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Comment by felizuno | Hacker News Reader

So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users?

I was beaten nearly to death (in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood) in Seattle in 2020 by two men enabled to descend into meth addiction by permissive policies. In my victim support group I met so many people - innocent people - permanently injured & disfigured like me, or raped, or psychologically destroyed by meth users who had been allowed to live in tents in their neighborhoods and use hard drugs undisturbed until it was too late.

It's easy to treat this like a philosophical topic when you've had the privilege not to pay any personal price. For some of us it's more than an argument on the internet. If you think we should allow people to sell/buy/use meth please have the courage to attend a support group for victims of violent crimes. I doubt you'd claim a moral high ground for decriminalization to the faces of victims like me who have had our lives destroyed by meth users.

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I'm severely visually impaired. I walk and use public transit. Currently in the pacific northwest. My quality of life has decreased so much since covid and when these policies came into effect. I tripped over someone asleep on the train floor and they lost their shit. I was really scared. One of dozens of instances. And the cities in general must become less walkable to avoid crime. Fences around apartments that mean less sidewalk access, store entrances near transit that close early, and people camping on the sidewalk that block access.

At this moment, it feels society cares less about me and others who want to use public services than the addicts.

It's been an especially hard couple of months here in Portland. I've traveled around, hoping to find a new place to live. But all the big US cities with good transit suffer the same issues. At best, I wish I could move to another country I could live in and feel I had a sense of agency, if anyone would have me. But at this point I'm feeling like it's time to give up.

hopefully this doesn’t sound insulting - have you considered cities outside of the US, like Tokyo or others in Japan?

Japan is probably one of the most blind/disabled friendly cities I’ve seen. Sometimes there are people sleeping on the floor of the trains too but if you trip over them they’d likely continue sleeping or apologize to you.

Emigration to Japan is well nigh impossible

Austin is quite visually impaired friendly. The Texas School for the Blind is here and I often see people walking around with canes. You also won't trip over anyone sleeping on the streets, save a couple of places downtown.

This is peak Hacker News response

If this is downvoted the comment it’s responding to also should be.

I mean really… “have you thought about moving to another country that speaks a different language and is a 20 hour flight from anyone you know?”

I know a bit about Tokyo and while I love the idea, I don't think it's very practical. The language barrier is real. I'm not great at non-computer languages, and Japanese script seems tough to read when one is visually impaired. From what I've seen, living as a foreigner there can be a bit isolating long term.

Currently looking at Europe. But immigration is hard anywhere. And there are tax implications I don't understand well.

I'm a Canadian who travelled to Seattle recently and I found that city legitimately scary downtown. The addicts were unstable and violent like nothing I'd ever seen, even in some of the worst parts of our country.

Walking through downtown Seattle at night with a suitcase trying to find my hotel is the first time in my life I thought I was about to be attacked or robbed, but thankfully I only had stuff thrown at me by the junkies.

The west coast cities of the US post covid are significantly more dangerous feeling than the east coast cities. In the past couple years Ive been in portland, seattle, chicago, philly, nyc, detroit, boston, washington dc and smaller cities. Seattle and Portland top the list as the cities that seem the most run down, and with the most visible violent crime.

I'm an American with decades of history traveling to West coast cities.

Portland and Seattle in the past few years look completely different than they did even a few years ago. Both cities have always had run down parts, but now it feels like the blight permeates almost everything. Some of my favorite places to visit have either closed entirely or now have limited hours and require me to buzz in at the front door so someone can visually verify that I'm not a threat. I can't explain how strange it feels for this shift to have happened in a matter of years.

It really trickles down so much. You can't use a public restroom anymore with the ease you once could. Items in stores are locked or just not available, employees feel unsafe, including my family members who are just trying to work college jobs. It's possible to help people without fully enabling them but too many who have been voted into office don't see or care to see the consequences of their policy. And the sad thing is they keep getting the green light from voters. I quit trying to understand a while ago.

I recently visited Downtown Seattle, and most people I encountered shared your opinion, but based on their stories, it’s not that bad by current standards.

Honestly, it’s much better than I’m used to. In a day of walking around, only one drugged out person was screaming uncontrollably. When he saw me, he politely asked for a light, and I said no, so he went back to screaming at nothing in particular.

It’s not like I was tripping on human feces (SF, post-pandemic, though they seemed to have cleaned things up a bit for APEC) or needles (various cities in Europe, pre-pandemic).

I don’t mean to trivialize the problems in Seattle. It is much worse than it was. However, it’s better than average these days.

At least in California, housing shortages are a big root cause, as is the broken approach to mental health care: It’s basically illegal to treat someone during a psychotic episode until they’ve already committed some serious violent crimes.

Yeah I was there before 2020 and it was beautiful, I'm surprised to hear what it's like now.

What part of Canada? I live in the Seattle area and visited Vancouver for the first time recently, and Vancouver was much visibly worse than Seattle in terms of open drug use and general sketchiness. Obviously there’s a lot of potential selection bias there in terms of what neighborhoods I visited there vs where I spend time in Seattle. But I was still surprised at how bad it was.

Vancouver was definitely worse than Seattle in the 90s with respect to open drug use, but now...it feels about the same last time I visited last spring. But I spend time in downtown Seattle and walked through China town in Vancouver.

In Vancouver the rate of violent crime doesn’t feel that high. There are lots of people strung out of their mind and they will definitely yell at you but I have never heard of anyone in my circle of friends and their circle of friends being assaulted.

A friend of mine recently closed his store in Seattle, permanently, and relocated to another county. He had the door smashed, and the organized thieves ransacked the place, and caused a lot of costly damage. (He showed me the security camera footage.) The police not only did not come, they told him they no longer responded to property crimes, only violent crimes.

