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Comment by j_walter | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know the specifics in Oregon, but in many places (especially bigger cities) that stopped prosecuting drugs and prostitution, "throwing everyone in jail" was not the previous scenario. People were arrested then put into diversionary programs that were enforced by the courts. It worked much better than just letting people stay on the streets as the process acted as a wake up call for many (of course, not all).

Yea not jail but supervised programs makes sense.

Oregon basically made it a $100 fine or you could get treatment...<5% of the people arrested chose treatment. Portugal had more rules requiring treatment which is what made it effective...Oregon did not choose that route.

https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2023/04/22/economist-magazi...

> Portugal had more rules requiring treatment which is what made it effective...Oregon did not choose that route.

As I explained in a sibling comment, requiring treatment is not the difference. Very few people who use drugs in Portugal are subject to mandatory drug treatment.

The key difference is that Portugal has a radically different housing policy than Oregon. As of 2019, housing is a formal legal right (and even before 2019, it was much closer to a de facto right than it was to Oregon's current model, which is "if you can't pay for a roof, pitch your tent over there, and hope we don't arrest you for vagrancy").

Most people who use drugs do not meet clinical criteria for addiction, so drug treatment programs are irrelevant and a waste of money for them. For those who do, drug treatment programs are still a waste of money unless they have stable housing, because it is essentially impossible to achieve and maintain sobriety without stable housing.

> I don't know the specifics in Oregon, but in many places (especially bigger cities) that stopped prosecuting drugs and prostitution, "throwing everyone in jail" was not the previous scenario. People were arrested then put into diversionary programs that were enforced by the courts.

The big difference between Oregon and the other cities/countries that tried this approach successfully is not diversionary programs - it's housing. In Oregon, housing is not guaranteed, which means any money spent on mandatory treatment programs for people without stable housing is essentially wasted.

Diversionary programs and rehabilitation are a waste of time and money if the recipient does not have guaranteed access to stable housing. It's virtually impossible to achieve and maintain sobriety in those circumstances.

> but I don't think the solution is "let's just go back to throwing everyone in jail".

As someone who lives in Oregon we need some way to force addicts into treatment. Jail worked in some cases because it meant that some addicts no longer had access to the drugs they were addicted to. But even better would be more of a therapeutic environment where they actually get treatment for addiction. However, it seems that most addicts aren't going into treatment willingly (big surprise) and this is why we're seeing so much trouble here. I voted for 110, but now I'm thinking that was a mistake. It either needs some major revisions to enable forcing drug users into treatment or it just needs to be repealed (the former would be better, I think).

How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit?

If someone wants to get high in their home, I don't care. If someone wants to get high in a bar or such, I don't care. If someone wants to get high in one of those places and then walk out in public _without harming anyone else_, I don't care.

The thefts, the assaults, the zombies and crazies in public, that stuff I care about.

There is a middle-ground between "criminalize USE" and "stop enforcing laws, particularly when drug abusers and homeless are involved".

> How about, and I'm just spit-balling here, how about we enforce laws again theft and assault and "quality of life" offenses like smoking and shooting up drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit?

> If someone wants to get high in their home

That doesn't work in a society in which housing is not guaranteed, and in which almost all "last-resort" housing options (such as shelters) require sobriety. Achieving and maintaining sobriety without stable housing is virtually impossible, and yet somehow society expects everyone to be able to do it and then complains when this doesn't magically happen.

The "tough on crime" mentality says, "well, this should give you an incentive to stop using drugs", except that attitude is completely fantastical: it goes against all clinical evidence of how substance use disorders actually work, and all empirical evidence of what resources a person needs to stop using drugs (assuming that is even the end goal, which is not a given).

To spell it out: if you don't provide housing options for people who use drugs, then you will wind up with homeless people using drugs in public. And criminalizing drug use doesn't change that; it just moves those people "out of sight" to jails and prisons, where they keep using drugs, at a monetary cost to society that is literally orders of magnitude greater than the straightforward option of just giving them housing.

> The "tough on crime" mentality says, "well, this should give you an incentive to stop using drugs",

How many times did I have to say that I don't care if people use drugs?

_I don't care if people use drugs._ I'm not interested in forcing folks into rehab.

But this crap:

> That doesn't work in a society in which housing is not guaranteed...

> To spell it out: if you don't provide housing options for people who use drugs

Is a BS excuse to let folks commit THEFT and ASSAULT because It's Really The System, or expose kids to fent smoke on the train because It's Really The System, or have kids step over zombies on the sidewalk because It's Really The System, or have children and women (and some men) harassed or threatened by crazies because It's Really The System, etc.

I don't care about the drug use. I worked with homeless folks for years and most of them are not OD'ing in public parks or harassing folks on the sidewalk. Stop making excuses for criminal behavior.

> Is a BS excuse to let folks commit THEFT and ASSAULT because It's Really The System, or expose kids to fent smoke on the train because It's Really The System, or have kids step over zombies on the sidewalk because It's Really The System, or have children and women (and some men) harassed or threatened by crazies because It's Really The System, etc. I don't care about the drug use. I worked with homeless folks for years and most of them are not OD'ing in public parks or harassing folks on the sidewalk. Stop making excuses for criminal behavior.

Your original comment literally draws a false equivalence between "theft and assault" and "smoking and shooting up drugs in public parks, on sidewalks, on transit".

Here's your comment:

Since the article is only talking about decriminalization of drugs (theft and assault are still criminal offenses), the only relevant difference here regards people who are using drugs in public places.

It's a pretty convenient bait-and-switch that allows you to complain about people using drugs (which is neither violent nor criminal behavior), and then when people call you out on it, revert back to complaining about violent and criminal behavior, which nobody in this entire comment chain except for you is talking about.

> Stop making excuses for criminal behavior.

Nobody's talking about criminal behavior. We're talking about drug use, which, as discussed in the article, is not a criminal offense in Oregon.

> Since the article is only talking about decriminalization of drugs (theft and assault are still criminal offenses), the only relevant difference here regards people who are using drugs in public places.

You should look up to the folks I was replying to:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36959984

Even from the article:

"Earlier this year, Portland business owners appeared before the Multnomah County Commission to ask for help with crime, drug-dealing, and other problems stemming from a behavioral-health resource center operated by a harm-reduction nonprofit that was awarded more than $4 million in Measure 110 funding.

...

"In a nonpartisan statewide poll earlier this year, more than 60 percent of respondents blamed Measure 110 for making drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse."

https://archive.ph/rznQr

The rest of your comment is just as full of misrepresentations.

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

They didn't spend any money on it...they didn't fund or push treatment programs at all. The implementation was 100% awful...just like every Oregon program that means well.

https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2023/05/13/survey-shows-ore...

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-mea...

Why do legislatures keep passing half-baked drug-related measures? It's not like this was the first one.

Measure 110 was not introduced or passed by legislators, it was passed by the public via ballot measure.

Yep, and it took effect 13 weeks after voting it through. No possible way to get things in order in only 13 weeks...especially at the state level.

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