12 ms·

I lived in Portland before the decriminalization laws passed in 2020, and from my perspective, drugs were already effectively decriminalized for the in-your-fac

I lived in Portland before the decriminalization laws passed in 2020, and from my perspective, drugs were already effectively decriminalized for the in-your-face-homeless, which I think is the most obvious social problem that people in Portland are trying to fix. At least that is my view based on the very common observation of people doing hard drugs in public. The people drugs weren't decriminalized for before 2020 were the mostly normal citizens. After all, if someone has a house or a job or a car, you can take that away from them by punishing them, and that is what the cops would do. But if someone is already sleeping on the street, is arresting them and having them spend a few nights in jail and then going back out the streets going to change anything? A cop might walk right past a man smoking meth in the street, but if you get pulled over for a broken headlight, and the cops might call out drug sniffing dogs, find a small amount of heroin in your possession, and throw you in jail for months.

flerchin 3y ago
What if they spent more than a few nights in corrective housing? Actually drying out, and getting treatment? I get that you can't force someone to want to get better, but you can lock them away if they refuse and keep breaking the law. Right? The whole situation is horrible. I moved away from Portland around the turn of the century, and it's unrecognizable to me when I go back to visit family.
- brianjking 3y ago
  What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!? Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until this country starts actually helping people. * Quality drug treatment that is paid for by the state/federal level. * Job training/retraining that is paid for at the state/federal level. * Affordable, high quality education that helps people not get interested in, have time for, be so full of despair that they resort to these hard drugs. * Quality, affordable, accessible mental health services IN ADVANCE of a crisis. Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain.
  - tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    > Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain. All your suggestions are depend on locking people up to force it. Your post is just saying we need "corrective" prisons.
  - timeagain 3y ago
    Having worked in shelters, these are all nice ideas and would take an amount of funding and staffing tantamount to freeway construction. Except freeway construction pays more and is a lot more pleasant.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hnthrowaway6543 3y ago
    > Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain. Making drugs illegal and locking people up, or straight up executing them, is actually extremely effective at stopping drug addiction, as seen in many east Asian countries, particularly Japan, Korea and Singapore. As well as the middle east. It's an uncomfortable truth for the Western world because we don't like strict punishments for nonviolent crimes, and for good reason. But let's not pretend that the heavy-handed corporal punishment approach doesn't work.
    - jimbob45 3y ago
      Did you leave out the Philippines on purpose? Isn't it kind of the posterboy for executions of this nature?
    - xvector 3y ago
      I do not know where the collective delusion that strict punishments do not work has come from. The data shows they work exceedingly well globally.
      - reducesuffering 3y ago
- wombat-man 3y ago
  Yeah, mandatory treatment is a touchy subject, and getting it funded is a task itself. I think we might see better results if we had a doctor advised period of mandatory treatment. Maybe 1-6 months based on the situation. Unfortunately I don't think such a thing is feasible in the US at the moment.
- jgon 3y ago
  This is the right answer and it is hopefully one people will converge on, although true to form it will be after trying everything else. Its super frustrating in a lot of cities right now because the current political environment seems to want to have a "stochastic junkie" if you will. When it comes to violence, disorder, theft and just generally refusing to be part of society in a non-harmful way all we get right now is a ton of verbiage about how addiction is a disease, these people can't be held responsible for the actions they've undertaken, they're serving their addiction, etc, etc, etc. And so then someone says "Well if they are completely incapable of conducting themselves rationally then we should probably step in and force them into treatment to remove the thing that is making them act this way." And of course a huge uproar comes in response from the same enablers "We can't force them into treatment! They have rights! We need to wait until they choose to enter treatment and they have to consciously take responsibility for completing the treatment." And so we're caught in this terrible in-between with people who can't be held responsible for their actions, but who also can't have the state enforce care on them unless they ask for it, and regular citizens just trying to peacefully live their lives bear the brunt of it. Its a luxury belief whose costs are disproportionately borne by the lower income members of society which makes it even more galling to watch it masquerade as some sort of progressivism. Ultimately people are going to force politicians to make a choice. If these people aren't responsible then the state needs to step in until they can become responsible. If they have inalienable rights then they also have responsibilities that come with those rights and need to be punished for their misdeeds. The current path is not cutting it and the voting public is waking up to that.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I've been locked in a hospital for chemical dependency treatment, so I have a hard time believing that it's impossible to force people into it. There was, of course, a huge bill that my insurance largely covered, but I suspect that homeless peoples' health insurance is not so good.