The law does not allow citizens to protect their property, and the police won't, either. So what to do? Leave.

Even violent crimes might not be enough to get attention. I know a couple that was mugged at a gas station near the Oakland airport this past Thanksgiving. The muggers stole stuff from the car with their infant and toddler in it.

Even then, the clerk watched the whole thing while not calling 911. The police didn’t come out and would only take a report if they went to the station, which they ended up not doing.

If something like that isn’t even making it into the crime stats…

This aspect of the discussion truly baffles me. It's like there's noone but the drug users to consider. Oh, do the addicts get enough treatment? Ah, they want to camp next to a school because they find more 'shelter' from the rain there? No problemo!

Aren't tax-paying citizens allowed to demand that they be able to walk into a train station that doesn't smell like urine and fecal matter?

They think that if you are a peaceful citizen with a place to live and a job, you are privileged and so the government doesn't have to help you. And if you are a homeless addict or criminal, you are an oppressed victim and deserve the help of the government.

I agree with you, the government is supposed to serve the tax-paying and law abiding citizens. But this oppressor-victim ideology that's spreading everywhere is blinding everyone from seeing it.

I don't think this particular issue has actually been debated on the internet all that much because I haven't seen it come up that much; the obvious solution is to draw a parallel to alcohol. It is illegal to be drunk and driving. Similarly it can be illegal to be high on something exotic and out in public. As hot takes go that seems fairly cool.

The issue with drug criminalisation is that people get arrested who weren't going to hurt anyone, weren't any threat to themselves, haven't done anything objectionable and nevertheless were risking prison. The wins on that front should be preserved.

> Similarly it can be illegal to be high on something exotic and out in public. As hot takes go that seems fairly cool.

Nope, try suggesting that in much of the mainstream/popular internet and you'll be immediately pounced on for discriminating against the homeless (and then the people who said that will get pounced on for saying homeless rather than "unhoused"). "So you think it should be legal for rich people to get high but not poor people". Pretty soon someone will bring race into it too.

Just adding my context that i have had this conversion on the "mainstream internet" (reddit front page threads) and not been attacked for it.

Honestly it seems to me like that stuff is happening less and less often. It just comes with not talking to literal children all the time. I'm all for privacy but i think in these arguments we should really be allowed to know who is 14 and who isn't. I think a big part of the toxicity and radicalism on the internet is that we're now having to have political discussions invaded by literal high schoolers. No one would privilege their ridiculous opinions at the Thanksgiving dinner table

I'd say just the opposite. People who think age means they have life experience are doing the most to damage the quality of discussion. Nowadays if you're born in the right class you can reach age 30 - hell, you can make it all the way to retirement - while never being exposed to any real consequences for your actions (and in fact everyone around you will go out of their way to prevent that happening). There are plenty of literal 14 year olds who have a lot more to contribute than a PMC "excellent sheep" who coasted right through school, university, and a not-quite-clearly-nepotism career in middle management or consulting.

>I don't think this particular issue has actually been debated on the internet all that much because I haven't seen it come up that much; the obvious solution is to draw a parallel to alcohol. It is illegal to be drunk and driving.

It's already illegal to drive impaired, doesn't matter your intoxicant. It could even be legally prescribed by a doctor.

But it's much more legal to sell alcohol than it is any other drug. Put the onus on the drug sellers to provide a safe controlled place to consume... which I hope comes with some legality and maybe some access to the banking system.

Stay strapped. Sorry to be harsh, but it’s not policies that keep you and yours safe. You need to protect you and yours and government policies aren’t going to protect you from hard drug users. Sorry you had a terrible experience but since ancient times people have weapons to defend against any enemy.

Yet most western countries has found ways to improve upon those ancient times.

Quick addendum that Washington state is open carry, as far as I know.

> Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. ...

> In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; ... no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

— Hobbes, Leviathan

Notably, Hobbes's point is that we entered a social contract—placing a Power above ourselves—in order to avoid this eternal warfare.

The kind of environment you describe, where the government cannot protect you from violence and so you have to protect yourself, is the definition of a failed state. It's not a normal situation that happens with normal governments.

I will say here what I have said many times in real life: if I had been carrying a gun I would probably have been shot with it - dead men tell no tales and they certainly ran my pockets.

I was jumped from in front and behind by two people by complete surprise and tackled to the ground. The amount of time between the beginning of the assault and losing consciousness was only a few seconds. From the video it looks like they already tried to kill me by repeatedly stomping on my head and kicking me in the face. I'm speculating but I think if they found a gun on me they would have just shot me with it.

That is chilling. I am so sorry you experienced this.

What neighborhood was this in? I used to do long urban hikes throughout Seattle and have had a few close calls with near-mugging. Since the pandemic it has begun to feel really risky to randomly wander around.

Were they ever caught? This seems like assault (and battery?) all already illegal.

Your problem doesn’t seem to be drugs but (probably) the defacto police work stoppage? That’s the problem in the Bay Area atleast [1]

https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-...

Getting assaulted sounds like the main problem. Police are a reactive force, they're useless to prevent or break up an assault unless it's a very ineffective (slow) attack

> Police are a reactive force, they're useless to prevent or break up an assault unless it's a very ineffective (slow) attack

This seems like you’re implying that stricter enforcement and tougher punishments are useless?

I tend to agree, we saw bright and clear as day with the “war on drugs” that being more vicious to addicts didn’t work and the problem only grew.

Im certainly no expert though, and what often seems to be missing from these conversations is actual experts who research and actively work amongst these addicted and homeless people.

It’s wild how often we have conversations about incredibly complicated and wildly nuanced subjects with very little back and forth from those with far more expertise than ourselves. Then we scratch our heads and tilt our heads in confusion.

