this is happening in one of the more permissive and “progressive” communities in CA.

pierat2• 3 years ago

What's the saying... "My body, My choice" ?

Well, some people will choose, willingly, to waste their life away living on the streets from one high to the next. The difference between most types of poverty and this, is that they *chose* this path.

Bodily autonomy has powerful upsides, as well as downsides. Here's one of the downsides.

If they wanted to 'get out', I'd be there to help them if I knew them. But they have to want to. Forcing your viewpoint on them makes you just as a horrible person as the judges throwing people in locked boxes for decades for a bit of white powder they injected.

lo_zamoyski4• 3 years ago

Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.

AlwaysRock2• 3 years ago

You're describing an addict.

loxdalen• 3 years ago

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

ellisd• 3 years ago

This is a fascinating view on the sedative crisis. The lack of shame from "normal" people feels very real. Complete inaction to the staggering and ever increasing death count rate and bodies piling on the ground IS utterly shameful, but not for 2023 USA.

I've noticed as well that when I've spoke to friends and family about open drug use and markets I become the one who's "out of line."

Do we as a free society have no shame left to express?

ryandrake2• 3 years ago

There's a huge strain of "mind your own business" running through the USA right now. When someone is out of line, you used to be able to rely on the public to correct that behavior. Now if you try, you're the bad guy--or "Karen" as they say, and everyone flips out their cell phone cameras to try to capture that crazed weirdo who has the audacity to ask someone else to behave themselves.

I brought my kid to a pumpkin patch for Halloween last year and this lady told her kids to simply cut in line so they can go do some fun thing first. I thought to myself "crap, I can't say anything because you know what'll happen." My elderly father didn't have that inner voice and told the lady to get her kids to the back of the line. Well, as I expected, lady totally went bananas, whipped out her cellphone, shouting "you don't talk to my kids!" calling my old man a racist... everything under the sun.

We're expected to simply sit back, mind our own business, and ignore bad/destructive behavior. If you believe in the social contract you're out of line.

pierat2• 3 years ago

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power.

Wait, are you talking about "personal" shame, or "corporate" shame. Cause if anything, corporations have none, and people are *learning* to also have no shame. Doesnt get you anything. Just makes you feel bad for no good reason, cause others are pointing a finger at you.

Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract.

Simply put: fuck the social contract. I didn't sign it. It doesnt get me any benefits, and all it is a whole lot of "costs", all of which are ill defined.

So, no.

Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created a significant subclass of infantile or openly hostile actors.

Being my username, a "pierat", has actually gotten me standing in communities. I democratize content access to the low common denominator of 0. I help others get the content they need or want. Im doing a lot better than capitalists slapping bills on access to everything... even if it does actually cost me money.

It will likely result in people reaching for a paternal “strongman” figure and a subsequent slide into (probably) fascism.

We already are. Its not like anything I can do will affect that. I mean, whoop-te-doo, I make a pile of votes for even worse sycophantic leeches than myself every 2 years. And being in the "other party's state" (I mean, does it really matter?) my votes are effectively wasted. But it costs me 15 minutes.

deprecative• 3 years ago

I don't think folks want to hear or think about why shame has gone, or is going, away. Having shame will only ever interfere with the pursuit of money. As we live in a capitalist society money is the only important thing in life. You literally cannot live without it. Why would I have shame? Why would anyone? Love? Family? Friends? Those do not pay the bills. As we are hyper individualist and capitalist there is no moral or ethical cohesive force beyond the ability to secure money. People don't seem to grasp that and rely on outdated nonsense like God or Religion. Guess what? Shame is only a detriment these days because of the society we've all agreed to participate in.

zer8k2• 3 years ago

Simply put: fuck the social contract. I didn't sign it. It doesnt get me any benefits, and all it is a whole lot of "costs", all of which are ill defined.

All of your "polite" behavior is modified by shame. To use an extreme, contrived, example if you shit on the floor your parents probably shamed you into using the restroom properly. You can, of course, continue to shit on the floor but you also can't act with such righteous indignation when no one wants you around. Perhaps you find a group of people who shit on the floor. But then they, too, will have their own shame-based norms that will you either comply to or be ostracized from the group.

Now, scratch the example of shitting on the floor and replace it with any other behavior. Depending on the group you belong to (or are trying to belong to) shame is an effective way in enforcing expected behavior. It's one of the things that separate us from other animals. If you don't respond to shame (rather than just acting like it) you are not quirky and original you are likely a sociopath.

ClumsyPilot8• 3 years ago

imply put: fuck the social contract. I didn't sign it. It doesnt get me any benefits, and all it is a whole lot of "costs", all of which are ill defined.

I mean, this is what happens when you decide that the contract is one-sided. If a company dump toxic waste into a river you use, you must pursue them through the courts like a civilised man. Years in courts and millions in costs to get justice.

If you take their waste and try Tom dump it in their office you will be arrested withing 20 minutes

seoulmetro• 3 years ago

This is exactly my thinking whenever the debate of "legal is good for all" or "Japan and Korea are safe". It's so honestly true that forming a cohesive group where shame of standing out hurts the individual is the much lesser evil. I absolutely hate the social standards of some Western countries compared to these. Most crimes committed in the shame-adverse countries are masked ones like speeding or spy cams.

javajosh3• 3 years ago

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

It's appalling that public discourse about systemic issues has entirely displaced talk of personal responsibility. It's appalling that a positive openness to alternative lifestyles has extended to an absurd dropping of ALL standards. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Sean Carroll has a recent podcast episode descrying the "crisis in physics", which he (partially) articulates as a problem of perception. As much as he himself always wanted to be a science heretic, he notes that all previous successful heretics were experts in the established state-of-the-art, and now if a member of the public researches physics, ALL they hear from are "heretics" who don't know the first thing about established physics. It's like the act of rebellion itself has eclipsed the utility of the specific act.

cal85• 3 years ago

The neoliberal view is that you can prove your point by forming subcultures that do better than the surrounding culture.

Can you clarify who you actually mean here by neoliberalism? It seems a very loosely defined ideology. Do you just mean ‘the mainstream West’, or something more specific? It’s a strange -ism. It’s very vague in definition, and no one ever professes to be a member of it, yet it is ostensibly an ideology. And I only ever hear it used with a pejorative subtext, which is interesting.

davidmnoll2• 3 years ago

If you’re talking about public policy, IMO personal moral opinions have no place. Do you really want the state teaching “personal responsibility”? Even if you did, do you really think they could do it effectively? We have the highest prison population per capita as it is. It’s been tried. Over and over.

