22 ms·

Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs,

Drug legalization is something I have come 180 on (or at least, 90 degrees). Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. ODs have more than doubled, and the shelters are half empty! They are not one more social program away from cleaning out the streets. I think the experiment has radically failed and I'm ready to say I was wrong. While I don't want to go back to locking people in jail just for being addicts, cities still need to be a place that people actually want to live in. Revenue prospects for the city are becoming horrid and there is not a lot of runway to continue throwing money at the problem.

xvector 3y ago
I feel the same way about SF. This whole experiment has been a massive failure.
- hooverd 3y ago
  Eh, all the stimulant use you don't see on the streets is surely responsible for much Value Creation.
  - thrawy2to15 3y ago
    A lot of drug users are trying self medicate their ADHD or BPD (the most common), or just their sense of existential dread. So at least in the case of ADHD some amount will be actually treating their condition with the stimulants whether they realize it or not.
qingcharles 3y ago
This is such a hard problem to solve. I work with drug and alcohol addicts regularly and addiction is such a damned nightmare. And every homeless person hates shelters. They have way more rules than prisons and all of the drama. I don't know what the solutions are :(
- alostpuppy 3y ago
  We appreciate you
- gafage 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - iAMkenough 3y ago
    It is a hard problem to solve. Criminalizing drugs and throwing addicts in jail doesn't resolve the problem.
    - skippyboxedhero 3y ago
      ...apart from in every country that does this and doesn't have lots of addicts? It is quite strange because you go almost anywhere else in the world...no addicts, no-one uses drugs, they find it strange that anyone would use drugs...go to the US, you not only have drug addicts but a whole industry dedicated to offering very knowledgeable-sounding opinions about what should work...it never is explained why the drug problem in the US is so out of control with so many people who know what "should" work. The only places where I have ever been that have had lots of drug addicts have been places that have tried to decriminalize (for some reason, almost always with help from the police who just want this stuff off their books altogether).
      - argc 3y ago
        AFAIK there are drug addicts all over the world, including in the Middle East and Philippines where drug addicts are met with severe punishments. The problem is IMO more the availability of drugs vs the potential punishments people face. People are willing to take risks to do drugs. Unless a government completely controls everyone's private life there remains an ability to evade detection and take drugs while telling oneself that one will not be caught. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/middleeast/saudi-drug-capital-mime-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/middleeast/saudi-drug-capital...
    - 3y ago
jdminhbg 3y ago
> Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. Huge sums were collected, but they haven't really been spent. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the first detox center built with M110 money only opened two months ago, and only has 16 beds: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portland-detox-center-measure-110-funding/283-fa52722f-97b8-4dfc-96b8-a25e98a8ba65 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portl...
- legitster 3y ago
  While this is true, there were a lot of programs that existed before M110, and part of the bill of goods that was sold with M110 was that it was going to make it easier for people to access existing resources without fear of law enforcement. And again, literally written into M110 is the idea that treatment is supposed to be cheaper than incarceration. Perhaps it's due to really bad red tape, but the treatment programs are not looking terribly cheap or effective.
  - Consultant32452 3y ago
    There's two problems with these programs. The first problem is that the people we're really talking about, the ones living/defecating/etc on the street do not want help. The second problem is that in order to want to get better, an addict has to hit their personal rock bottom. Programs that keep people floating above their personal rock bottom are like family members enabling addicts. It ultimately doesn't help them. It's VERY difficult to create social programs that help people want to not be ill, while simultaneously not letting them fall to their own rock bottom. And then consider the position from the legislature of creating incentives for government programs/NGOs which align with the desired outcomes and it becomes expoentially harder.
    - InSteady 3y ago
      Plenty of people on the streets want all kinds of help. They don't want shit programs with a million hoops and strings attached, nor do they want gross dilapidated shelters also with hoops and strings plus predators prowling around looking to steal their shit (or worse) while they sleep. Also, while the whole rock bottom trope probably holds some truth for many people, when you make every story all about it you kind of lose the plot. If you try hard enough, you can look at just about anyone's life who has recovered from addiction and create a narrative based on an upward trend after the "worst" moment or period of their addiction. If they had two periods that were basically exactly as bad, you dig around until you find some trivial reason to label the second period as worse, and thus the "real bottom." If someone had their worst period of addiction many years before they actually got to a place where they could maintain sobriety long term it was just a long journey for them. Etc.
TheBlight 3y ago
Does Portland's program do anything to address the mental health problems underlying much of this drug abuse?
- legitster 3y ago
  $1.3 billion statewide approved in 2021: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/Pages/index.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/Pages/index.aspx This is in addition to the ~$1.3 billion the state already paid in mental health services: https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2021/oregon-spends-on-mental-health-with-few-results/ https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2021/oregon-spends-on-ment... In addition to resources available at the county level ($2 million came from police defunding): https://www.multco.us/justice-agenda/budget-priorities https://www.multco.us/justice-agenda/budget-priorities
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheBlight 3y ago
    I guess it won't make much of a difference if people can easily opt-out for a life of addiction on the streets.
- paulcole 3y ago