Addiction may have been the root cause of GP's assault, but there are any number of reasons you may be attacked in broad daylight. Despite the risk of prosecution to the perpetrator, many thousands are assaulted every year. Not even the threat of the noose kept the Old West safe.

In the face of imminent threat, only personal preparedness is of value.

>I tend to agree, we saw bright and clear as day with the “war on drugs” that being more vicious to addicts didn’t work and the problem only grew.

Drug use has grown much faster under the current regime of tolerance of drug use. There were lots of problems with the war on drugs, but the idea that it didn't reduce drug use isn't based on evidence.

As an analogy, skin cancer had been rising despite sunscreen.

Do you have any actual evidence of this? I would love to see it. I wouldn't be particularly shocked either way to find that drug use has increased faster in places that decriminalized or not, but it's an important starting point for discussions. Assuming everyone is being honest in their data-gathering as well as consistent in methods.

Sure. For one, prohibition keeps the equilibrium price higher, which reduces equilibrium consumption. This RAND report from 2000 estimated a free market cocaine price would be 3% of the price under prohibition.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP909.html

2nd, if you prefer a more direct account, this doctor describes the effects of BC's safe supply program. Basically they bought opiods and gave them out for free to addicts. These were often resold, crashing the market price, increasing consumption of these as a gateway drug. This is to illustate the expected effects of a lower price: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-must-end-...

This widely cited study on prohibition of alcohol in the USA found a long run 30% cut while prohibition was in force, with a sharper initial cut: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3675/w3675...

Overall legal production is generally cheaper, and a cheaper price produces higher equilibrium use. You could of course tax legal drugs, but you'd need a war on illegal supply to enforce that.

Surprisingly yes, they were caught with much credit and appreciation to the detectives of SPD. In fact the police were very helpful in accessing support and counseling, and I should be completely honest that I would have described myself as loosely "anti police" until I had this experience.

The issue was simply that these men were psychotic after using meth in an uninterrupted fashion, and emboldened by the fact that the police were not allowed to interrupt their daily drug use or property crimes. I'm very confident that if possession/use of meth had been treated criminally these men would not have been in our neighborhood and able to target me. During pretrial I was made aware that they had been contacted multiple times in the days before my assault but police were not allowed to arrest them despite the fact that they were using/in possession of methamphetamine.

I appreciate this problem and empathize with what you've been through. I live in the bay with a toddler. I presume by "treated criminally" you mean jail time. But by all accounts and data, jail time makes drug habits significantly worse [1]. The extreme version of this is just dragnet police enforcement turning every simple drug use into ever-worsening drug use (aka the weed-to-fentanyl pipeline).

In your specific case, it means a low-level drug offender going to jail and coming out hardened using more aggressive drugs, evermore ready to unleash violence at worse levels.

I'm happy to think through what a low-recidivism version of "treated criminally" could be, but it is not any of the options we currently have.

The paper I linked has some interesting suggestions as to how to change the current incarceration systems to support actual drug treatment.

P.S: I think police should have better tools, and better pay (it's a hard job!) but also higher accountability, Police vs. Anti-Police is a made-up twitter dichotomy.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234751/

I think we probably agree to a large extent. There are a lot of comments here, so I want to quote one of my responses to another person in an effort to inject some consistency, but tl;dr the reason I think decriminalization is the issue is that AFAIK our criminal justice system is the only way we can confiscate drugs or force a person into treatment such as inpatient detox and/or rehab:

""" To me it's not so much about punishing drug use (jail time), it's about stopping drug addiction (intervention and recovery). For example I think intervening in such a way that a user is confirmed to get at least a few hours of sleep before potentially using meth again would be a big start.

I'll admit that I support confiscating drugs when found, but I'm not advocating that arrest is always appropriate. I am in favor of punishing selling meth, which I acknowledge is perhaps hypocritical given my other beliefs knowing that plenty of people sell to support their habits.

I do think it's important to have a mechanism of mandatory intervention, and my non-lawyer understanding is that criminalizing drugs is really the only way to put mandatory intervention on the table. I met mothers who could not force their children into rehab, for example. I should be clear that I don't feel this way about all drugs, but I think that methamphetamine specifically poses a risk to the safety of both users and people around them that merits mandatory intervention.

If we had functional mechanisms to to enact mandatory interventions for users that were non-criminal I'm definitely open to that. Depending on the targeted success rate it seems like inpatient detox + rehab would be required in many cases, and I am simply not aware of non-judicial ways we can force a person into those circumstances against their will (which in the case of meth I admit I support even if that opinion is controversial).

I am not an expert, but nonetheless I'm now entangled with the topic as one that defines significant aspects of my life (loss of smell and hearing, PTSD, facial disfiguration). I think we can do better than we have been, both recently and since Nixon, but I think that having tough conversations is part of how we'll get better. My experience is that people in my situation frequently have our perspectives invalidated as "politically incorrect" or otherwise irrelevant [...], and I wanted to speak up to make sure people know that we exist and we don't want our numbers to grow. """

Likewise, the problem isn't the drunk driver, it's that the drunk driver killed your family.

Do you think an addict considers the closure rates on assault cases before harming a stranger?

> Do you think an addict considers the closure rates on assault cases before harming a stranger?

Actually, yes. These people are not instinct-driven animals completely incapable of thought.

Similarly, if you know that drunk driving is very likely to get you caught then you will do that less than if you know there's 0% of getting caught.

You can tell a lot about how someone thinks by listening for denial of agency. The CEO had to do it; that drug addict had no choice; he had to defend his honor; she couldn’t lie.

Sometimes people have only one choice, but they almost always have agency.

Your experience of addiction must be significantly different than mine.

I was referring to the language people use to convert other humans into objects or automatons.

But if you deny the addict any agency, you deny the possibility of eventual recovery. One could also point to the Sacklers as the ones with agency in that scenario. But somebody made choices; it didn’t just happen and there’s nothing that anyone could have done.

