I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work.
One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business.
1: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/multnomah-county-purc...
Yes, and that's why the state also needs to provide injection sites, non-shelter housing, and all sorts of other programs that were supposed to happen under Measure 110, and which the state refused to fund, and which never had the time to get off the ground before this bill was passed.
> One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business.
There are lots of ways to solve that issue without criminalizing drugs. And in fact, as proven by countless other cities across the country, criminalizing drugs doesn't even solve that problem either.
It doesn't solve the problem.
However, criminalization may be a less worse way to mitigate the impacts of the problem.
This feels like "no true Scotsman" at policy-scale: it's unscientific to point out the flaws in actual sausage making as the reason the Platonically ideal sausage turned out poorly in reality.
Those political characteristics are inherent to the process! If one path to utopia requires pissing voters off, then it's more logical to engineer a different path to get there while placating voters, because the former in untenable in a democracy.
There's no data to support this claim, and copious evidence against it.
> This feels like "no true Scotsman" at policy-scale: it's unscientific to point out the flaws in actual sausage making as the reason the Platonically ideal sausage turned out poorly in reality. Those political characteristics are inherent to the process! If one path to utopia requires pissing voters off, then it's more logical to engineer a different path to get there while placating voters, because the former in untenable in a democracy.
It's not a "no true Scotsman" to point out that the measure that voters passed was never actually implemented. Some of the provisions weren't even due to kick in until later this year!
Ironically, your statement is a great example of begging the question (in the correct usage of the term): by your logic, any world in which decriminalization is not already implemented is "proof" that it's a bad policy, because if it were, the Logical Politicians™ would implement it, as that would surely appease voters.
In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure".
If the voters passed a measure, that caused substantial negative perception before it was fully implemented, then who's to blame?
Maybe the voters should have been clearer on the implementation sequencing.
> In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure".
How does this not suffice as an excuse for any bad results from decriminalization? What constitutes a sufficiently perfect implementation to validate negative outcomes?
> Maybe the voters should have been clearer on the implementation sequencing.
This is, again, begging the question. You're assuming the consequent.
Voters were clear on what they wanted. They directly voted for and passed a specific bill. Elected officials - not voters - refused to implement what voters chose. Then, elected officials - not voters - repealed the bill.
It's not like this was repealed by popular vote. As of today, there's not even any evidence that the same voters who approved this in 2020 have somehow changed their minds and oppose it today.
You're arguing from a position of pure speculation to support an a priori conclusion, and that's simply not logically sound.
> How does this not suffice as an excuse for any bad results from decriminalization?
This is ridiculous. You can't judge the effect of a policy that's not implemented. If you're willing to do that, you've left the realm of science altogether and might as well argue for policy based on astrology, or augury.
I don't know how feasible this would be without public healthcare though
I’m sure it’s real, but is the problem that the drug use isn’t illegal? How does making it a crime again help?
Unfortunately, if the new laws are enforced there will be a "correction" that takes place and I imagine that will include fines, arrests, and jail.
They didn't even really do the decriminalization. The full law never came into effect, and the most of the treatment programs they promised to create as an alternative to incarceration were still in the process of being set up. The state never approved the funding for many of them, so they killed the initiative before it ever started.
> I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work.
That's exactly what happened. The funny part is that the evidence has shown quite clearly that criminalization doesn't "work" either. But it's treated as the societal default, that which can be accepted and trusted without any evidence.