Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs | Hacker News Reader

Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs

theatlantic.com

15 pointsSeanBoocock9 comments

What Oregonians—myself included—failed to take into account is to what degree word would get around and attract every wannabe user who could afford a bus ticket.

Oops.

This needs to be at the federal level—with sufficient social support—or not at all.

The funding earmarked by the law that passed in 2020 and went into effect in 2021 wasn’t fully released until late 2022.

It is unsurprising that people would have a negative view of things right now since the only real effect they’ve likely seen so far are the reduction in criminal charges and not the massive influx of money into treatment and housing etc.

https://archive.is/A7vcl

I know there’s mixed feelings about this for many reasons but I think fundamentally this is the right step. Drugs are not the problem, mental health and lack of social services is. If we criminalize drugs, we’re throwing people who are struggling into prison which only exacerbates their problems.

I know how bad this sounds and I agree that there should be something better, but I’ve heard many times from users that hit awareness that the only way they would get clean is if they went to jail. Now they’ll never get clean.

Well they might be clean for a bit while in jail. It's rarely a long term solution though.

Right now we rely on people hitting “rock bottom” and hoping they snap themselves out of the addiction cycle at that point. The sad truth is the majority of people cruise through rock bottom and eventually end up dead. We need to support people before they get there and use therapy when people feel bored getting high all the time. Prisons are a massive cost to the tax payer already, a wholly alternative system for drug addicts could and should be created.

> Drugs are not the problem, mental health and lack of social services is.

Why can't both be the problem? There are plenty of people who don't have mental issues that take drugs recreationally and do dumb shit.

There are also people who seriously need help.

I don't see why we can't handle both of those issues separately.

God help us if governments make drugs legal then illegal as a means of ensnaring more people into the system. We can say it's necessary because addiction is skyrocketing, but if the response to a change is to imprison people, then how is that not a despotic scheme of monumental proportions?

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