Well no, the problem is transit-poor environments that force every old trip to be a car trip [1]. What you're asking for is recompense, what I'm asking for is a system wide permanent fix.

EDIT: Rephrased retribution->recompense, that is to say recompense is good, but is not optimized for avoidance in the future (i.e. a system-wide fix)

[1]: https://urbanist.co/public-transportation-reduces-drunk-driv...

I actually don't think we should decriminalize. Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices.

There's no reason to fund crime (drug dealers/organized crime), maim and kill users, push users into poverty, and generate and push the externalizes of drug use onto the rest of society. This is the choice we have made and continue to make a society under a prohibitionist regime, decriminalization or not.

Illogical thinking

What does "legalize and regulate" mean? Isn't that true of most drugs?

We are talking about what those regulations should be and what to do when people break the regulations.

Probably as many regulations as there are on alcohol or tobacco or pharmaceuticals (which I'm also not a fan of the doctor/pharmaceutical gated access to other drugs). If you produce it has to be pure, tested, not adulterated, with standards for production facilities. If you consume, only in particular establishments or at home, and you can't drive while under the influence.

If someone breaks those regulations, then they face similar kinds of penalties as people who produce and consume alcohol would. I really do not understand why people do not draw the same conclusion as if we don't already have a terribly destructive drug that society has more or less made peace with.

So you'd arrest all of the homeless addicts and put them in jail for consuming in an unapproved place?

If it’s genuinely dangerous for passersby when people are on the streets and have high doses of meth in them, then maybe?

I don’t know nearly enough about the behavior of mentally ill homeless people and how it varies with addiction status and current meth levels, but I think there is no shortage of recent reports of dangerous addicts in various cities.

You're the one who proposed the regulation ("particular establishments or at home"), and now you are already second-guessing whether it should actually be enforced (asking if it's "genuinely dangerous... maybe").

Regulation sounds good, but it doesn't just happen because it's written down. Enforcement is the messy part.

> You're the one who proposed the regulation ("particular establishments or at home")

I am?

My mistake.

My question stands, then: does "legalize and regulate" mean that there would be regulations preventing the stated problems in Portland, and that they'd be actually enforced? Or is it essentially just the same as plain legalization?

Why not?

They can get help if they want to get over the addiction and otherwise they can get a job so they can get a place to do drugs legally.

They are a part of society and their actions have negative consequences for others. We regulate that.

> If you consume, only in particular establishments or at home,

I think you're imagining a hypothetical scenario that doesn't match the problems described in the article.

Portland isn't having problems with crime and homelessness because responsible adults are consuming moderate amounts of drugs from the comfort of their homes on the weekends.

> If someone breaks those regulations, then they face similar kinds of penalties as people who produce and consume alcohol would.

I think you've missed the point of the article and what's being discussed. Decriminalizing drug use means removing those penalties, which has resulted in widespread public drug use in those cities.

That's an orthogonal issue to dealing with addiction, which would be a problem regardless of legalization status...

Oxycontin was legal, how well did that go?

It’s not clear to me that making it legal was the problem. The marketing was catastrophic. The amount of messaging, in doctors’ offices and otherwise, about using long-acting painkillers, getting ahead of the pain, making sure your pain was treated, etc was ridiculous.

Nowadays, the messaging is quite different. And we’re starting to learn that the opioids may not even work for the things people like using them for, regardless of how dangerous they are:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Yes, that’s an RCT with oxycodone users reporting more pain after 6 weeks compared to placebo.

I'm sure the marketing for legalized Meth will be more responsible (just like it is for everything else that isn't good for us).

What is the compulsion to find some tiny fragment of an argument to go against the obvious? Maybe it's because you'd need an absolutely idealized scenario to take legalizing drug use seriously.

You know those countries that legalized drugs? Feel free to look up how well that's going.

Well, legalized meth is essentially ritalin/adderall (not exactly the same thing, but same class)

Thankfully those have posed absolutely zero problems so I guess we should legalize meth.

I didn't say that, just pointing out that a lot of these illegal drugs have already legal analogs that are quite similar in chemical composition. (If I were to make an argument here, it'd be more along the lines that we're overdiagnosing ADHD and overprescribing stimulants)

If you had any experience with this at all you would realize how profoundly ignorant it is to conflate the downstream effects of meth with adderall. Anyone reading this please please do not make this mistake.

I know some people that are (former) meth addicts, and you know where they got their start? I'll give you a hint, it happened when the doctors stopped prescribing their ADHD meds or they wanted a higher dose. Just sayin'

> I'm sure the marketing for legalized Meth will be more responsible

Doctors already know how those work, and we don't have to allow marketing them.

We should stop all the current Meth marketing...that'll solve the addiction problem for sure.

What are all these scenarios where policy makers have absolute control of how drugs are sold and consumed? Meth is illegal, as in we don't allow "marketing" today. But if it was legal, it'll only be the marketing that will be the potential problem? What is the point of these arguments? The low enforcement/legalization options have been tried in various places in various ways, not one has gone well. Besides magical thinking, what is the actual argument that legalizing drugs makes it less of a problem?

Marketing of legal prescription drugs can be restricted in certain ways, but it has to be allowed unless we modify the First Amendment. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and can't be casually eliminated just because we don't like the results.

Marketing is restricted, regulated and outright banned for a number of products and services.

Is that the overwhelming opinion of legal scholars?

I think I would be just fine with a change like that. If sales of a product can be restricted, why should advertising for that product need to be unrestricted?

It doesn't feel to me like advertising is more of a fundamental right than engaging in sales.

Advertisements for prescription drugs are very heavily restricted in the US. And, as far as I know, companies selling prescription drugs may not encourage doctors to use them arbitrarily.

