Drug decriminalization in Oregon begins today
drugpolicy.org
drugpolicy.org
Drug trafficking is still a crime.
I'm pretty sure they get the same people who think a six pack is "binge drinking" and one range day's worth of ammo is a "stockpile" to come up with those limits.
Edit: And since apparently this needs saying "drink" = "the standard alcohol/drink unit that all the professionals who measure this stuff use"
I don't really have a position on what "binge" should mean, but that doesn't exactly sound like it's not. Could just be my perspective. I probably drink most days. Usually one beer. Rarely, I might have two in a day. I can't remember that last time I had more than that.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-alc...
And more than 1 5% beer is outside of almost all people’s ability to “process” in an hour.
I would wager the majority of people based on size/weight can’t process a single 5% beer in an hour.
According to 5 seconds of googling, the typical weight of an American man in 2016 was 197lbs.
You might well lose your wager.
https://mcwell.nd.edu/your-well-being/physical-well-being/al...
This "standard drink" is what an average person can roughly process per hour. It's all fuzzy because of how many confounding variables there are with alcohol (and because "average person" is kind of a nonsense phrase), but there you go.
Source: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/overview-a...
That’s why the NHS metric is better suited for discussions about how much alcohol per unit of time one can/should drink, or to discuss the effects of different rates of alcohol consumption over time.
From the NHS website:
>One unit equals 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol, which is around the amount of alcohol the average adult can process in an hour.
> 8 units of alcohol in a single session for men
> 6 units of alcohol in a single session for women
Assuming the beer is 5% you'd need to drink 1.6 litres to hit 8 units of alcohol. If each can / bottle is 330 ml that's 1.9 litres.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-alc...
My whole life I’ve been watching the “safe” amount of alcohol go down and down, study after study. The idea of casually drinking multiple beers after work every day is crazy to me.
Drinking a six pack of anything every night is likely the sign you are an alcoholic.
I first heard of this with Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%); their latest HD Strength In Numbers, which is 57.8%.
https://www.brewdog.com/eu_en/brewdog-vs-schorschbrau-streng...
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/11/here-are-the-dru...
The measure makes it a noncriminal violation similar to a traffic ticket to possess the following:
Less than 1 gram of heroin
Less than 1 gram, or less than 5 pills, of MDMA
Less than 2 grams of methamphetamine
Less than 40 units of LSD
Less than 12 grams of psilocybin
Less than 40 units of methadone
Less than 40 pills of oxycodone
Less than 2 grams of cocaine
1 to 3 grams of heroin
1 to 4 grams of MDMA
2 to 8 grams of methamphetamine
2 to 8 grams of cocaineLSD is effective in such small quantities and it's been delivered in so many different forms I think the normal "grams"/ "ounces" metrics are irrelevant. The one time I used it, it was a single "hit" about half the size of a micro SD card and paper thin.
Which is how this should be for many drugs.
Though I would like a clean source for the occasional dose of LSD. Just... you know once a month or so.
Some which I think are addictive/ destructive enough where they should be kept illegal. Bath salts, crack cocaine, are good examples of the latter.
I also think we should be deliberate in how we tread this path.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/synthetic-c...
1. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/know-your-amphetamines
Because alcohol and sugar are hardly safe to use long term, yet no problems with legality.
Most likely not, but definitely much safer than unregulated "bath salts". And keep in mind, "safe" is not binary, it is a spectrum. Even a lot of common household OTC drugs are not safe if taken in improper dosages or without following the instructions carefully.
And even regarding those drugs that you've mentioned, a giant chunk of the deaths and overdoses occur due to impurities and unknown mixes that are unaccounted for due to the illegal status of those substances.
For example, let's say a heroin addict keeps buying from the same dealer and knows his safe "dosage", which is N grams. The thing is, that's not the real dosage, because street heroin is mixed with tons of garbage fillers to prop up the value and make the drug cheaper to manufacture. So his real "safe" dosage could be 70% of N, with 30% being fillers. Then at some point later, he either switches dealers or his usual dealer switches suppliers, and the fillers only account for 10% of the final product now. So the addict buys his usual "safe dosage" of N grams, without being aware of decreased filler amount(dealers don't post an accurate percentage of fillers in their drugs on the package, cause why bother if it is illegal either way, and it could be that they didn't even know it themselves). Even though the addict thinks he is buying his usual "safe" dosage, in reality his dosage becomes 29% higher (0.9N grams vs. 0.7N grams), hence the overdose.