    - User23 3y ago
      You'd be wrong. Medicaid is fantastic. No copays (nominally there are, but you can just not pay, which obviously street junkies opt for), no premiums, full service. The only drawback is it represents a kind of prisoner's dilemma defection and when a sufficiently high percentage of the population gets a clue and starts reliably defecting the whole system is going to collapse. Not for lack of payment, but simply for lack of beds, doctors, and nurses.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  This sounds a little like treating a symptom so one can pretend they don't need to solve the actual problem, which is homelessness. Which you solve by providing housing, and a long term caretaker-supported program to help folks clean up, get good psychiatric help and therapy, another pass at the educational system, and then hopefully at the end of all that, a new shot at a normal life. That costs a lot of money. Something that people who want to live in a city that's livable should probably be willing to collectively pay for. But don't.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    The junkies are the problem. Homelessness is another problem, sometimes intertwined, but distinct. All the housing in the world doesn't change the hordes addicted to meth or fent, who would be an absolute plague even in some sort of magically awesome free housing situation.
  - autokad 3y ago
    its very rare a person goes homeless because the prices in downtown Seattle are expensive. if housing goes up, you move to a place its more affordable - not to the street. The reason for this homelessness surge is drugs. Many of these people its a lifestyle choice, one that works very well for what they want. They get to beg, do drugs, and sell stolen goods all in one spot, its very convenient. yes, if you have been paying attention, all those store robberies and car break ins is very much related. many of those instances, the hot goods are exchanged for cash at these tent areas - some even have xmas lights! > "hopefully at the end of all that, a new shot at a normal life." What makes you think they even want that? They want to do drugs, they want to not work. we should re-criminalize public drug use, followed by not allowing people to set up permanent residence anywhere they please. All of a sudden, less people would want to choose that lifestyle.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      > its very rare a person goes homeless because the prices in downtown Seattle are expensive. if housing goes up, you move to a place its more affordable - not to the street. Research disagrees.[1] [1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
- qingcharles 3y ago
  The problem is that most addictions need years of treatment. Years and years :( I work with people coming out of prison who have been clean for a decade and the first thing they do is go and score some meth or crack or whatever. After a decade without!
  - breckenedge 3y ago
    Are you sure they were actually clean in prison?
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      Yes, I was in with many of them. While you can get anything you want at a cost inside Illinois prisons, hard drugs like coke, meth, crack are actually very hard to come by. 99% of the drugs are "K2" and weed.
chaseha 3y ago
“When we push it back into the criminal system, it pushes people back into the shadows,” Ms. Hurst said. “People will die because of this.” ^ this quote from the article speaks plainly why it's dangerous to recriminalize. Agreed w/ your perspective on prior laws hurting disproportionately normal citizens who still had (some) property/livelihood to damage through arrest. Not agreeing w/ the status quo in Portland, though - from friend's accounts it has become a tough place to walk around. I appreciate the fine line the government is trying to walk here. Hopefully they can accelerate some of the drug treatment options concurrently.
- 0max 3y ago
  One common theme I've noticed with Progressive policy on the west coast is that well make the progressive amendments to our laws and policies, but we don't have the institutions to support those policies. At least with Portugal, they have a stick in their policy that enforces treatment and medical attention if you're strung out and using on the street. Also, Channel 5 did a great piece on the Safe Injection Site in SF. When talking to the "real ones", the safe site made all the difference in people's lives when it was available.
legitster 3y ago
I think the difference is that drug use was at least kept out of nice/touristy parts of town. There was lots of blatant drug use all over town, but you could expect to go to Powells or Pioneer Courthouse Square without seeing people smoking out of pieces of foil. So while it was not a great or sustainable system to have police clear out good neighborhoods and force addicts into designated bad areas, having a city be equally unappealing to everyone is in the long run a lose-lose trade-off.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
Oregon banned cops pulling people over for broken cars btw, a lot of the issues described in this thread are also because the locals here rightfully hate the police and have muzzled them.