I don’t know whether anyone has ever tested the constitutionality of the relevant laws and regulations, but they exist and are enforced.

You seem to be entirely missing my point. Methamphetamine, like oxycodone, is legal, right now, in the US. Here it is:

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/00...

I don’t, and never have, seen posters in doctors’ offices suggesting that patients get ahead of their symptoms (of hunger? sleepiness? distraction?) by taking prescription meth. And I’ve never heard any suggestion that the high incidence of methamphetamine is caused by its legality.

I think that's a different context, because doctors were heavily encouraged to overprescribe it and it was marketed as non-addictive.

Oxycontin is still legal, as is methamphetamine (Desoxyn) and cocaine (Numbrino). They can all be legally prescribed by a physician, although as DEA scheduled controlled substances they are subject to tight restrictions.

The issue with Oxycontin (and related opioid painkillers) wasn't the legal status. It was over prescription triggered by a range of unethical actions by pharmaceutical companies (mainly Purdue Pharma) plus some doctors who took advantage of the situation.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

It's hilarious they likely spent thousands of hours work-shopping and testing a whole bunch of names and ultimately went with Numbrino.

You can blame capitalism for the problems due to Oxy…

And Communism for problems due to Fentanyl? Drug abuse is politically agnostic.

Incorrect. The literal capital owners used the fucking market to push the sale of these drugs. So much so they caused a problem they now profit off the fix for…

You may have survivorship bias. Most humans can't handle it being legal.

Selling hard drugs as a legitimate business owner has lots of liability attached, so prices will never be 'dirt cheap'. In addition to this, drug legalization is only sold to the masses if the cities/states that legalize them get tax revenue. Again, this will not lead to less expensive drugs.

What's already started happening is that the black market prices continue to be cheaper (because dealers don't have to pay taxes, insurance, or any other costs associated with legitimate businesses) and legitimate businesses can't compete, and they go under.

It's interesting to me that the same people the scream about muh socialism and want legal drugs aren't willing to pay the price for it.

Socialize the drug distribution then. The government can manufacture and distribute drugs at dirt cheap prices.

I don't want legal drugs for me, but to get rid of the criminal distribution networks, and reduce the lengths addicts need to go to in order to procur drugs (which may often culminate in robbery and theft)

Why can "the government" distribute drugs at dirt cheap prices? Maybe you come from a country where that happens but in the US the government couldn't distribute masks during a pandemic.

Plus cheaper, easier accessible drugs lower crime, overdoses...how?

The way Ive heard this done is you get a prescription from you doctor, you go to a dedicated facility where you get your prescribed dose and fresh gear, and you have to take your dose there under supervision by medical staff.

This lets the addicts get their hits without overdosing, without them having to steal or sell themselves to buy the next hit, and they're not funding narco cartels and terrorists.

Sweet, let’s have a government that profiteers off providing their people with extremely addictive, life-destroying, undeniably harmful substances. I’m sure that’ll work out great and not be corrupted ever.

As long as you short-sighted folks keep this idiotic social experimentation out of Oregon, go nuts. We’ve had enough of being the nation’s testbed of half-assed radical policy.

> Sweet, let’s have a government that profiteers off providing their people with extremely addictive, life-destroying, undeniably harmful substances. I’m sure that’ll work out great and not be corrupted ever.

Did you miss the part where we were suggesting the government didn't make money off of this?

> “It's interesting to me that the same people the scream about muh socialism and want legal drugs aren't willing to pay the price for it.”

Legalization has nothing to do with socialism. It’s a libertarian policy.

Socialists would tend to favour prohibition, because the costs to society as a whole (increased healthcare and law enforcement costs, economic impact of addicts not working, increased crime, etc) would be considered to outweigh the individual freedom of being able to consume whatever drugs you want.

This doesn't really address the comment. Decriminalize = production is criminal, consumption is legal. Legalize = production is legal, consumption is legal.

The parent comment was complaining that legal consumption made the environment threatening.

>maim and kill users, push users into poverty, and generate and push the externalizes of drug use onto the rest of society.

None of these appear to hinge on decriminalization vs. legalization. Alcohol, for example, maims and kills users, pushes severely addicted users into poverty, and externalizes the problems of its use onto society.

Use went down during prohibition, use went up during legalization. So in effect you're proposing we increase these problems as related to meth and other hard drugs.

(This is not an argument for prohibition of alcohol, it is merely listing the cons of legalization)

> The parent comment was complaining that legal consumption made the environment threatening.

What the top comment is implying as far as I can see is that going soft on drugs (“philosophical”, “internet argument”) is a solution for pen-pushers.

Fucked up as his story may be, what has the war on drugs really ended up accomplishing? Do we really think amping it up will make things better?

Legalization combined with harm reduction and strictly regulated point of sales (think how Sweden treats alcohol by selling it through systembogalets) is what will ultimately pull us out of the pit. Nothing else will.

A good chunk of society wants to get high, as long as they’re not serviced legally they are financing criminal empires. Not only are you getting no tax on those sales, you have to spend buckets of money on law enforcement to fight those criminal empires. Not to mention you’ll also have to spend money on police, EMT, hospital hours etc to cope with the less stable subsect of drug users, because they are currently out of government purview and thus unmanageable.

It shouldn’t even be a partisan thing, the right could easily sell it as increasing government revenue and restoring law and order. All without it costing the regular taxpayer a penny, as you can fund the new system with the drug tax.

> what has the war on drugs really ended up accomplishing?

I haven't studied this extensively, and I know that it's widely accepted that the war on drugs was unsuccessful, but I would caution against conflating "it didn't completely solve the problem" with "it had no positive impact at all." As a parent comment mentioned, periods of prohibition are generally associated with lower consumption overall (across both legal and illegal channels).