Using the idea that millions of people are just morally deficient as public policy is a proven failure. There’s always a reason when millions of people are doing the “wrong” thing, and the job of public policy is to assess the return on investment to society of removing those reasons or otherwise disincentivizing the behavior.

Personal responsibility is a personal lesson that requires personal choices and experiences. It’s not something you can publicly mandate

zmgsabst2• 3 years ago

I think it speaks to the incoherence of their views they don’t consider culture, including teaching personal regulation and responsibility, as a feature of systemic problems.

How can culture not be an aspect of a social creature’s systemics?

ezekiel684• 3 years ago

You're not wrong about displacing talk of personal responsibility. But, appalling though it may be, I doubt many would argue that horse has not already bolted from the stable (to a first approximation).

nonethewiser10• 3 years ago

It's appalling that public discourse about systemic issues has entirely displaced talk of personal responsibility.

Well, many don’t believe in personal responsibility. Some argue individuals are inextricably bound by the shortcomings of society and society must account for that.

Its kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.

dragonwriter7• 3 years ago

The neoliberal view is that you can prove your point by forming subcultures that do better than the surrounding culture.

That has nothing to do with neoliberalism, which is an economic ideology. I guess its metaphorically connected if you interpret it as a market of subcultures, but that's a pretty strained metaphor, not a real connection to the ideology.

It's appalling that public discourse about systemic issues has entirely displaced talk of personal responsibility. It's appalling that a positive openness to alternative lifestyles has extended to an absurd dropping of ALL standards.

Its apalling that public discourse has seen grounded criticism and fact-based debate replaced with ludicrous strawmen and hyperbole in which any connection to reality is so distant and minute as to be undetectable like this.

ttctciyf2• 3 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

rayiner9• 3 years ago

The neoliberal view is that you can prove your point by forming subcultures that do better than the surrounding culture.

Asian and other immigrant groups have done that and you can see the results. (In a country overrun by “white supremacy” poor Asians have almost three times the income mobility from the bottom quantile to the top quantile as poor whites in the US.) It works, so long as you can keep your kids from becoming Americanized.

Another example is Mormons. They should be poor like Appalachians. They fled persecution to arid parts of the country nobody else wanted. But Mormons today are disproportionately likely to be middle class or upper middle class.

8note2• 3 years ago

The US devalued shame by using it for everything.

The big change recently is the me-too movement to change from shame into consequences, which is good for people with something to lose

But, with the moves towards feudalism in the states, there's too many people with nothing to lose, and both shame and consequences depend on having some status to maintain

wkat42423• 3 years ago

Shame is a bad thing IMO. It's basically self-deprecation as a result of peer pressure.

The thing is, peers aren't always right. In many cases the masses impose their self-centered views on arbitrary topics. It's not always about something as self-destructive as hard drugs, or even self-destructive at all.

You might live in a highly religious community but have LGBT+ feelings. You might wish to enjoy playing games though your community feels those are for kids. You might like particular kinks that others are frowning upon.

Feeling ashamed because of others' judgment in those cases is purely self-deprecating and holding the person back from truly finding themselves.

In many cases resistance to shame is a great thing and promotes diversity. Avoiding hard drugs is not even a matter of shame but the lack of realisation that a person is destroying themself.

chris_wot4• 3 years ago

There is good shame and bad shame. If you murder someone, then you should rightly feel shame. If you are gay, then you should not feel shame. Shame can work both ways.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

I think your premise (that folks suffering addiction _don’t_ feel shame) may be incorrect. I think the addiction is more powerful than the shame.

dminor• 3 years ago

Indeed, if you talk with people in recovery about what they felt during their worst moments, they overwhelmingly mention shame.

Unfortunately our instincts about addiction lead us pretty far from the realities of addiction, as OP demonstrates.

oldpmfan3• 3 years ago

I don't agree. Germany for example is pretty shameless beyond the shame border in USA. To give you a few maybe extreme examples (which does not apply to all people in Germany and not all this examples are sexual): Mixed saunas, swinger clubs, open relationships, no shame on being naked in designated nudity areas, topless DJs, a naked women is not a big skandal etc.

Yet Germany does not have the drug problems which Oregon has.

USA has a big shame problem (just look at IG) in sense of nudity and nipples (which is spreading around the globe thanks to US tech) yet you say shame is devalued in USA.

I think I just debunked your theory (sorry for that) but it's not shame.

unlikelymordant3• 3 years ago

Being ashamed about nudity is i beieve a totally different thing. The shame op is talking about is feeling bad when you have cheated your neighbours, or being ashamed of doing something that lands you in jail i.e. caring about your reputation as a good human. Nudity in public is completely orthogonal to any of that imho, and is more of a cultural norm.

rayiner9• 3 years ago

You’re giving examples of where the German social norms allow things that are taboo under US social norms. That’s not what shame is about. Shame is a feeling that societies use to enforce social norms and taboos—whatever those norms happen to be.

America is a very individualistic society—people can violate social norms and they don’t feel shame, because they say “who cares what other people think?” My impression of Germany—which is second hand, my wife lived there and I know lots of Germans—is that it is a less individualistic society. Society might allow certain things, but where society doesn't allow those things, there is strong shame-based social pressure.

At least when my wife was living in east Germany in the early 2000s, drug use was one of those taboos. When she mentioned smoking marijuana—something that didn’t raise eyebrows among other teenagers at her rural Iowa high school—the reaction from German students was very negative.

flycaliguy• 3 years ago

I’ve been shamed for j-walking in Germany. Sorry, you didn’t debunk anything you just invited a bunch of puritanical nonsense to the nude beach.

hackinthebochs2• 3 years ago

Your response misses the target the parent was getting at. There are laws that constrain behavior in public places derived from the taboos of the past. This is what you are referring to when you talk about limits to nudity and such. These laws may derive from shame culture of the past, but they have modern relevance largely due to the existence of laws.

