The Oregon Health Authority then sat on that money for several years, bickering about procedures, policies, etc, and not a single dollar was sent out for several years after the law changed.
Treatment centers are finally starting to get open, years late. In the meantime, we spent years decriminalizing the drugs, while then guiding people into treatment, with no actual treatment available to them (and literally amassing hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for it, before spending anything)
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portl...
Either let people do drugs and let them worry about the consequences, or, if society is going to be on the hook for the consequences, don't. There is no feasible way to hold both positions at the same time.
Nobody’s a victim when a kid falls and breaks an arm while skateboarding, but we have programs like CHIP to help kids have access to healthcare to get that arm treated, regardless.
The kid is going to be fine after they are in a cast for a few weeks/months. A fentanyl addict, even with million of dollars over a few years of treatment, is more than likely never going to be OK again. Both involve moral hazard (if society is responsible for the consequences), but the consequences of both aren't similar at all.
If I may try to thread this needle:
- drug use has serious consequences for users directly and for society
- imprisonment is not effective at curbing drug use in individuals or systemically, because illicit drugs will always be available, see prohibition for the strongest case here
- illicit drug trafficking increases other criminal elements like gang violence, petty theft, etc, incurring high costs on society
- it is believed that addressing the causes for hardcore drug use as a mental and physical health issue may actually reduce drug use
- that work may be expensive today, but is expected to become a net positive over time as drug use declines
The idea is literally investing to fix a problem properly, rather than slapping on ever more expensive band-aid solutions as the problem gets worse.
If you don't believe health care can reduce drug use, that may be a sound position to hold, but if you believe it is effective it is absolutely not at odds to both desire investment in it and to seek decriminalization.
I disagree that hardline policies can't work. In China, there is no social safety net for drug users (nor much for anyone else), nor is there much sympathy for it, therefore...drug abuse happens for sure, but it just doesn't survive very long (one way or the other).
But regarding more permissive western cultures: imprisonment in the American system of "we put you away and don't bother with substance abuse treatment in prison" doesn't work, but there are definitely alternatives to that (flood prisons with substance abuse treatment programs).
As a tax payer it's perfectly reasonable that I don't want to pay for that, though.
If after a decade it ends up being very expensive but very effective, or moderately expensive and moderately effective, or expensive and not very effective, we can make better informed decisions -- rather than stick with prison by default, just because it is cheapest for now.
Say we put someone in prison then treat them for drug use and it works. This person is cured, found jesus, and will never touch another drug in their life. Why would you still keep them in prison? They’d have been sentenced to a time in prison regardless. Why? Would you propose a system of early release for cured drug offenders?
But we can’t really go there as a western country, so we try to socially reduce the consequences of drug use: not only are we not going to throw you in jail, but we are going to make sure you don’t starve/freeze to death and we will even try to cure you (even if we are going to fail at that most of the time).
If we had drug treatment in prison that worked, we would be horribly stupid not to just lean in on that. I’m totally for “go to prison but get out of you get clean.” Who wouldn’t?
No, the voters decriminalized drugs with a constitutional amendment.
I think the problem is quite the opposite from your diagnosis. There are no standards for legislation “success” or “failure”. Very few bills actually achieve their stated aims, and all the ones that don’t are kept on the books, then the results are blamed on under-budgeting, or partisan politics (which should be foreseeable if true).
A rehabilitation program requires a very high level of trust from those seeking help, especially so if the program is trying to pull people off of the streets.
Re-criminalizing drug usage would make it difficult to convince people that they won't be arrested.
Admittedly, I don't know how this problem has been approached elsewhere and what was needed to actually improve things.
Decriminalization is the only ethical way to move forwards. For decades now we have abused our own populace and those of other countries to the point of parody in the name of this prohibition, and, shock of shocks, it has failed, just like prohibition did, with the added benefit of we have the documents from the Nixon administration who were quite ready to say, behind closed doors anyway, that the entire point from the start of the war on drugs was openly to fuck with hippies and black people at scale, and that was before the CIA was flooding ghettos across the country with drugs to find/launder money for their operations.