We're not talking about a war on drugs that "didn't completely solve the problem", we're talking about one that made the problem ten times worse and fucked up society in the process.

It doesn't matter if it had any positive impact, the negative impact outweigh them so much it's a downright crime against humanity that imprisoned millions of people in a system that constitutes modern day slave labor.

"what has the war on drugs really ended up accomplishing?"

A lot of comments here have a "Portland was a lot better before decriminalization" theme. So at least some people might think the war on drugs was working out better than the current policies.

I'm not saying we should bring back the war on drugs, but the argument you are making can no longer be taken for granted.

Also you can just point to all the countries that do have a war on drugs, and have been successful, and do not have major problems with drugs as a result.

> Fucked up as his story may be, what has the war on drugs really ended up accomplishing? Do we really think amping it up will make things better?

A full-on "war on drugs" and "do noting" are both extremes. Not many people are in favour of a war on drugs, but that doesn't mean complete laissez-faire policies are the solution either.

"Drugs are illegal" and "war on drugs" are NOT the same thing.

All well and good: allow everyone to use as many legalized drugs as they want, but enforce the other laws on those people. Don’t allow anyone to camp in the street, don’t let them steal with impunity. If they want to get wasted on drugs, they should manage to not cause harm to normal citizens.

I could certainly agree with that. Just take a page out of alcohol management. Many cities across the world already have pretty strict laws against public alcohol use. And they send more police to places where drunks are more likely to congregate and cause issues, like around bars at Saturday and Sunday.

What’s an unmentioned but relevant issue to me is how things like MDMA and ketamine (users are less harmed and harmful than with alcohol) are lumped in with hardcore opioid and meth abuse. There’s “hard”drugs and then there’s HARDdrugs.

I’d rather see the really hardcore stuff not even sold in specialized stores with the other stuff, but rather directly distributed through places similar to methadone clinics. They can give whoever wants the drug the full PR on how this substance very likely will get a grip on you and demolish your life. Clinics themselves are quite grim, making the whole atmosphere around recreational use less enticing. And you can put a higher age limit like 21 or even 24 on it.

There's not enough housing, where are people supposed to sleep?

To be clear, I hate seeing people sleep on the street. It's terrible, but they don't have good options.

Maybe if they werent constantly cycling through erratic meth benders and on a constant search to steal enough to afford their next high, they might have a better chance at affording housing. Im all for housing those who need it. And housing is too expensive in cities, but the meth/fent addict who cant even manage to keep their pants on has more severe problems than the going rate on a studio apartment.

I think sometimes the point to make something illegal is not to stop it. But to make the behavior unacceptable to do in public.

Maybe we can craft better laws that just enforce them get aspect.

But if it is flat out illegal then some amount of trying to hide it will occur. As a result, maybe those two meth heads would have not been wondering around in the public where they will harm others.

Making legal and taxing it would still result in the meth head problem, and potentially increase bad behaviors associated with getting money to buy the higher taxes drug.

> Just legalize it and let people get pure product at dirt cheap prices.

Having traveled to Portland recently and witnessed the public drug problem first hand, I have no idea how anyone would think that increasing availability of the drugs would improve the situation.

The only thing legalization and widespread availability would help is reducing deaths from tainted drugs. While that is a significant problem, anything that increases the availability and reduces the price of a drug addiction will also fuel drug use among the public. I've heard people try to argue the inverse, but removing penalties, decreasing prices, and improving availability simply cannot do anything other than increase consumption.

The biggest problem with dying by overdose is measuring the dose. Legal drugs presume quality control and standardized dosing. This, alone, could prevent the majority of opioid deaths.

> This, alone, could prevent the majority of opioid deaths

Reduce, yes, but it's not a magic bullet. Many opioid deaths are from people taking pharmaceuticals in precisely measured doses, often in conjunction with other drugs. Others are from people who misjudge their tolerance after extended breaks, such as after relapsing.

Regardless, it's an entirely separate discussion than the problem in the main article: Increasing availability of drugs will worsen the societal problems in places like Portland.

I suspect increased availability of drugs would also lead to more deaths from polydrug abuse. People who normally take one drug might be more tempted to start mixing drugs if it's as easy as picking up some extra pills at the drug center down the street.

You're missing the point. If you're a politician, "making drug addicts not poison themselves" is a nice-to-have, but "making drug users not victimize others" is basically mandatory. Zero political parties are going to win on a platform of "its ok that drug addicts are making the streets unsafe, the real problem is that their drugs are not affordable or high enough quality."

But this is not about opioid overdose deaths, but random people getting assaulted ("beaten nearly to death ") by meth-heads.

I bet what would work even better to prevent overdose deaths is not having our cities full of people doing opioids.

Sociologists recently performed a large multi-region study of homelessness, drug use, etc.

It turns out that there’s no real correlation between having drug addicts on the streets and the level of drug use in the area or even mental illness. Unemployment doesn’t even predict homelessness, and neither does weather, or laws pertaining to the homeless.

By far, the best predictor is housing affordability and availability.

Link to study?

https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

I know this sounds absurd, but I don't think social studies on such politically hot issues can be trusted outright. Given the state of university social science departments, can you imagine the cost of publishing something that supported ‘war on drugs’ style policy. Im not saying your study is bogus, just that Ive learned to be circumspect around research into such topics. Because often such academics are also activists or involved in public/ nonprofit institutions that have become invested in specific policy.

I get your sentiment, but note that this study goes even farther to piss off anti-war on drugs activists:

It says it doesn’t matter either way, so they are wrong (if they win, it won’t help), but also irrelevant.

Interestingly, progressive cities also have the most expensive housing.

They generally have incredibly severe homeless problems, which is ironic, since they spend so much money on homeless aid programs, affordable housing (not more housing) initiatives, etc.