There's another form of shame culture that isn't codified into law but constrains behavior due to the potential reduction in social status for breaking various taboos. Essentially part one's feelings of status is sourced externally and this provides a moderating effect on one's behavior. The problem is that modern society has seen a stark reduction in the effectiveness of this kind of shame culture. We've essentially devalued the prevailing culture in favor of various sub/counter cultures. Now every degenerate interest has a sub-culture formed around it that insulates anyone who identifies with it from the shame of going against the prevailing culture. The usefulness of shame for reinforcing social norms has been eliminated to disastrous effect.

constantcrying9• 3 years ago

I think I just debunked your theory (sorry for that) but it's not shame.

You didn't. It is even somewhat irrelevant, as being shamed for sexual perversion is utterly unrelated to not being ashamed of using drugs.

tayo422• 3 years ago

How many social safety nets does Germany have compared to the US and Oregon. My guess is a lot more and probably a less isolated culture, more family friends around, cheaper cost of living too. This shame thing your all rambling seems to be a red herring

whearyou• 3 years ago

But in Germany, if you cut in line, huge shame. I’m in Israel, not as many orgy clubs (I assume?) but more people cut in line. There’s shame about different things.

redog• 3 years ago

How old are you?

poopbutt7• 3 years ago

ezekiel684• 3 years ago

Alert potential ageism detected.

(Imagine if they had said instead, "What color is your skin?", for example)

robodan• 3 years ago

Shame relies on personal connections that they want to keep. People turning to drugs are already losing those connections at a rapid rate. Trying to shame them as they walk out the door isn't going to do anything.

America already has an epidemic of loneliness. Chemical numbing is a symptom of this.

OO000oo• 3 years ago

You can’t devalue shame without devaluing dignity. They go hand in hand.

j45• 3 years ago

There’s lots of other ways to build strong peolel than negativity.

I’m not a fan of the many culture either but dignity and positive inner dialogue is better for resilience than negative inner dialogue.

Like shame. Shamers usually are insecure or impatient to some.

Valuing one’s self is reason enough.

Learning to get better, or sleds order at something one day at a time doesn’t come from a negative spiral of solely living by what others think.

HWR_142• 3 years ago

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you.

I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless.

Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at all. You called it fascism with no real reasoning. Explicit laws that we can change and discuss seems like a good way to manage things!

badrabbit6• 3 years ago

Shame works very well. I so hate it when people use "gay" to invoke some sort of a culture war side-choosing spell. The original comment is about feeling shame not being shamed. If you believe being gay is wrong the yes you should feel shame, if you don't then the question is not relevant for you.

The original commenter is more right than any of us can conceive. So many societal problems would be solved if people had raised their kids to learn to feel shame. Trumpism, gun worship, climate change denial, post-truth mindset, anti-vaxx, treason, insurrection, racial hatred and discrimination,etc... the thing so many of people with these views have in a common is they feel no shame about the harm they are causing.

If in your own opinion you did something wrong, you should absolutley feel shame. What is more evil than being proud of doing wrong by your own standards? You can debate what is right ir wrong or even what morality is but refusing to feel shame is embracing evil.

graeme• 3 years ago

This was in the comment you’re replying to. It covers your reply

Devaluing shame instead of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed

As the other comment said, you’re also discussing “being shamed” whereas the original comment is about “feeling shame”. Similar but far from identical.

babyshake• 3 years ago

I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in.

This is a strawman argument. I think what we're talking about is shame for having a reckless disregard for others. The way I think of it is we are increasingly living in a world where people are viewing other humans as "NPCs".

nonethewiser10• 3 years ago

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you.
I don't need more people being shamed for being gay

Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment.

Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who feel inclined to do it. Can there possibly be any case made to choose the 2nd over the 1st?

Japan is a good example of this principle. Things are a lot more orderly despite a lot weaker enforcement mechanisms.

rayiner9• 3 years ago

What do you mean shame doesn’t work? America is a country that literally can’t reproduce itself without importing people from countries where mothers shame children for not having children in a timely manner. America had 100,000 people die of drug overdoses last year, whereas societies that shame people for drug use have far lower rates of overdoses. Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-marital sex largely managed to avoid the AIDS epidemic that gripped similarly poor countries in other regions.

And let’s not forget that we live in a country that became a world power under a social structure that was much more rigid and repressive than the one we have today. Our relative decline in economic importance is probably caused by other economic trends, but it’s pretty wild to say “shame doesn’t work” despite the evidence to the contrary.

foxhill• 3 years ago

i don’t think that’s a sensible reading or conclusion from OP’s comment.

indeed, your conclusion appears to desire the very thing OP was calling in to question without justification - the existence of that authority figure.

why do you think people should be told how to be? remember it’s more frequently been the law that has outlawed being gay, or say, more recently in florida, wearing the wrong thing.

DiggyJohnson2• 3 years ago

I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in.

You're introducing these things into a thread about shame and drug usage. It's a complete non-sequitur.

webnrrd2k2• 3 years ago

I dont think that I buy your line of reasoning. For one thing, historically, a lot of social contacts were based on ignorance and bullshit. Women were persecuted for being witches, people were killed for having the wrong religion, race, sexuality. There are many episodes in history where this was socially sanctioned and approved by authority figures.

I think people are right to have a healthy dose of doubt and even disrespect for authority figures. That's far from infantilization. It's learning to think for yourself and to choose carefully who you take as an authority.

As far as addiction goes, the US had a pretty long experiment with authority figures telling people to just say no. How well did that work out?

ezekiel684• 3 years ago

I actually agree with you -- from the standpoint of socially influencing others who are not already addicts.

There is no true addict on the planet however (of any substance or behavior) who will hit "rock bottom", as they say, and moderate their addictive behavior due to shame. So I feel that some of the blowback you are receiving here is related to the notion (true or not) that public shame applied to addiction for the purpose of influencing non-addicts is equvalent to "giving up" on addicts themselves (and therefore not worth that cost).

woodruffw3• 3 years ago

We’re a nation that deeply stigmatizes the addicted, saddling them with shame and isolation; what makes you think that piling more shame onto them is going to change anything?

Shame makes people live lives of quiet desperation; it isn’t a building block in a healthy society.

gloosx2• 3 years ago

Addiction is a perpetual Ouroboros of shame. It is essential to understand this truth before ever wanting to integrate more shame into this problem.

If one chooses addiction - well, it is an authority that moderates his behavior – the substance. Any shame will only make its rule stronger.

The infantilization of society is a myth, society never really grew up to the point of understanding the universal truth - that kindness, support, re-integration, participation, gratitude - these are our allies to fix the society problems - not shame, guilt, isolation and indifference.

nroms• 3 years ago

I think there's something in between the polarity you've got there, something like "tough love". I think too much policy is based on emotional ideas, instead of seeing 'kindness, support, and re-integration' as ends of those ideal policies. People cannot just heroically decide to be kind in the face of an overwhelming issue.

