Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 fast food illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require weight tests for homeless people to receive government help like CAAP payments?

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.

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

Then address the root of the issue.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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!

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.

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?

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

Citation needed.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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...

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

"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...

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

"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.)

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

-- 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.

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.