I think that partially motivated the study. Climate also doesn’t seem to matter, neither does hiring more police, or really anything politicians have funded in the last decade.

There are countries all over the world that take a much stricter prohibitionist approach, and overwhelmingly do not have the same problem with drugs. Your claims instantly fall apart given the numerous counter examples of countries that DO successfully criminalize drugs.

I think selling hard drugs being criminal is OK. But the US should actually do something with the severe addicts rather than just tossing them in prison, or creating laws against that and leaving them on the streets.

Mandatory rehabilitation would do a lot. But rehabilitation would work much worse in an environment where relapse is easily attainable, anyone who has had any kind of addiction will tell you that.

I think part of the problem is people with no real experience pushing their narrative. Many honest drug addicts will tell you the actual solutions that will be around wholistic rehabilitation: withdrawals treatments, reintegration into society, no permanent records, removing stigma. And some would prefer to be funneled into that rather than go to rehabilitation by free will. Free will stands no chance against a heroin or meth addiction.

My family member works in a psychiatric clinic in Central Europe. They deal with severe addictions. They have proper rehabilitation programs with dedicated facilities where people with severe addictions that have led to mental disorders learn to reintegrate with life, attend job interviews, take care of themselves, and so on. I have spent my childhood around these people as family members of clinicians would attend various events (Christmas parties, weddings, funerals, other outings, etc) and I have not felt threatened by anyone in rehabilitation.

But yeah, what I see in West Coast cities is threatening. It’s a day and night difference between that and proper care for hard drug addicts though. West Coast is what ignoring the problem looks like. Central Europe is what solving the problem looks like. In both cases, hard drug sales are not legal.

And the solution is ridiculously simple. If someone is acting out in public due to drugs, police would be called. The police would deliver them to a psychiatric clinic in a municipal hospital. The clinic would put them in a ward and on a rehab program, start withdrawals management, set up a social worker for employment, and so on. It would take several months to rehabilitate someone and some people would go through the program a few times. Not all of it is easy and the taxpayer pays for the healthcare. But that’s the cost of solving this problem, and that does solve it.

I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We have quite bad drug abuse issues as well.

I have helped a group that rescued several people (I believe most with drug addiction) from the streets[1]. What they do, and several other groups, and also government institutes do, is offer voluntary recovery programs that are legitimately very good. You can go there and they'll take care of you, including professional psychologist/psychiatrist support (and medicine to help get off drugs); in the main institution we're working with[2], former homeless and former drug dependents help directly in welcoming people. I'm not sure that's the whole solution to the drug problem, but I think it's part of the solution -- getting out in the streets, offering help to the homeless and addicts, and if they want, taking them somewhere that'll offer shelter and recovery from addiction. [3]

There's one rule in those places: you can't go in with drugs with you. Of course, if the person becomes too violent then they might not be able to deal with them either.

Please, go out there and help (while staying safe too, preferably in a group) -- or help institutions that do this kind of work (like we say, everyone can play a role, be it in a kitchen, on the streets, or with donations). I think it's groups like this that keep things from falling apart.

There are many people on the streets for whom drugs are just a quick escape mechanism, and have economic issues, mental health issues, or health issues (or all together), and a compassionate community/institutions that helps everyone recover is what really is needed I think.

Pretending they don't exist or as a friend calls "shuffling them around" doesn't work.

[1] Our group offers a meal once a week (Sunday nights, where they have difficulty finding something to eat), and we offer taking them off the streets. It's incredible what genuinely caring about people will do: I've seen people cry when you hand them a plate of food.

[2] It's this one: https://www.missaobelem.org/; This one is state funded and excellent as well: https://hub.spdmafiliadas.org.br/ (called HUB)

[3] Other important parts being, educating people about the tragedy of drug abuse, and providing community and support so they don't resort to drugs, and also preventing selling.

>So much sympathy for drug users and business owners, but what about the private citizens who get victimized by these drug users?

That doesn't score virtue points in hipster society.

A core element of the problem is that Americans are vehemently opposed to involuntary long term psychiatric treatment. Long term, in this context, meaning anything longer than 72 hours or so.

So there’s a push to decriminalize because the alternative is jailing non violent drug offenders. This is counterproductive in many ways and keeps them in cycles that enable addiction like preventing gainful employment, increasing access to network of people that can provide hard drugs, increase hopelessness and worthlessness, increase likelihood of violent behavior, etc.

A better system would be to decriminalize with the alternative of connecting people with serious and persistent mental health issues to significant inpatient mental health supports. Not someone that smokes pot or drops acid every once and a while, but the people like you describe that abuse hard drugs like methamphetamine or fentanyl to the point that they become homeless and frequently experience psychosis. Programs that provide housing, counseling, rehab, etc. but again most people vehemently oppose this for various reasons. Distrust of psychiatry, refusal to fund government programs, a libertarian belief that a person should be able to let themselves self destruct even if it destroys the community around them, etc

So here we are

Yeah...it's all fine and good until you get slapped in the face by reality.

What happened to the people who assaulted you? Were they fully prosecuted?

no, the prosecutors office cut deals with both of them because they were a) only able to schedule murder trials and b) scared to face a jury in Seattle

Awful. It's worse than I thought.

When I first moved to Seattle for my first real job, eons ago, my car was stolen. The police came right out, and found my car (they didn't find the thief). I got the car back.

I guess those days are long gone.

Thank you for your bravery in putting your statement out there.

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Like I said, please go to a victim support group and summon the courage to say that to somebody's face.

I’ve never been to a support group, and you have, so take this from that perspective. It seems to me that the support group wouldn’t want outsiders dropping by to share their opinions.