I also think there's a point where things have slid so far that we need some measures that appear inhumane on the surface, but solve the problem more meaningfully. I think of the protesters in Toronto hoping to permanently protect the tent villages established in Trinity-Bellwoods inner city park, even blocking the police from clearing people out of their "homes". If we go on with policies like "give out free tents" that are the epitome of band-aid emotionally driven ideas It's hard to see how we aren't simply incentivizing the problem to grow.

It's as though some people genuinely think the permanent slums as in india or brazil are a solution and not a problem.

rewmie5• 3 years ago

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power.

It sounds like you are advocating for the virtues of oppression and the subjugation of anyone or anything that does not fit your norm.

(...) many people unfortunately need an authority figure (...)

Let me stop you right there, and make it quite clear to you how profoundly idiotic and prejudicial your personal opinion is.

As you seem to advocate that people unfortunately need an authority figure, I'm sure you will acknowledge your need to be put in your place when you step out of line with this blend of nonsense, and simply succumb to the shame you should be rightfully feeling for your regrettable opinion.

If not, perhaps you can start to understand why your opinion makes absolutely no sense.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

I've worked with a number of people from rich European countries. Sometimes, they'd extol the virtues of their social programs, and I'd ask what keeps people from just mooching of them. The answer was always some combination of pride, shame, and sense of common purpose.

imp0cat• 3 years ago

It's not that simple, there are definitely (certain groups of) people who absolutely do just that.

telchior• 3 years ago

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame

Shame is admittedly a very powerful tool for social conformity. During the few centuries that you seem to view as the good old days, it was used to great effect for blocking many different behaviors. Among those: not dressing in quite the right way; having dark skin; insufficient patriotism; insufficient aggression in men; the desire for autonomy in women; homosexuality, or for that matter basically any acknowledgement that humans are an innately sexual species.

And then society broke, gosh darn it!

The problem with bringing back those good old days of shame, but of course just in the way that's nice and beneficial, is that a huge number of people believe that all of the above listed shameful behaviors of yesteryear should still be shameful. Shame is the mechanism that various conservatives are using, at this very instant, in trying to brand all gay people as groomers, or all people who get abortions as murderers and/or worthless sluts.

So, in my humble opinion, it ain't happening; how are you going to get any kind of agreement about what behaviors are good to shame? Pandora's box has been opened for half of humanity, who all generally agree that non-harmful behaviors should not be shamed, while things like flagrant violations of election law or finance law should be; while the other half continues to vociferously insist that non-harmful social behaviors are the only real priority and the golden days would come back if only we could all hate the deviants again.

akomtu• 3 years ago

What is the set of core moral principles shared by all in our society? Turns out, one half of americans has one moral code derived from christianity of the old days, and the other half has been trying to develop an alternative moral code. The two moral codes are rapidly diverging, and so is the list of things that deserve shame in both camps.

vjk8002• 3 years ago

Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract.

In places with diverse people from different backgrounds and cultures (i.e. all modern cities) there is no social contract. Apart from murdering people, there are very few things that people agree are universally good or bad, and thus the behaviour moderating effect doesn't exist either.

As someone who was raised in a very small town with sort of strict culture (didn't really seem like that to me at the time, but by modern urban standards it was that), I can very easily see how the cultural relativism leads to all kinds of social problems in western urban world. In my town no-one did drugs, because that would have been shameful. People around you (all of them to some extent) are important, you are important to them and you care about what they think about you, and as a result you don't want to do stuff that will look shameful in their eyes. Without this guidance from other people, (some) people end up going down into rabbit holes of drug habit, alt right, etc.

throwaway77384• 3 years ago

In my town no-one did drugs, because that would have been shameful.

Reads: People hid their drug use successfully. How much history do we need to experience before we accept that shame only leads to everyone pretending that something isn't a problem instead of addressing it head on.

godelski15• 3 years ago

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

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

I went to college in a non-college town about twice that size (college was <2k people), and again, lots of drunks. Different sides of the country but both were very Christian and even had strict drinking laws. The uni didn't allow alcohol so a lot of kids were just drinking and driving (closest bar was a mile away and downtown was a 15 minute drive).

Look at a heat map of opioid deaths. Then tell me again how this is a problem exclusive to big cities. If it wasn't in small cities, you wouldn't see a looming crisis in The Blue Ridge. If it were shame, Utah wouldn't be an epicenter.

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

TulliusCicero• 3 years ago

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

goodpoint4• 3 years ago

Without shame, many people unfortunately need an authority figure ... slide into (probably) fascism.

A culture based on shame and guilt IS fascism.

fennecfoxy2• 3 years ago

Eh, I think shame as a societal tool is outmoded anyway. Sure, it can be used by our monkey brains to enforce "the greater good" as judged by our peers, but in some countries "the greater good" is throwing gay men off buildings.

The US is filled with so many contrasting opinions that it's a survival skill to be able to ignore people trying to induce feelings of "shame". Whether you're a liberal who doesn't want to feel shameful that you're a feminist, or gay, or want healthcare for everyone, or a republican who doesn't want to feel shameful that you're against gay and trans people existing, want to ban abortion, throw the economy to the war machine etc.

I don't think your argument extends at all to a hard drugs problem, though. As a gay man who has learnt to ignore the "shame" of being gay and to ignore the (surprisingly still high number of) people that shoot me disgusted looks if I dare to hold a man's hand in public, I'm not also going to suddenly _not_ feel shameful if I get into hard drugs.

Also, I don't think you understand hard drugs at all. Pretty sure "shame" isn't even a blip on the radar of the awareness of the hard drug user, across all cultures and all of history, such drugs have been so potent that the addicted can only focus on the next fix; things like shame and morality sink into the background as effects of withdrawal from the drug take hold.