Note: numbers and percentages are absolutely made up, because i have zero idea about typical heroin dosages and percentage of fillers in those. But my point should still be valid, even with the real life numbers probably being much different.
You can't stop people from using even the most devastating drugs simply by making drugs illegal to produce and distribute. There will always be someone willing to take the risk, regardless of the penalties. Criminalization is the WORST form of regulation. Instead of ending up with a dangerous, yet pure product, from a trusted, regulated supplier, you end up with an impure and potentially deadly product from an unregulated and completely untrusted supplier.
You can judge drug users all day long, but they're going to seek these drugs regardless of the prohibitions. And there will always be a criminal willing to supply the addiction, because the demand is 100% inelastic (i.e. totally unrelated to price).
Drug criminalization has created a $400B global market that fuels terrorism, human trafficking, child exploitation, and the destruction of democracy in many corners of the world.
Outcomes for who? The individual or the population? Seriously. Ask a doctor and they would probably agree that, for a particular patient, having access to legal safe alternatives is a good thing. But ask them about drugs as a whole, for the entire population, and the answer will always be "less is better but zero is best." Stemming the supply will damage current users, but illegality also suppresses uptake by new users.
Opioids are different than pot. LSD is different than rohypnol. Cocaine is not the same as ketamine. Balling all "drugs" into one category and declaring them legal for traffic and sale is a horrible idea. I don't want to see GHB to ever be sold or transported openly.
Clearly that's not true, as evidenced by the enormous illegal drug trade. Highly regulated availability of safer substitutes for the worst drugs might reduce uptake of those worse drugs.
Balling all "drugs" into one category and declaring them legal for traffic and sale is a horrible idea.
That's not what the parent comment said. They specifically said based on health.
Hold on, that logic isn't sound. You are saying because the illegal drug trade is enormous, therefore the illegal status of drugs has no suppressive effect on new user uptake? Why can't both statements be true? "The illegal trade is enormous and making drugs legal would make the drug user base even more enormous"
Illegality status might suppress 50% of new users and impulse buyers, who knows. You can claim illegality does not suppress 100% (that much is clear), but I guarantee illegality has suppressed some non-zero % of potential users from trying it.
We already massively promote and sell alcohol nearly everywhere. It's a deadly drug that is more dangerous to use than many illegal drugs. Tobacco is similarly broadly distributed, yet causes cancer and early death in millions of people.
If drugs were regulated based on their risk level, then it's likely that tobacco would be sold in plain packaging at pharmacies and MDMA would be available in a vending machine...
Two wrongs don't make a right. Alcohol and tobacco are "grandfathered in" to the current system due to widespread usage for centuries. If I were king for a day, alcoholic beverage marketing would be made immediately illegal, but in our current democracy there's no way the alcohol lobby would allow that.
I guess doctors would say the same about alcohol. However, I would prefer to have my glass of beer once or twice a month and I don't want to go to jail for it, thank you very much.
And I’m sure someone will pipe up that they know some nice weed dealers etc, but you have to realize that’s a nice little bubble you’re living in. For many, the drug dealers are linked to some very nasty individuals, and the criminalization of drugs has simply given them huge income streams.
Why do they have vastly more usage than the illegal drugs? A major reason is because they are illegal--such as risk of arrest, poor and uncertain quality, hard to find. Legalizing them would vastly increase usage.
With decriminalization:
1) drug users will still not know what they are actually consuming. They can very easily invest drugs heavily mixed with other drugs, or dangerous chemicals. This will lead to far higher levels of accidental overdoses and is a path to more addictive substances.
2) Drug sellers will still be subject to lengthy prison terms. This directly creates to massive amounts of drug violence. If you are a dealer, you will commonly hold large amounts of cash and valuable drugs, making you a prime target for robbery including home invasions.
Since you cannot rely on banks to deposit your sales, nor police to protect your property, you will need to be heavily armed.
And if you suspect a partner or customer to actually be an informant who can net you a sentence nearly as long as murder, there is almost no downside to killing them. How many innocent kids have been buried in fields because of the paranoia of their dealer?
3) Our individual rights have been reduced significantly because of drug sales prohibition. Because of the war on drugs, police can get no knock warrants to burst in your house, kill your dogs, maybe even you, and not even apologize when it turns out their “tip” was wrong.