In these groups is the consensus view you've all come to that addiction is to blame and nothing else of note? Any shared group feeling about overall policy solutions? Or everyone thinks if drugs were maximally criminalized they wouldn't be there?

I'm genuinely curious but I'm also biased. I was a homeless street addict myself for a long time and the only way I ever got out was a combination of harm reduction and expensive medical attention I am in no way entitled to as an american.

Most of my problems were ultimately caused by carceral violence and I can't really see how more of it would have helped me. But idk, open to other views I guess.

Thanks for your comment, it's good to have perspectives from other people with real life experiences. It sounds like you're in a better place which is great to hear :)

Me and most people I met who were victimized by drug users "blame addiction" in the narrow sense that we don't think the people who victimized us would have behaved that way in the absence of the drugs. I don't think the general attitude was that drug users are bad people, more that drug use can result in people acting in ways that they otherwise wouldn't. I certainly don't think using any drug reduces a person's human value.

I'm in support of targeting pathways and outcomes that I think might be similar to yours. We probably have different perspectives on some forms of harm reduction and agree on others, which I think is inevitable based on our different experiences. I think we agree that medical attention and pathways to overcoming addiction outside of jail are important ingredients to a successful recovery.

To me it's not so much about punishing drug use (jail time), it's about stopping drug addiction (intervention and recovery). For example I think intervening in such a way that a user is confirmed to get at least a few hours of sleep before potentially using meth again would be a big start.

If we had functional mechanisms to to enact mandatory interventions for users that were non-criminal I'm definitely open to that. Depending on the targeted success rate it seems like inpatient detox + rehab would be required in many cases, and I am simply not aware of non-judicial way we can force a person into those circumstances against their will (which in the case of meth I admit I support even if that opinion is controversial).

I am not an expert, but nonetheless I'm now entangled with the topic as one that defines significant aspects of my life (loss of smell and hearing, PTSD, facial disfiguration). I think we can do better than we have been, both recently and since Nixon, but I think that having tough conversations is part of how we'll get better. My experience is that people in my situation frequently have our perspectives invalidated as "politically incorrect" or otherwise irrelevant (not what you're doing BTW thank you for your perspective), and I wanted to speak up to make sure people know that we exist and we don't want our numbers to grow.

Congratulations on your recovery, and FWIW I really like your your username/giraffes :)

Please stop incessantly committing appeal to emotion fallacies.

This is about as helpful as "please go to welfare office and tell everyone to just work harder" or "please go to a substance abuse center and tell everyone to just, you know, stop using drugs mkay?" or "please go to a prison and tell everyone that crime is bad and they just need to fly right and everything will be fine."

I assume you mean drug-related victim?

Because we can say the exact same thing in the other direction. Go to a group that's grieving over car deaths, and tell them you're glad that resources that could have helped are instead going to fight the war on drugs.

Since this method gets such contradictory results, maybe it's a bad method for evaluating things!

> Prohibition of drugs just doesn't work.

It seems to me like there are places where it does, and places where it doesn't. In the places where it works, everyone agrees that it works, and in the places where it doesn't, everyone agrees that it doesn't.

I'm very curious about the underlying factors for this.

Yeah after writing that I thought of a bunch of counter examples.

It's hard, and for the record I'm also anti-prohibition about many substances (just not meth). I had weed in my pocket when I was assaulted that I campaigned to legalize in WA. I shared streets with plenty of harmless drug users too.

I'm sorry for calling you out, after seeing this comment it's obvious I would have done better to give you some space to think. It's an emotionally charged experience that I'm still learning how to rationalize years later - but haste makes waste and I was hasty.

I just want to make sure people know that victims like me exist, and though we are often treated as if our perspectives are invalid/uncouth/politically incorrect most of us simply want to stop other people from going through similar experiences. Telling people off doesn't spread that message and isn't helping bring smart ideas to the table, which I regret.

You were right to. From reading this thread I've realized I've not read enough to comment and what I could tell you you already know.

Decriminalization was a nice dream to solve a lot of misery.

That's terrible. I'm glad that never happens in places with harsher policies.

It does though lol

I’d say that’s the point of the comment.

“Enabled to descend into meth addiction”

Sorry this happened to you but every human has the god given right to use whatever substances they please and no government can tell them otherwise.

Perhaps your anger should be focused at the government officials and local policies for allowing these people to live in tents on public property and use drugs in public.

Drugs are for people with jobs to enjoy.

I'm sorry for your experience, but consider this: in central and south America, drug cartels are murdering and beating people every day. I think it would be an understatement to say there are more beatings and murders being dealt by drug cartels than meth-induced psychos.

Why do drug cartels thrive? Simple: because drugs are illegal in the USA. By legalizing drugs, we would bankrupt them.

There’s one thing to have legal drugs and another to turn a blind eye on people shooting or smoking crack in broad daylight in the public, defecating everywhere and attacking random people. That’s a bit too much for the rest of us to bear. Common sense seems to be upside down and inside out these days.

Bankrupt them? The drug cartels in mexico have other means of income, don't be daft.

Still it's really amazing what mental gymnastics people make to justify the norms. You've got fear instilled in your decision to go outside your house and still call yourself the land of the free.

I have been travelling through Latin America, going through Cancun, Bogota, Lima and Buenos Aires, spent a few weeks in each city. I've been walking around these cities a lot, including at night. I've never seen any people who looked dangerous or felt afraid for my safety.

I really think that a lot of stereotypes about the region are outdated by about 20 or 30 years by this point.

Do you have some stats to back up the implied claim that homeless drug users significantly raise assault rates? Portland is a very safe city AFAIK.

Either way It’s less about “we should let people sell meth” and “we should let people sell meth if the only other option is just jailing them” IMO. obviously no one wants to see or be homeless drug addicts taking up public space. But we don’t really have a ton of options without systemic change

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