For example, China has a strong, stroooong culture of shame and societal shaming, but they still had that trouble with Opium, by your logic enough shame would've stamped that out immediately. People on those drugs don't work like people not on those drugs.

dirtyid2• 3 years ago

I think OPs point is to employ shame to prevent % of potential users and future addicts of hard drugs in the first place. Won't stop everyone but may subtantially mitigate. But I also think you're right, modern US culture is particularly shameless. Which isn't a value judgement, just that shame won't be effective given US context. Not to mention shame isn't going to prevent big pharma from engineering opiate crisis from legitmate medicine for non shameful use.

trabant00• 3 years ago

I would say more societal peer pressure than shame, but I don't want to argue semantics. I think that yeah, some of that went away, but another wave in another form is being created right now. Take a look at things like the fitness movement, NOFAP (which I think it's BS but that's beside the point), etc.

A lot of individuals get lost in this cultural transitional period, but I think this always happened. A good example was the hippy movement, they where very drug and free sex positive too. Society as whole will be OK I think, other non-legal checks and boundaries are being set up to prevent a major collapse. Collectively we learn from mistakes and correct for extreme behaviors.

vintermann• 3 years ago

I think you should feel bad for making this post. But you won't, will you?

syndacks• 3 years ago

Yes, let’s bring religion back into schools. And for god sakes, cover up those legs!

ml-anon3• 3 years ago

Its fucking wild that folks are advocating shame as a method for dealing with drug addiction in the year 2023. As if shame isn't one of the major contributing factors to the crippling opioid crisis to begin with.

An astonishingly large number of people got hooked on legal prescription drugs which were pushed by billion-dollar pharma companies and the medical profession as a whole. Shame is what drives people away from admitting their addiction and seeking treatment towards illegal means of procuring a fix.

The mind boggles at just how phenomenally stupid this thread is.

afpx• 3 years ago

Yeah, this shame angle is offensive. My 80 year mom, who was strongly against drugs, died an addict because the pharm industry got her hooked on pain killers. Because of shame, her kids didn’t even know until she was an addict until she was almost dead.

alienbeast2• 3 years ago

For an example of how shame can be useful in discouraging bad choices, look at cigarettes. They're legal, but society and government have successfully campaigned to publicize their negative effects, to shame smokers and to praise quitters.

godelski15• 3 years ago

Its fucking wild that folks are advocating shame as a method for dealing with drug addiction in the year 2023.

It's also extremely divorced from reality. Even if you've never met an addict and seen how many want to get off the drugs (maybe you've met someone who is addicted to something else, like food, alcohol, or bad habits), but that the very fact that people don't flaunt it is proof of that shame. Now maybe some are unabashed now, especially in big cities, but similarly if you call someone "a fatty" enough they'll either: fix themselves (lol), hide their eating while trying to show effort or justify their weight, or just stop giving a fuck.

people got hooked on legal prescription drugs

I want to address this, not because I think you're making this argument (your wording suggests not), but because it can be common. Many people set up the situation as if there are one of two directional graphs. Drugs -> homelessness or homelessness -> drugs (with variations on paths and some other nodes). But the effect in reality is coupled. Both can be true. It's a clique to drink your sorrows away and everyone knows the call of a stiff drink after a hard breakup or the call to eat a tub of ice cream. Of course losing your livelihood and having difficulties putting it back together can lead to that kind of addiction. But similarly we've seen people go off the deepend and take a bender too far, so of course that can lead to losing your livelihood. Most things in the world are not DAGs. There's lots of complex and coupled phenomena with feedback loops and many paths to reach certain steady state solutions. The danger is oversimplifying it and pretending these are trivial to avoid or trivial to escape. But the nature of their existence is proof of the lack of triviality, while a single counter example is not proof that they are.

Similarly it boggles my mind that a comment about shame is the solution. As if the Victorian times were well known for their safety and high prosperity. As if highly religious cultures have demonstrated exceptional prosperity (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever). That we're seeing similar comments about punishment, as if North Korea, Russia, and Iran are pinnacles of prosperity, wealth, and morality. How people are unabashedly hand waving away any nuance and pretending that the solutions are simple. But if they were then the examples before would be utopias, and that we'd speak of the many historical draconian eras in high regard.

K0balt8• 3 years ago

Fwiw I actually wasn’t trying to advocate shaming people as a solution to drug addiction. At all.

I’m not even addressing addiction, but rather the socially disruptive manifestations of drug addiction related activities that are becoming increasingly common, especially in the United States.

Obviously my (now suppressed) comment was poorly written if it gave that impression.

I was suggesting rather that the disruptive social circumstances that we are seeing in the USA surrounding drug addiction are partly a result of people not feeling that they need to keep disruptive behaviours to a minimum out of a sense of personal discretion.

I have lived all over the world, and in many areas with serious addiction problems, but the kind of overt behaviour common in the last decade in the USA is uncommon in most of those cultures, and i posit that is a direct extension of the addicts themselves retaining a sense of personal dignity.

The idea of personal dignity and it’s corollary, shame, seems to be conspicuously missing in the subcultures where these kind of problems are recently erupting compared to subcultures with similar base problems where the public presentation tends to be more benign. But that is just my empirical observation from living amongst different peoples and cultures.

Furthermore, I think that replacing personal standards and self moderation with stronger regulations and reductions of civil liberties is a dangerous path that can jeopardise the functioning of a healthy democratic society.

In summary, I see shame ( not being shamed by others, but rather feeling shame in oneself) is an undervalued component in the moderation of behaviour and has utility that we ignore at our peril.

Some commenters have pointed out that shame sometimes prevents people from seeking help for addiction or other circumstances. I think that is an excellent example of where a usually useful thing can sometimes be tragically harmful. It’s an excellent counterpoint, though I never meant to suggest that shame was universally a good thing, only that it is often a useful thing. It’s definitely worth mentioning though, since my examples do tend towards being unreasonably rosy in that regard.

Personally, I strive to be able to look back at my actions and words of 5 years ago and feel a deep sense of shame- this is an indication that I have grown as a person and have transcended behaviour that I earlier would have thought of as being nominal. That’s just one example of how I find shame to be useful in my own growth.

justanotherjoe• 3 years ago

shame is what got us casted out from eden

jmac01• 3 years ago

This is a wild take. I get what you're going for, but I think you've got the problem wrong. The issue is that society has been constructed (deliberately or accidentally) by corporate interests to make the average person feel devalued and useless to the point that they be don't believe anyone cares about them, so why should they care about themselves, especially when they fall on harder times. The idea that shame is somehow missing in society is wrong, many of these people feel intense shame, but that is outweighed by the perception that society doesn't give a single fuck about them so they stop moderating their behavior as a coping mechanism.