flerchin 3y ago

What if they spent more than a few nights in corrective housing? Actually drying out, and getting treatment? I get that you can't force someone to want to get better, but you can lock them away if they refuse and keep breaking the law. Right? The whole situation is horrible. I moved away from Portland around the turn of the century, and it's unrecognizable to me when I go back to visit family.

brianjking 3y ago
What if we...i don't know, actually helped people!? Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until this country starts actually helping people. * Quality drug treatment that is paid for by the state/federal level. * Job training/retraining that is paid for at the state/federal level. * Affordable, high quality education that helps people not get interested in, have time for, be so full of despair that they resort to these hard drugs. * Quality, affordable, accessible mental health services IN ADVANCE of a crisis. Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain.
- tick_tock_tick 3y ago
  > Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain. All your suggestions are depend on locking people up to force it. Your post is just saying we need "corrective" prisons.
- timeagain 3y ago
  Having worked in shelters, these are all nice ideas and would take an amount of funding and staffing tantamount to freeway construction. Except freeway construction pays more and is a lot more pleasant.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hnthrowaway6543 3y ago
  > Locking people up or making drugs illegal will change nothing but cause there to be more pain. Making drugs illegal and locking people up, or straight up executing them, is actually extremely effective at stopping drug addiction, as seen in many east Asian countries, particularly Japan, Korea and Singapore. As well as the middle east. It's an uncomfortable truth for the Western world because we don't like strict punishments for nonviolent crimes, and for good reason. But let's not pretend that the heavy-handed corporal punishment approach doesn't work.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    Did you leave out the Philippines on purpose? Isn't it kind of the posterboy for executions of this nature?
  - xvector 3y ago
    I do not know where the collective delusion that strict punishments do not work has come from. The data shows they work exceedingly well globally.
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
wombat-man 3y ago
Yeah, mandatory treatment is a touchy subject, and getting it funded is a task itself. I think we might see better results if we had a doctor advised period of mandatory treatment. Maybe 1-6 months based on the situation. Unfortunately I don't think such a thing is feasible in the US at the moment.
jgon 3y ago
This is the right answer and it is hopefully one people will converge on, although true to form it will be after trying everything else. Its super frustrating in a lot of cities right now because the current political environment seems to want to have a "stochastic junkie" if you will. When it comes to violence, disorder, theft and just generally refusing to be part of society in a non-harmful way all we get right now is a ton of verbiage about how addiction is a disease, these people can't be held responsible for the actions they've undertaken, they're serving their addiction, etc, etc, etc. And so then someone says "Well if they are completely incapable of conducting themselves rationally then we should probably step in and force them into treatment to remove the thing that is making them act this way." And of course a huge uproar comes in response from the same enablers "We can't force them into treatment! They have rights! We need to wait until they choose to enter treatment and they have to consciously take responsibility for completing the treatment." And so we're caught in this terrible in-between with people who can't be held responsible for their actions, but who also can't have the state enforce care on them unless they ask for it, and regular citizens just trying to peacefully live their lives bear the brunt of it. Its a luxury belief whose costs are disproportionately borne by the lower income members of society which makes it even more galling to watch it masquerade as some sort of progressivism. Ultimately people are going to force politicians to make a choice. If these people aren't responsible then the state needs to step in until they can become responsible. If they have inalienable rights then they also have responsibilities that come with those rights and need to be punished for their misdeeds. The current path is not cutting it and the voting public is waking up to that.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I've been locked in a hospital for chemical dependency treatment, so I have a hard time believing that it's impossible to force people into it. There was, of course, a huge bill that my insurance largely covered, but I suspect that homeless peoples' health insurance is not so good.
  - User23 3y ago
    You'd be wrong. Medicaid is fantastic. No copays (nominally there are, but you can just not pay, which obviously street junkies opt for), no premiums, full service. The only drawback is it represents a kind of prisoner's dilemma defection and when a sufficiently high percentage of the population gets a clue and starts reliably defecting the whole system is going to collapse. Not for lack of payment, but simply for lack of beds, doctors, and nurses.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
This sounds a little like treating a symptom so one can pretend they don't need to solve the actual problem, which is homelessness. Which you solve by providing housing, and a long term caretaker-supported program to help folks clean up, get good psychiatric help and therapy, another pass at the educational system, and then hopefully at the end of all that, a new shot at a normal life. That costs a lot of money. Something that people who want to live in a city that's livable should probably be willing to collectively pay for. But don't.
- flerchin 3y ago
  The junkies are the problem. Homelessness is another problem, sometimes intertwined, but distinct. All the housing in the world doesn't change the hordes addicted to meth or fent, who would be an absolute plague even in some sort of magically awesome free housing situation.
- autokad 3y ago
  its very rare a person goes homeless because the prices in downtown Seattle are expensive. if housing goes up, you move to a place its more affordable - not to the street. The reason for this homelessness surge is drugs. Many of these people its a lifestyle choice, one that works very well for what they want. They get to beg, do drugs, and sell stolen goods all in one spot, its very convenient. yes, if you have been paying attention, all those store robberies and car break ins is very much related. many of those instances, the hot goods are exchanged for cash at these tent areas - some even have xmas lights! > "hopefully at the end of all that, a new shot at a normal life." What makes you think they even want that? They want to do drugs, they want to not work. we should re-criminalize public drug use, followed by not allowing people to set up permanent residence anywhere they please. All of a sudden, less people would want to choose that lifestyle.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    > its very rare a person goes homeless because the prices in downtown Seattle are expensive. if housing goes up, you move to a place its more affordable - not to the street. Research disagrees.[1] [1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
qingcharles 3y ago
The problem is that most addictions need years of treatment. Years and years :( I work with people coming out of prison who have been clean for a decade and the first thing they do is go and score some meth or crack or whatever. After a decade without!
- breckenedge 3y ago
  Are you sure they were actually clean in prison?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Yes, I was in with many of them. While you can get anything you want at a cost inside Illinois prisons, hard drugs like coke, meth, crack are actually very hard to come by. 99% of the drugs are "K2" and weed.

