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Comment by runjake | Hacker News Reader

The War on Drugs is a failed strategy, but I don't know of another way to tackle the problem of drugs and geography, WRT the US.

Decriminalizing hard drugs has been a failed experiment in Oregon, where hard drug use shot up drastically.

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I don't think criminalizing or decriminalizing drugs really matters so much as stuff like fetty becoming commonplace in the past few decades, fetty precursors being produced by China and ending up in the US, or specific pharma companies heavily promoting anti-pain meds to encourage people to become dependent.

I think discussions on criminalizing or decriminalizing or The War on Drugs is a waste of time if the goal is to reduce drug usage because they only affect the symptoms of the drug problem. We should still discuss them, but for other reasons.

>Decriminalizing hard drugs has been a failed experiment in Oregon, where hard drug use shot up drastically.

Is the problem the increased usage, or is it the secondary effects (more homelessness, etc)?

I think both, but increased usage + new addictions were specifically cited by the legislation[1] and government officials. The uptick in prevalence of homeless people in the suburban and urban areas is startling though.

1. https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2024R1/Measures/Overv...

Oregonian here. Both, I think. However homelessness increased everywhere over the same period the legalization covered so it's kind of hard to gauge how much legalization actually increased it.

The problem was that there was no way to compel people into treatment for addiction when the drugs were essentially legal. There was an attempt to replicate what Portugal had done in the early aughts, but as I understand it they could compel people into treatment. The other problem was lack of treatment resources - even if people wanted treatment it could be difficult to come by. While I tended to favor decriminalization before, after seeing the results close up it seems that there should have been a longer period of preparation prior to the enacting legalization. And for substances like fetanyl and meth - highly addictive substances that cause people to resort to crime to keep up the habit - it's probably not be a good idea to ever legalize them because overdosing, death and permanent mental damage are common. We need a more nuanced approach where less addictive (and non-addictive) drugs like pot, LSD, shrooms, etc. are essentially legal while highly addictive drugs remain illegal with stiff penalties for distribution.

But it’s clear that there is no penalty or enforcement budget that will prevent a black market in hard drugs. You will have heroine and fent users, there is no way to prevent it.

So, how do you minimize the impact to everyone?

Did it shot up (relative to neighboring states, I assume, otherwise it's not very relevant) because more Oregonians started doing drugs or because drug addicts from nearby states moved in?

Decriminalization is entirely different from full legalization. That is only sensible and moral solution.

Do you have anything more to say on this point?

Given my experiences in Oregon, I'm having trouble thinking of it as sensible, but I'm open-minded.

Having seen it myself, the only people that are still talking about legal drugs this year, are people who haven’t been to Oregon.

Do you Oregon folks not think Oregon fucked up the implementation? You can’t simply decriminalize and not have adequate resources to handle the results.

Have you argued that no one has tired real socialism yet too?

This is the thing. Oregon basically decriminalized but didn't build or maintain the harm reduction infrastructure necessary to make decriminalizing drugs not a terrible idea. The two things support one another -- make it easier to stop using, and stop penalizing people so harshly they are scared to use services.

I don't know how many addicts y'all have been around, but in my experience no one wants to be an addict.

There are resources in place, but at least in my area, they aren't being utilized to capacity.

So while it seems logical to the rest of us that addicts don't want to be addicts, they're also apparently not willing to tap into that help.

You can argue this or that about something not being funded right, or set up right, but at the end of the day, these people have to make efforts. And a lot of them try! I talk to them! A lot just don't give a crap and have given up on life.

Then begs the question: who's going to pay for it, and from where? Our education is already underfunded, and personally I'd rather see funds go to education, particularly non-special education (already well-funded) and Career Technical Education.

Why don't they utilize them? What's keeping them from doing so? Addiction is brutal, and getting clean is not a simple process of rehab.

Getting clean requires a ton of energy and patience and it often hurts like hell. For someone who is spending 100% of their energy on surviving and managing their addiction, they might not have the reserves to try to get clean.

We need to figure out how to reach them, not write them off.

Also, "I'd rather fund x instead of y" is a trap. We can do both, and we can say the bar is fully funded education and fully funded support for addiction and recovery.

So, I'm somewhat tangental to these resources you describe. And you're right, they're not adequate or at the proper scale, but at the same time, the meager resources that are in place aren't even being fully tapped.

While it would seem likely that addicts do not want to be addicts, they're not exactly responding to the outreach and least in my metro area (3rd largest city in OR).

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