You're essentially "victim blaming" here, shame is not a healthy motivator. The "social contract" has been eroded in favor of "if you're wealthy/beautiful/healthy/etc you're a more important member of society". "If you can provide more money to the corporation, you are more important"

chociej2• 3 years ago

I can't say I agree. The answer to debilitating addiction isn't to make someone feel even worse about it (to the extent they don't already feel terrible). It's to provide meaningful support to get out of addiction and back to the life the person wishes they could have. Shame is fatal to dignity and self-acceptance. It has no place in public health.

mitchdoogle3• 3 years ago

Interesting. I feel the exact opposite about shame. It's far too prevalent and people make too many choices based on what they think others will perceive

walsand21• 3 years ago

You’re getting attacked a lot for this comment which I don’t think is fair. Shame helps hold people and companies accountable, and without a social control the only things that holds them accountable is money

I think this article is relevant - shamelessness as a strategy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25591066

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

We've devalued shame so much that someone can write a blog post about shame shilling and needing a strong daddy, chased with a soy Reddit closer. Unreal.

dang3• 3 years ago

Please don't post flamewar rants to HN. You made the thread far worse with this. Veering into fascism at the end didn't help.

We want thoughtful, substantive, and above all curious conversation on HN. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

K0balt8• 3 years ago

Yeah, wow, I think a lot of people took that comment way out of the spirit it was made in.

From my perspective it was an observation of my experiences in a variety of cultures and how certain social problems don’t flourish in those environments because people are more conscious about the perceptions of others, and how I see a tendency to replace those social mechanisms with “strong” authority figures as problematic for a functioning democracy… but… it seems I really hit a nerve for some folks and it got taken way out of the intended context. Sorry about that!

dathinab• 3 years ago

I don't know what exactly Oregon did, so following isn't about Oregon but more in general:

I often hear the "decriminalize drugs it worked in Portugal" phrase. But while it's not wrong it also misses a lot of points.

Portugal did much more then just decriminalizing drugs, they also e.g. giving people free therapy or consulting to get them away from drugs, places where addicts can safely take drugs and also people can reach out to them to help them reduce drug consumption and much more. Also they did various steps to reduce the poverty<=>organized crime<=>selling drugs<=>taking drugs relationship through I don't remember enough details.

I'm not even sure the last step is possible in the US due to the US being in a very different situations, e.g. wrt. police violence, gang violence, but also stuff like how society tends to punish people which had been in prison even through the prison punishment already is supposed to be their full penalty and enacting such discrimination is quite problematic (as it makes it much harder for someone to change their live to the better).

Anyway only decriminalizing without any other steps is likely most times a bad idea.

E.g. in Portugal after cutting resources for that program the results also started to become worse AFIK.

What is most important in my opinions is to make it easier for people to get away from drugs and turn their live around. _And this fundamentally also means not treating drug addicts for criminals because they are drug addicts_. But that isn't exact the same as a general decriminalization. For example you could have rules like not punishing people which committed a (non serve, e.g. drug possession up to some amount) crime due to being addicted iff and only iff they take a withdrawal therapy, and only once or so. Also such a therapy is provided for free by the state for any addicted citizen, at least once or twice in their live. Similar you do not get discriminated when for having been addicted in the past if you went to a withdrawal therapy. Especially the later point is really important.

matthewmorgan• 3 years ago

After any repression there's a rebound effect.

jmyeet• 3 years ago

The so-called "War on Drugs" was an objective and abject failure. It merely created the carceral state leading to the US having the highest per-capita incarceration rate of any country in the world. With 4% of the world's population, the US has 25% of the world's prisoners.

It's not that decriminalizing drugs hasn't worked. It's just now you see it. Previously it was hidden in remote prisons where the drugs were often brought in by the staff.

The point here is you need to fix the underlying reasons why people use drugs. Those reasons vary. Many heroin users start off with a valid prescription for opiate painkillers. The US prescribes opiates at a prodigious rate. Doctors are given golf trips to prescribe Oxycontin to enrich the Sacklers, creating the next generation of heroin junkie.

A lot of it is escapism and self-medication too. Untreated mental health issues, homelessness, hopeless conditions, etc.

In short, the drug isssue cannot be separated from material conditions, from having basic needs met. So when people cannot afford food or shelter, we as a society are making a choice to prioritize profits for a very few at the expensive of spreading misery and death to many people. Putting them in prison merely hides those problems from view.

ip26• 3 years ago

Maybe if we reach a consensus that neither the war on drugs nor 110 worked properly, we can sit down and have a straightforward discussion about what would, now that both ideologies have failed.

smcg• 3 years ago

They dropped the ball with funding treatment programs, which are essential for this to work in the first place. That should be in the headline. Decriminalization hasn't been debunked.

"state audit published this year found that the new law was “vague” about how state officials should oversee the awarding of money to new treatment programs, and set “unrealistic timelines” for evaluating and funding treatment proposals. As a result, the funding process was left largely to the grant-making panel, most of whose members “lacked experience in designing, evaluating and administrating a governmental-grant-application process,” according to the audit. Last year, supporters of Measure 110 accused state health officials, preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic, of giving the panel insufficient direction and resources to handle a flood of grant applications. The state health authority acknowledged missteps in the grant-making process."

lo_zamoyski4• 3 years ago

We've all heard it before, that decriminalization will make drugs appear less like a forbidden fruit and remove some of the incentive to abuse. But that's not really true, at least not where things like drugs are concerned and addiction is a possibility.

It turns out that forbidding bad things and punishing bad behavior does reduce their incidence.

Now let's apply that to all the other crime we've gone soft on, like depravity or murder or violence in general. Criminalize drugs, criminalize the production and distribution of pornography, criminalize public displays and promotion of depravity. Singapore may take some things a bit far, but you cannot deny that crime is EXTREMELY low, something that should compel us to get off the sentimental train and consider that adequate punishment is good thing.

crtified3• 3 years ago

Alcohol, being at once one of the worlds most dangerous hard drugs, one of the worlds premium luxury markets, and a common everyday cultural component across large swathes of humanity, is proof that society can and does incorporate the regular leisure usage of mental intoxicants as an ethically acceptable standard of living.

If you are happy to walk down your street and purchase a bottle of wine or craft beer, then you are casting your vote about what you consider to be an acceptable standard for such activities.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 3 years ago

Alcohol as a "luxury market" is really just a marketing gimmick. It's dressed up to be palatable and to entice people. Dealers gotta make money.

