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Comment by anewaccount2021 | Hacker News Reader

anewaccount2021

The not-homeless, not-drug-addict rest-of-society is already well on its way with its response...gated communities. No homeless, no open drug use...all protected by private property laws and private security. Get ready for more of them. It doesn't matter what laws you will pass, you don't get past the front gate unless your card scans.

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.

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To be honest, can you blame them?

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.

Decriminalizing possession doesn't make burglary legal.

Decriminalizing possession doesn't stop the need for people to steal to afford drugs, though. It also means people who do them will only interface with the criminal justice system when they commit these kinds of support crimes.

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.

I'm having a hard time seeing, though, that it will really change the number of drug users substantially. So the ones who were going to resort to burglary still will, and we will catch them and put them into the criminal justice system. But the users who manage to be otherwise gainfully employed (or at least self-sufficient enough without crime), we can forget about.

> when policies make it easier for people to rob others.

Which policies are those?

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_P...

I'm not sure what you're saying here. For a start you're conflating drug use, open drug use and drug addiction. Homelessness obviously has some correlation with some types of drug use but there's a lot of non-homeless, non-addicted drug users. And you haven't touched on hard vs soft, addictive vs non-addictive drug use.

I'm not disagreeing because I'm genuinely not sure what point you're making?

Gated communities are quite rare in Oregon. Sure, they exist, but they are very much the exception. Even in areas with multi-million dollar homes (this ain't California, remember ;-)), the roads are usually public (or private but ungated). I can't see simple drug decriminalization changing that here, and I haven't seen anything to suggest a desire to head that way.

Looks like you're getting downvoted for raising a valid point. Further evidence of the reddit crowd infecting HN with their downvotes of anything that raises an uncomfortable debate.

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.

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