If you are driving or flying with a large amount of cash, police can simply take it from you without showing it was linked to any crime, and force you to spend thousands on a lawyer to even have a chance of seeing it returned.
Then there are zero tolerance laws that allowed police to seize your property because anyone on it was using drugs.
We all pay the price for the drug prohibition, whether we use drugs or not. Time to end it completely.
But I do think there is value in taking a measured approach to the problem as opposed to opening the flood gates.
We shouldn't do this, because this doesn't 'solve' the problem in 100% of cases.
That is how nothing ever gets done. I think we should absolutely hit the low hanging fruit.
I mean, a few years ago, Oregon legalized Weed. This last election, they legalized shrooms (in certain clinical settings). Once people see progress being made, they are much more likely to go with the next step.
How can that kill off a dangerous black market?
Someone who is going to try heroin is going to try heroin. They can live a mostly long, healthy, productive life if they get clean drugs and needles. Where are they going to get that from decriminalization?
An idea I’ve noodled around with is adding drug (and alcohol) consumption as a badge to your drivers license. Every time you go to a drug dispensary you have to show your license.
If you get out of line, driving intoxicated, or commit any crimes while drunk or high they take your license until you complete rehab. And if you go too far off the deep end, maybe they keep your badges off your license for a very long time.
At least that way we can eliminate all the other crimes the war on drugs helps create.
I don't think this is as big a problem as people make it out to be.
In NYC, there is a black market for smuggled cigarettes because of the large taxes on them. Most people buy them from legit places regardless because it's much more convenient.
There are high alcohol taxes in Oregon and Washington, yet very little modern bootlegging. People prefer to buy legal alcohol in spite of the fact that moonshine is cheaper.
The risks of dealing with illegally manufactured substances are worse than the increased cost of buying from legitimate sources.
Tautologically correct, but I think the implication here is that availability doesn't affect whether someone will try heroin. I have a hard time believing that: it seems obvious that on the margin, there are some people who would try heroin if it were easier to get (and wouldn't if it were harder). We can argue about how big that margin is, but it seems hard to argue that it doesn't exist.
(Apologies if that's not actually what you were implying.)
Look at consumer products: generics or store brands are available for all kinds of products yet the substantial majority of sales are for branded products. And here the generics/stores brands are fairly similar to the branded products. But in the illegal drug market you have little idea of the quality of that product--so consumers will pay substantially more for products where they know exactly what they are getting [in this case the legal products].
For example, legalization might reduce the scale of drug trafficking, but I doubt it would eliminate it completely. Tobacco is completely legal yet due to high taxes there is still a large multi-billion dollar bootlegging business to smuggle cigarettes across tax gradients. Also, highly taxed drugs will likely result in an increase in related crimes like theft. I had a friend from high school who was addicted to heroin. When he ran out of money he was willing to mug old ladies to come up with the cash for more. If heroin were instead legal... why wouldn't he just steal directly from the legal distribution source now that the threat of violence is no longer there? You don't steal from the dealer because you might be killed, but stealing from Walmart or CVS or whoever is carrying it? Why not? Corporate policy probably says not to do anything.
Lastly, unless marketing is highly restricted, legalization of drugs will absolutely lead to an increase in usage across all demographics. And a net increase in usage will cause some % increase in DWI rates, overdose rates, health care impact, etc.
We will pay some price for legalization as well, it's just TBD and nebulous at this point.
It would be so cheap your friend from high school could afford it with a standard burger flipping job. He'd have no need to resort to violent crimes to afford heroin.
They might buy from bootleggers if they can't afford the fully-taxed cigs. That's a crime too, obviously, but somewhat less serious than armed robbery.
I can't really quantify "a lot" or whether the thieves were smokers that couldn't afford them, but it's clearly happening. Here are some armed robberies from 2020 in NYC that involved stealing cigarettes at gunpoint: [0][1][2]
> They might buy from bootleggers if they can't afford the fully-taxed cigs
I would guess this is the preferable option to robbing stores, but if you literally have no money, even bootleg cigarettes are off the table.
[0] https://abc7ny.com/armed-suspect-pulls-out-gun-steals-cigare...
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/02/18/robber-armed-with-rifle-hits-n...
[2] https://patch.com/new-york/parkslope/man-robs-nyc-7-elevens-...