"Society" isn't really a unit. Plenty of people would happily make alcohol illegal if they had power. It's not ethically acceptable to drink in a lot of communities (even in the U.S.). Some countries prohibit alcohol present day.

My point is that the status of alcohol as "ethically acceptable" is far from universal.

crtified3• 3 years ago

It is not universal, but it is a common component of mainstream culture across China, India, Russia, USA, Canada, most European countries, most Central and South American countries, most African countries, Australia, Japan, and others - encompassing a majority of the human population.

fzeroracer• 3 years ago

I don't know what people expect. We have a nationwide problem that states are trying to solve at an individual level and failing. I lived in Virginia and Texas, both had severe drug issues, homeless problems and those states are strict on drugs. They're experiencing rises in deaths due to fentanyl, rising homeless rates and more. No one talks about the issues in those states because they aren't doing anything to try and stop it, so there's no new policy to criticize.

efields• 3 years ago

Can’t do the decriminalization and legalization without proper resources devoted to rehabilitation. This is a health problem and the US doesn’t like to provide free healthcare to those who need it.

Oregon did the right thing by decriminalizing, but massively screwed it up by under investment in care.

kazinator• 3 years ago

The headline is a lie.

First, minor drug possession was downgraded from a misdemeanor to a violation, similar to a traffic ticket. Under the new law, users caught with up to 1 gram of heroin or methamphetamine, or up to 40 oxycodone pills, are charged a $100 fine, which can be waived if they call a treatment-referral hotline.

It doesn't sound like decriminalized use to me. They are handing out pretty hefty tickets.

Traffic violations are illegal; it's a crime to run a red light.

Selling, trafficking, and possessing large amounts of drugs remain criminal offenses in Oregon.

I.e. not decriminalized.

Trafficking and manufacturing cannot be decriminalized. I mean, think about all the prescription drugs out there.

What you have to do is to provide them as cleanly produced pharmaceuticals that can be provided to someone who is addicted, and at a reasonable, low cost.

You cannot just do the following and expect great results:

* the same thugs are selling the same shit;

* nobody knows where the shit came from or what is in it;

* only, the users aren't hard criminals now, only perpetrating a $100 misdemeanor.

whiddershins7• 3 years ago

Reading the comments here, I am not seeing a lot of awareness that Portugal’s “decriminalization” and Oregon’s couldn’t be more different.

In Portugal drug use in public is not tolerated. Shooting heroin in the park will result in arrest and a choice between treatment and jail.

Oregon’s approach seems to be what someone imagined Portugal was doing without actually finding out.

You can believe people have a right to do what they want with their body while simultaneously believing they don’t have the right to impose upon other people by acting in antisocial ways.

This may be a difficult distinction to make, but many people don’t seem to even try.

Just because something is acceptable, or legal, should not mean it is necessarily celebrated or even tolerated in public.

kinakomochidayo• 3 years ago

Mandate drug recovery programs for opioid/stimulant and various hard drugs.

Legalize psychedelics and promote anti-addiction and therapy programs using psychedelics such as Iboga, Ayahuasca and Psilocybin.

crtified3• 3 years ago

Worth noting that this and other similar content published by author Jim Hinch is written from his perspective as senior editor of the heavily Christian rehab-evangelist outfit "Guideposts".

Not a criticism, merely contextualising the presented editorial position.

th0ma5• 3 years ago

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

faangiq• 3 years ago

Remember- this is by design.

gloryjulio• 3 years ago

I am firmly against criminalization of the soft drugs(alcohol, cigarette, weed, lsd, etc) But I felt like the hard drugs are in a different problem space. Not sure what's the answer

keithalewis• 3 years ago

Legalize hard drugs, but if are down to your bottom dollar because you can't use them responsibly then you lose some rights. Imagine a world where people are held accountable for their actions.

ITB• 3 years ago

The problem is that hard opiates aren’t a drug in the sense that alcohol or mdma are drugs. It’s straight up poison. It should definitely be controlled and possession should be prosecuted.

inamberclad• 3 years ago

Decriminalization is fine, but there's still no way out for these people. How would one go from living on the street in a state of addiction to happy, housed, and employed? Quality of life is tenuous enough for regular Americans who haven't lost it all before. Climbing back up the hill must seem impossible for those at the bottom. Therefore, there's little motivation to get clean.

dclaw• 3 years ago

Funny how it completely ignores the fact that covid sent everything to hell, and bureaucratic crap caused funding to not even be dispersed for over 2 years after passage. Of course programs that you judge based on an imaginary 3 year timeline will fail when they have only had maybe 8 months to do anything.

user6723• 3 years ago

A small amount of Molly and a couple tabs of LSD is pretty fuckin' amazing ngl

ezekiel684• 3 years ago

If you read my replies to other threads in this discussion, you might imagine I agree with the pessimistic tone of the article. But change is hard. We have no rational basis to imagine that such a momentous policy (and enforcement) upheaval would not make things somewhat "worse" before they might become better. Or, whether the troubling anecdotes observed now under the new policy are truly statistically significant compared to the proportion of those benefitted by the change -- until a more thoughrough assessment can be conducted.

If people are hoping for a policy where literally no one "falls through the cracks", I'd have to suspect they had little to no experience with those who struggle with substance addiction.

Terr_3• 3 years ago

To recycle from an NY-Times submission on the same topic yesterday [0]:

When evaluating these policies, it's worth keeping in mind that it may not be a choice between "Drug Sickness versus Normal Productive Citizen", but instead a balance of "Drug Sickness versus Prison Inmate".
Sure, a person imprisoned for drug-use may be "out of sight, out of mind", but--even ignoring ethical/moral issues--the raw financial cost of that incarceration is still there, and could be might higher than whatever was being spent before in trash-removal or patrols or whatever.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36950162#36950237

ajmurmann• 3 years ago

In Portland these policies clearly aren't working and I want dealing fentanyl and meth be punished. There are more nuanced problems going on that might play a large role in this policy taking. Lack of rehab facilities definitely is one of these factors. The Portland police also has largely stopped policing anything. I wonder how different things would look if even just all cars without license plates got stopped. It also doesn't help that even repeat offenders get released without bail. I genuinely wonder how different things would look if hard drugs were decriminalized, but all other laws were enforced properly.

ohthehugemanate• 3 years ago

I have heard that Portland is such a mess because three factors hit at once:

1) the police stopped arresting for small possession, but no social services were funded to fill the gap for helping/making people get clean. Churches can only do so much.