chaseha 3y ago

“When we push it back into the criminal system, it pushes people back into the shadows,” Ms. Hurst said. “People will die because of this.” ^ this quote from the article speaks plainly why it's dangerous to recriminalize. Agreed w/ your perspective on prior laws hurting disproportionately normal citizens who still had (some) property/livelihood to damage through arrest. Not agreeing w/ the status quo in Portland, though - from friend's accounts it has become a tough place to walk around. I appreciate the fine line the government is trying to walk here. Hopefully they can accelerate some of the drug treatment options concurrently.

0max 3y ago
One common theme I've noticed with Progressive policy on the west coast is that well make the progressive amendments to our laws and policies, but we don't have the institutions to support those policies. At least with Portugal, they have a stick in their policy that enforces treatment and medical attention if you're strung out and using on the street. Also, Channel 5 did a great piece on the Safe Injection Site in SF. When talking to the "real ones", the safe site made all the difference in people's lives when it was available.

legitster 3y ago

I think the difference is that drug use was at least kept out of nice/touristy parts of town. There was lots of blatant drug use all over town, but you could expect to go to Powells or Pioneer Courthouse Square without seeing people smoking out of pieces of foil. So while it was not a great or sustainable system to have police clear out good neighborhoods and force addicts into designated bad areas, having a city be equally unappealing to everyone is in the long run a lose-lose trade-off.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

Oregon banned cops pulling people over for broken cars btw, a lot of the issues described in this thread are also because the locals here rightfully hate the police and have muzzled them.