Even if taxed at 100%, I have a really hard time believing that will result in most in drugs being more expensive.
I'm not super familiar with street prices of drugs, but if politicians tax drugs the way they tax cigarettes and alcohol, it will be burdensome for drug addicts and cause increased theft and bootleg operations that have some (but not all) of the same problems as drug trafficking.
And again, bootleg cigarette markets are almost devoid of violence compared to illegal drugs.
Ya, like how if you get the recipe for a drug only slightly wrong you turn it from useful tool to deadly poison. I want the FDA inspecting facilities. I want them testing purity, and then testing the tests that they use test the previously tested test. When I buy aspirin I want to know it is aspirin and not anything else. "Let the market decide" doesn't help me once I'm poisoned. Please government, regulate drug manufacturers.
Tax avoidance happens everywhere and it’s contribution to our violent crime rate is minute.
And why would your friend rob anyone if his heroin cost a fraction of today’s price, and he could easily procure it? And if he faced no Neil time for buying it legally?
That seems like more of a net positive IMO. Theft of institutions must be less deadly/detrimental than the alternative. Even if people were to steal more from (say) Walmart than rob grandmas, it'd still be positive.
>And a net increase in usage will cause some % increase in DWI rates, overdose rates, health care impact, etc.
This might not be the case because of increase purity/social and institutional support because of destigmatization/re-invested profits taken from taxing the product.
> Lastly, unless marketing is highly restricted,
You raise a good point. There is only one status quo, but legalization can take many forms. As an example, I mostly agree with the model presented here: https://transformdrugs.org/product/how-to-regulate-stimulant...
(See the "Balancing conflicting priorities" heading for some (admittedly sparse) discussion of drawbacks.)
Drugs would be manufactured and sold only by government-licensed operators, in unattractive packaging with prominent warnings, and advertisement would be strictly forbidden.
I also think that legalization and regulation can't happen in a vacuum. This may be an unpopular opinion in the United States, but I think that a social safety net (like welfare or even UBI) that allowed your friend to purchase legal heroin instead of mugging old ladies would be an excellent use of my taxes.
It’s insane to me that doctors can’t prescribe this stuff. If there was any justice in the world you could go to your doctor for a safe dose of anything on your birthday.
It seems odd to me that the government can charge a fine without a crime being committed. In my mind, this would remove the rights and protections that someone would have under a criminal charge.
So you did get pulled over. So you were in detention/arrest (insert lawyer debate here) as in you were physically stopped. At that point the cop can search your car. He probably did. He almost certainly looked in the back seat and counted the number of passengers/objects there, something he could not do as you sped by. He then examined your life in that he looked to see if you had outstanding warrants and whether your insurance/license/registration was all in order. Had he wanted to, he could remove you from the vehicle and pat you down for weapons. Speeding, being a crime, allowed him to do these things that parking tickets do not.
That's not entirely true (excluding the pat down). The "search" you are talking about is simply plain sight/smell/etc. A cop writing a parking ticket can look through the window of your car and run the plates to see if it's stolen, lacking registration, etc. In either case they need probable cause to do an actual search of your vehicle.
Not to mention, they can stop (in most states) you even if you didnt commit a crime, like at a DUI checkpoint.
I guess maybe your state is very different. Which is part of what I was asking about. Any offense, civil or criminal, must be defined in statute or code. So can you point me to that?
Less than 1 gram of heroin.
Less than 1 gram, or less than 5 pills, of MDMA.
Less than 2 grams of methamphetamine.
Less than 40 units of LSD.
Less than 12 grams of psilocybin.
Less than 40 units of methadone.
Less than 40 pills of oxycodone.
Less than 2 grams of cocaine.
Also interesting from that article is that the law changes things for "reasonable suspicion", so they may see fewer arrests for more than one reason.
"This prevents law enforcement from then searching vehicles because they can't develop reasonable suspicion, which is the grounds that allows them to ultimately continue to search for evidence of a crime, Parosa said."
From: https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/475.752
So, it sounds like 12 grams, regardless of strength. I guess don't get caught with one undried mushroom :)
> (B) Twelve grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of psilocybin or psilocin.
http://oregonvotes.org/irr/2020/044text.pdf
I wouldn’t bet on that actually holding up in court. 12g of pure psilocybin is about 600 doses, which a judge may determine is illegal based on the intent of the law.