2) the war on fentanyl pushed that drug market into homemade from ingredients anyone can get on alibaba... greatly increasing access.

3) the unemployment crisis.

I can vouch personally for the massive number of people who appear high on fentanyl, specifically. Thank goodness it's not an aggressive drug. Can someone with more context and subject expertise comment?

frankreyes• 3 years ago

I've said this will happen over ten years ago. But hey, let's keep people on drugs, it's going to be fun

yafbum3• 3 years ago

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

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

SturgeonsLaw• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

Only if we also bring in the death penalty for people who sell fried food, burn stuff, have infectious diseases and drive cars

yafbum3• 3 years ago

I have yet to see someone be repeatedly brought back to life by an emergency worker due to a sudden French fries overdose, or live out on the streets because they just can't stop buying churros and spacing out on them.

DropInIn• 3 years ago

Decriminalization doesn't work in isolation

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

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

barbs6• 3 years ago

Decriminalizing drugs reduces a lot of harms regarding drug use, but it's no silver bullet. Seems like the uptick in drug overdose deaths would be best responded to with injecting rooms. They've been a resounding success around the world in reducing overdoses and harms related to injecting drug use.

No-Firefighter• 3 years ago

The idea behind drug decriminalization, aiming to treat drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal one, seems promising in theory. It's encouraging to see efforts to shift the focus toward rehabilitation and support for those struggling with addiction. However, the data from Oregon's experience suggests that the reality is far more nuanced.

aarong11• 3 years ago

Places that decriminalize drugs need to pour the money they saved on enforcement into health, social programmes and education. The positive effects of decriminalising anything aren't going to be seen until a while after that is done.

jamesgill• 3 years ago

No doubt that the reform isn’t perfect, but this is such a poor, confused attempt at creating a story of causality (or even correlation).

chociej2• 3 years ago

Of course it hasn't reduced addiction. The quote from TFA explains it best: "If you take away the criminal-justice system as a pathway that gets people into treatment, you need to think about what is going to replace it."

That doesn't mean that decriminalization is bad, it means you can't ignore public health. Seems uniquely American to assume that just leaving addicted people alone without appropriate healthcare options is going to reduce addiction.

lionelholt• 3 years ago

The problem as summarized by the photo isn't drugs. The problem everywhere -- not just in Oregon -- is Human Overpopulation. The severity of it in Oregon has increased because of populations spilling over from elsewhere, most notably California. Sadly, Portland is finally a large city, thus it has the same issues all other large cities have. This overall problem of Human Overpopulation which is the root cause of pretty much every other problem in the entire world (climate change, wealth gap, dwindling resources, etc) is exacerbated by certain politicians opposing birth control.

Aerbil3133• 3 years ago

Anyone got the heart to say all drugs and alcohol are bad and should be banned everywhere? No one? Reminder: Alcohol is a known carcinogen and a toxin as classified by WHO, and drug use frequently ruin people’s entire lives, as well as killing them! The obvious yet unthinkable fact that drugs, alcohol, and many other things are more often than not merely distracting yourself from your problems? Still no one? Oh, come on, folks! Really? <more silence…> Sigh. I guess everyone are addicts of something.

michaelcampbell• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/EfGAD

androidbishop3• 3 years ago

As a fairy heavy drug user, I feel I should chime in since it appears most of the comments here are coming from "normies" whose experience with users seems to be limited to homeless street addicts or family/friends who fell apart.

1. There are far more users out there than you realize. Almost all of my friends use, they all live normal lives and you wouldn't know it unless you actively partied with them. There are vast swaths of society that aren't opiate or meth addicts, but partake in coke, ketamine, psychedelics, mdma, etc regularly without consequence. You just aren't seeing it.

2. Anyone who hasn't been through the criminal justice ringer for drugs likely does not fully appreciate how devastating it can be. In most cases it does not contribute positively to a person's life, can hinder future employment, can cost a person their job, their livelihood, their housing, their kids, etc., for what was likely a victimless crime. Decriminalization, within reason, is a moral imperative. Full legalization, with regulation, is the only way to effectively deal with the problem in its entirety, from supply on down, the same as it was with alcohol.

3. Using drugs is a personal choice that people should be free to make, the same as using alcohol (a drug as debilitating, toxic, addictive, etc as most illegal drugs), or scuba diving, or skydiving, or any other high risk activity that we tolerate. Like the latter activities, you can implement licensing requirements such as mandatory education and fees to fund abuse treatment programs. Legalizing it across the board will mandate safe and responsible supply, and remove the criminal organizations from the equation. Again, look at what happened with alcohol prohibition and its eventual legalization. It is the EXACT same as what we are experiencing with drugs.

4. Because it is entirely possible to use drugs responsibly, its use in and of itself should not be the focus of criminal enforcement. It is bad behavior that is the issue, and like alcohol, we can criminalize it. Driving drunk, public intoxication, child endangerment, domestic abuse, assault, property damage, etc are all problems we have with drunks, and all are criminalized respectively. There is no reason why we can't do the same with drugs.

5. Addiction is a serious issue. But it is a public health issue, and should be treated as such. Turning addicts into criminals is just making a difficult situation worse. These people are sick, they should get help. We also need to serious expand programs for the homeless, as the housing problem is what drives a lot of what you see on the streets.

androidbishop3• 3 years ago

6. We need to research and fund more effective substance abuse treatment. There is a surprising dearth of evidence-based treatment programs out there. Having gone through a few court-mandated programs myself, I cannot express enough how useless these were. Show up to a few meetings, watch some ludicrous after-school scared-straight specials, attend a number of NA meetings listening to junkies relate the same rock bottom stories over and over, the occasional piss test (which either didn't even test for the drugs I was on or could be beat by staying clean for just a few days) and probably the only helpful thing: community service. The most effective experience I had getting clean wasn't even a drug program at all: living at a yoga commune for several months as part of their volunteer program. Something about living away from regular life, with a variety of people (not just users), having all my basic needs met, meditating and doing yoga every day, living simply and having jobs to do around the compound, in a totally non judgemental or condescending atmosphere free of conversations that constantly focused on drugs or addiction, really helped me reset. Maybe that only works for me, I don't know what works for other people, but there might be something to that experience that can be applied to other programs as well.

Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

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