None of this has ever been about the fucking drugs, it has always been yet another cudgel wielded by the state to further it's own ends. IF we decide we need to regulate substances based on actual scientific documented evidence, not puritan sensibilities of sin and vice, then so be it and we can figure that out after the fact. But until then, the entire existing systemic infrastructure for it is frankly, poisoned. It is not fit for the task it is entrusted and should be destroyed.
Burn it down, and start over.
Prohibition was a massive success where did you get the impression it didn't work? Nothing has ever reduced domestic violence or alcohol related deaths as much. Even after being repealed it fundamentally changed how Americans interact with alcohol; how much people drink is still massively below what is was pre-prohibition.
> Burn it down, and start over.
They did and the whole article is just about how much worse it made everything. Not just visible issues or people complaining about moral issues but OD deaths surged.
It also more or less created organized crime in the United States, and laid the foundations for every illicit-business-at-scale that would follow it. Of course it reduced alcoholism: alcohol was illegal, and anything made illegal will be necessarily reduced in availability. But it didn't get rid of it, and it made the alcohol that remained far more dangerous:
- The economics of smuggling meant that lighter alcohol like beer and wine were far less profitable to transport than hard liquors like whiskey, bourbon, vodka, and moonshine. SO MUCH moonshine.
- Because the aforementioned products were illegal, there was now zero government oversight involved in their production and distribution, meaning you often had no idea what the fuck you were actually buying and if it was any good, or hell, even safe to consume. Much like the war on drugs, and, if you wanna get REAL political, the fall of Roe v Wade, making it illegal, be it booze, smokes, pot, meth, or abortion doesn't make it not happen: it makes it unsafe.
- Worse still, the legal issues meant that if a particular establishment was selling unsafe liquor, you couldn't do shit about it because, again it's illegal and any report to authorities about the lack of safety put you in legal hot water. This meant the enforcement that did exist was basically down to the aforementioned organized crime rings, who didn't bother with a jury trial, they'd just put you in a hole out in the woods.
And, naturally, no taxes are paid on all this commerce that is very much still happening, and is riskier to the people engaged in it, to suit the puritan sensibilities of a loud minority. Which is probably a big part of why it was no longer the law of the land. And that's all before you consider the fact that it flies directly in the face of all the individual freedom that this country's supposed to be built on in the first place (not that that's usually true, but in such matters, I think we should strive for it.).
As GP was alluding to, all the things that require spending $ on, which people aren't apparently willing to spend after the symbol of voting for decriminalization. Which, if they're a mandatory part of decriminalization, but people never end up paying for, mean that decriminalization isn't actually a viable policy.
I was really hoping that for once we might have a reasoned debate about decriminalisation (or not). I can see we are yet again going down the same route of many people simply relaunching their pro/anti positions.
If you ever despair of politics, this is why; this is politics done badly.
The US has spent more than a trillion on the War on Drugs, we should use a fraction of that on housing and healthcare, instead of thinking about restarting the trillion dollar war on drugs
How much have we spent on police in this time? I think it’s worth spending a trillion to fight the war on murder, theft and rape…
It seems like the best case scenario is "We legalize drugs and then raise tax dollars and then use that money to fund programs so that people that are addicted aren't harmed too much in the long run" just seems not ideal.
I get the arguments for personal liberty, but we wouldn't allow other risky behavior that has a such huge societal cost.
Former city council members often railed against it; as a member they’d be assigned city bureaus (fire, police…) to basically manage day to day.
Former members complained they were so busy dealing with office work rather than understanding Portlands problems in the abstract and crafting legislation. Also the mayor was on the council and did the same job.
The hope is the new system (mayor and council are now separate entities, city manager oversees bureaus so mayor and council can focus on legislative matters).
Also I’d like to point out every city in the US is a raging dumpster fire of homeless, collusion, graft, fraud… Portland isn’t unique and it’s hardly as bad as say PA cities. America is a shithole country full of FOMO obsessed fast fashion clothes, food, gadgets, and media and gives zero fucks about setting that aside to clean itself up. Garbage in garbage out