In general, possession-vs-dealing is such a weird line to cut based on quantity of the drug.
The fact that 10 pills of MDMA in someone's possession likely means that it won't just be one person consuming all of those doesn't necessarily turn that person into a professional dealer. Not any more than a pack of cigarettes turns someone into a tobacco company if someone bums a smoke off of you.
I prefer the warnings to be helpful for informing adults weighing risks in their decision. Scarier warnings like on cigarette packs are a means of forcing personal or governmental ideals on others through fear. Provide all the known facts and let people make their choice.
Even if you decriminalised meth, for example, and removed the need for property crime to get it, it could still cause a lot of bad effects for people proximate to the users.
People stay awake for days, become irrational and violent. Prolonged use can trigger psychotic episodes.
There needs to be a balance between taking into account the safety and freedom of users and the safety and freedom of wider society.
There are middle-grounds between full legalization and full prohibition. It seems obvious that prohibition has been a failure. I think instead we should base it on how harmful and addictive they are. Drugs with low harm and low addiction potential should be easy to get. Other drugs should be legally obtainable (and manufactured and distributed by legitimate means) by addicts, but hard to get for most people.
Sometimes people bring up the case of alcohol, which seems to have relatively high addiction potential and harm, yet is still legal. I think this is a case of path dependence though. I don't know if I would advocate making a similarly harmful drug legal and easily obtainable today, but the cat is out of the bag on that one.
A lot of people got (get) "incidentally" addicted, due to overprescription / easy supply.
Regulatory failure and corruption didn't help, of course.
There's also an implied suitability in the sense that "stores wouldn't be allowed to sell if it was really that harmful". This may or may not be true but it certainly impacts our cultural mindset around alcohol.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chart+marijuana+usage+in+col...
I’m sure there are solid arguments against a license structure but I haven’t imagined a better middle ground between total prohibition and 19th century style cocaine in cough syrup.
On the other hand, if you were the kind of person who had a specific interest in any of those things, I think it is very likely that your friend group would enable you to get them pretty easily. (ie you'd probably have some friends for that purpose)
Which I think makes it criminal that psychedelics are criminal.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00187-9 is one of the many, many recent articles on the topic.
https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portuga...
Then the data says 10% ... it's laughable.
On the other hand, this is also subjective and anecdotal? I'm not doubting that data can have errors, but I'm having hard time criticizing data because it's not what someone "expects" it to be.
As another comment mentioned, using college-aged kids as a representative sample for the entire population is inherently flawed, especially when it comes to things like drug use.
I was actually taken aback at how negative his views on weed were. He made it sound like successful people in Norway won't touch the stuff. In contrast, I can't think of anyone in in my circle who would have shared his views.
It was a reminder of how we all live in our own bubbles.
Life continues as normal, just with fewer people in prison. As it should be.
Edit: I live in Oregon and voted for this. So yay, we're moving in the right direction.
and got this: https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/the-top-5-industries-lo...
I wouldn't care to venture a guess as to their thinking but the intent is clear: they don't want drug decriminalization.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_brachman_could_a_drug_prev...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/oregon-1st-state-d...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/04/election-dr...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-12-10/...
I would consider these outlets more or less mainstream. I think the 'real story' in this case is not a conspiracy of big pharma and the prison-industrial complex, but the slow change of attitudes and policy in the US. Occam's razor.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/politics/oregon-decriminalize...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/04/election-dr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/ballot-measures-propos...
In fact, I think you would be hard-pressed to find any news outlet that didn't cover it.
That the law goes into effect today is a bit of a technicality, so it's not surprising that most of the coverage was back in November.
There are other states where drug possession is only a misdemeanor, e.g.:
https://apnews.com/article/0216054dc6cd453f8d83de8bbc84caeb
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2015/ACT/pa/pdf/2015PA-00002-R00HB-07...
You say "other" as if that's the case in Oregon. As of today, it's no longer a misdemeanor (or in some cases, a felony).
The major one is that decriminalizing drugs cannot mean decriminalizing crime(theft) done to support addiction. Seattle has moved in this direction which has thrown its legal system into utter chaos as it has pretty much legalized petty crime for a certain class of people.
Being compassionate does not mean letting people do whatever they want. That being said, not treating people as criminals for putting substances into their own bodies is a great step and I hope other cities follow suit.
Does crime increase?
What impact does it have on the prison population and public health?
I adopted a teen who was in the system for 10 years because parents were constantly stoned.
Police had to bring kids home from school many times because The bio parents were so out of it.
If parents are stone/ drunk so regularly they shouldn't parent, it's child neglect/ abuse regardless of whether the drugs are legal.
Too often that choice is forced on folks and the major impact that has on your life can leave people resentful and angry which just isn't a good place to start being a parent from.
No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs".
Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads.
The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives.
Unless we as a society take a stand on some of these issues, we will be in deep trouble in a few years.
This already happens and has been the case for a long time. People get addicted to drugs regardless of their legality. The way to address addiction is through proper support programs and good healthcare for the people that suffer from it.
The drugs and the addiction do no harm (opiates, nicotine is very harmful - and legal).
The ISA made the English stop the programmes which was a catastrophe for the addicts
Nah, the next obvious step is to legalize them and have pure supplies of known purity and dosage distributed by the government at near-cost + tax to exclusively fund social programs and rehab. There's no need to bring profit into it.
Prohibition doesn't work. We've seen it time and time again. Let's be adults about the fact that addicts have, do, and will exist in our societies and take steps the minimize the harms to both them and society at large from their existence.
Consider if alcohol was free; would you expect alcoholics to still want to enter rehab? I think the answer is quite obviously yes. I think it's a common error of reasoning to think that illegal drugs are very different to alcohol.
Personally, I worry when "sin tax" money is used to fuel unrelated social programs. The incentives are now inverted. If drug usage goes down and the money flow decreases we're jeopardizing the foundation of other important things. Maybe its better to take the money when/where you can get it and deal with the problem down the road? I dunno.
https://www.city-journal.org/harm-reduction-san-francisco-ho...
You say that like there isn't a mental health epidemic already going on right now that's being ignored. Solve that and we're 99.9% of the solving your doomsday scenario...
[edit below]
> Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment.
I find it to be much better than the alternative where we make a choice with no experimental data, and instead of a small test small test sample being impacted by the decision, we have an entire country impacted by it. I really don't understand the hesitancy among some HN participates to experimentation in political decisions. In theory, people here all have jobs where the products and changes they ship are thoroughly tested and justified with experimentation. Medicine experiments with peoples lives all the time. To me, it's no different with laws. If we want good ones, don't just dive all-in based on some feel-goody sentiments: justify it with data.
It's not a perfect comparison, but there was an interview given by Alice Cooper about city officials in London trying to prevent him from doing a concert there back in his earlier days. The amount of publicity and attention it got him only helped make him more of a success, and he subsequently sent nice flowers and cigars to two notable detractors involved to say thanks.
There have to be laws against LSD or MDMA because they are enormous fun, and very safe.
Everything is harmful when used incorrectly, but useful when used correctly. I for one think these drugs are not inherently harmful, everything has a use. Why should doctors get to be a gatekeeper of my health if I choose to self medicate?
Not at all. Oregon is saying they are going to stop using police resources to punish people for self-destructive behavior. Most drug users are struggling to begin with. Adding prison time for something which is not hurting others is cruel.
> The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives.
As opposed to ruining people's lives for a behavior which isn't inherently harmful to others.
Not always, but often.
The self-contained, highly functional, occasional heroin user is real but there are plenty that do not live up to the expectation of being responsible drug users.
Prison works as a stand in for involuntary rehab, and a very poor one. But While thinking Oregon is over correcting, I will watch from afar with an open mind to see the outcome.
Possessing small quantities is no longer a crime.
The state can still crack down on dealers and supply chains. They can also prosecute for related crimes.
We've had this weird state for a long time where it is legal to own and abuse anti-depressants and opioids, but you can go to prison for a long time for owning small quantities of far less destructive/ addictive drugs like LSD.
This brings things back into a bit of parity.
I still think this is likely a good law though, because the justice systems current approach to drug crimes creates such a tremendous harm to society, there has to be some rather obvious benefits to curtailing that. If you look at how relatively minor drug convictions can affect people’s lives, it’s beyond any measure of proportionality. It’s just a harm easier to ignore because it mostly affects societal out-groups.
https://www.amazon.com/Legalize-This-Decriminalizing-Practic...
He argues (convincingly) that all drugs should be decriminalized. Putting someone in jail is the most extreme thing that our society does, and needs a serious justification. Every individual being put in jail deserves an answer, and no satisfactory answer can be given for putting someone in jail for a nonviolent drug use (or possession).
The reasons to decriminalize drugs, or not, from a government perspective is policy that can be typically measured as cold numbers. Such numbers can include:
* cost of drug treatment / rehabilitation
* cost of lost/missing work
* decreases in numbers of incarceration
* changes in traffic fatalities
* changes in rates/frequencies of drug consumption
Then there are second and third order effects are large policy changes that aren't immediately clear such as related petty crime, homelessness, changes in education attainment, changes to medical insurance expenses and so forth. More complicated than that are social changes that everybody wants to guess at, but are really a wild card.
Portugal has had great results with drug decriminalization, primarily that demand dramatically tanked. It isn't clear similar results will be achieved in the US due to cultural differences, but I applaud Oregon for being a test experiment that other states can learn from.
Please note that I have not stated any personal opinion for/against drug policy changes.
As for society as a whole it costs less to help people that abuse drugs than it does to imprison all drug users. We should not punish adults for what they choose to put in their bodies on their own time.
Even less if you leave the people who use drugs alone in their pleasures!
If somebody wants to check out of society I don't want to stop them. That is their choice. But if they are trying to participate in society and struggling with drug abuse we should try to help them.
In my world that is not what drug users are doing.
It has been prohibition that has caused most of the harm.
People have problems. Often people who have problems get lost, in madness, in violence, in drugs. Stop blaming madness, violence and drugs.
The people who have problems need help from their community, quite often. It seems (from the outside) that in the USA community is being deprecated.
Most people who use drugs have fun. They do not come to any harm, so long as they do not get busted by police, or beaten by the crooks that sell the drugs.
Time to get the law out of it. Time to start being kind to each other. People with problems do not need to be punished, usually that does not help.
Legalising drugs will lead, probably, to better drugs. Powdered injectable heroin came about because it is the best way to market such a illegal product. In the nineteenth century opium was mostly used in tinctures.
In South America cocaine was traditionally used completely differently chewed with lime (?)
Prohibition has been a catastrophe for the victims and good on you Oregon for looking for a way out.
Although the app that I use (Harmonic) shows all comments the same, which is nice :)
I just assume I don't have access until I have some sort of hidden karma value that's high enough.
A few tooltips would work wonders, and I believe can still be done with the nice, cleanly-simple html style they've gone for.
The destruction of so many lives... For absolutely zero gain. The initial facial motivations for these laws in the first place is all you need to figure out that they should never have been put in place.
And for the millions of people whose lives were destroyed by this unjust criminalization? They will get zero compensation. Isn't the world fantastic?
I kind of agree, but we do have 50 states, each running their own experiments. Massachusetts has right to repair. Nevada has legalized gambling. Some states have stronger employee freedom, some stronger employer freedom. Lots of different educational experiments. Helmet laws, concealed carry, state income tax, no state income tax. Can you pump your own gas?
Oh stop it, that's not nice. We are slowly, slowly increasing the ability for people to pump their own gas. Right about the time nobody needs to pump gas any more, we will fully legalize it.
We also have no sales tax, and I consider that a pretty big plus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/sunday/opioid-cri...
In the end, the only people who will be forced to look at open drug use and homelessness will be people who can't afford to buy a unit in a SafeStreets(tm) community (YC Winter 25!).
edit since HN is rate-limiting me: my point is, you aren't going to be happy with the response everyone-else has to social-engineering legislation they don't agree with. If you don't want more inequality and social divisions, stop giving people a reason to build a moat.
I'm not disagreeing because I'm genuinely not sure what point you're making?
The petty crimes fueled by drug use don't go away if you decriminalize it. We keep throwing money at homelessness but it doesn't seem to work at all because a lot of the problem homeless really need to be involuntarily committed for long term treatment of mental illness or addiction. Not many people want to go down that route, because we still don't really trust or are comfortable with that.
People are going to compensate the only way they can. You aren't going to chide them for locking their doors when policies make it easier for people to rob others.
They won't get scooped up for a lesser offense, yes. But if anything, it means when they do get scooped up it will be for a worse one, and it will happen.
Which policies are those?
I'm proud of Oregon for trying this, but I worry that having one state go it alone will result in problems resulting from unequal strain on Oregon's social safety nets. Many drug users are productive members of society, but many are not. Hopefully this does not cause a homeless migration to Oregon.