  No. From what I see daily, if what Portland is doing is working in any way, then I’d hate to see things if they weren’t working at all. It’s a very sad state of affairs here and it’s hard to recommend that anyone move here unless you’re being paid extremely well AND you love the outdoors AND you’ve lived in a city with a severe drug/homelessness/mental health crisis before. I moved here in 2007 from the extremely rural South. The day I moved into my Old Town apartment a homeless guy spit on me! What a wake up call to a kid from the country. But I ended up living in that apartment for 10 years and never once felt actually scared in that neighborhood. But now, I actively avoid that neighborhood and getting spit on might be the best possible outcome! Source: I live in Portland very near Downtown.
namesbc 3y ago
"We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas
CydeWeys 3y ago
The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either, while it will make life for everyone else substantially better -- and we should be prioritizing the welfare of the productive members of society who actually pay to make all of it possible. Right now way too many cities have lost the plot by being too permissive of violations of the social contract, and everyone suffers as a result.
- prawn 3y ago
  I think you can provide services (shelters, etc) AND crackdown with a view to cleaning the city for regular people (rather than just specifying taxpayers).
  - fragmede 3y ago
    More than a service, bring back the projects. Yes there were problems with them the last time around, but the problem we have now seems worse on all fronts.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  I hate the messaging of “for the actual taxpayers” phrase even if I agree mostly with the sentiment. There is more to life than paying taxes, and people contribute to society in many ways that aren’t financial. I think “productive members” has the same phrasing problems. We need to make life better for members of society that contribute and benefit from it, for people that want to be a part of society, regardless of their ability to contribute back.
  - freetanga 3y ago
    Well, I agree halfway… at the core of any social contract are rights and obligations. I think part of those obligations are to contribute to society (I think we agree up to this point) However, I believe a part of that contribution has to be in an objective, quantifiable way - which translates to taxes. The rights we consume from society are tangible and expensive. A city populated only by of poets would collapse of starvation after 12 hours… That said, if a Society feels they need to foster a specific part of it (culture,social work, etc) they can enact tax breaks to reduce the financial load of those making that contribution. But taxation comes first (as an obligation).
tunesmith 3y ago
I don't believe Portland's efforts caused the rise of fentanyl, though. How do we know it wouldn't be worse, if not for Portland's efforts?
- adolph 3y ago
  My recollection is that in 2007 Mexico banned pseudoephedrine in order to remove feed stock from meth labs supplying the US.[0,1] As a result of this and other factors suppliers in Mexico found fentanyl, which bypassed growing cycles of agricultural drugs like pot and heroin. During the pandemic, Mexico grew additional trade ties with China which included fentanyl precursor chemicals.[2] 0. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-crime-pseudoephedrine-idUSN1927125520070719/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-crime-pseudoephedr... 1. https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2005/06/the_mexican_connection_pseudoe.html https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2005/06/th... 2. https://coffeeordie.com/china-mexican-cartel-alliance https://coffeeordie.com/china-mexican-cartel-alliance
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Plenty of other precursors to use if you can't get pseudoephedrine at scale. Trying to control ultra-small scale producers doesn't accomplish much other than sweeten the cartels (and purity/yields, so I guess that's a positive). Opioids being more dependence-inducing than stimulants would better explain a production shift. Big legitimate trading volumes with China (and any other large producer of goods/inputs) make a customs-focussed effort at controlling supply basically impossible.
dylan604 3y ago
With my personal experience of knowing so many addicts that have been in/out of various recovery programs, I'm totally at a loss. I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want, but that's back when I thought people were only doing things for recreation. I didn't have experience with true addicts until I was older. I've even played with liking the idea of a version of The Wire's Hamsterdam on the sole basis of the yo-yo lifestyle of recovery/relapse is just something that has no real answer.
- thrawy2to15 3y ago
  Just giving a voice to those who do maintain responsible recreational use, because that crowd very much exists. It might go unnoticed since they usually don't die or screw up their lives because of it. --- On the flip side I've seen addiction become a much more devastating force in recent years and smart solutions are badly needed.
- oneshtein 3y ago
  > I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want ... unless this harms other, isn't? Drug addicts are causing harm and are burden to society, so why libertarians support them? In liberal philosophy, value of human life is infinite, thus all humans are equal, thus it's not allowed for someone to cause harm or abuse others. However, why we limit this to humans only? In my opinion, is a bacteria, virus, ideology, hate, chemicals, drugs, pollution, technical problems, climate change, ecology causes harm to humans, then it should be equal to harm done by a human directly. Why it's illegal to shot someone, but legal to smoke weed near to someone, which leads to addiction and further death? IMHO, it's the same harm, but with extra steps.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    What nonsense is this? Smoking weed next to someone does not lead to addiction. Every place that I am familiar with some form of legalized marijuana consumption says you can't do it just any old place you feel like. So this is also just more BS being spread. You have a very misconstrued understanding of something, and now you're calling it libertarianism.
anon291 3y ago
[flagged]
jes5199 3y ago
it's not like we have room in the jails either, we still routinely release people due to lack of space
swalling 3y ago
"Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc." This is not even remotely true. Everyone in the city, from the mayor [1] to the head of the largest services non-profit [2] has been yelling from the rooftops about the glacial slowness to effectively spend the allocated funding for drug treatment. Until just months ago, Multnomah County has been sitting on tens of millions of unspent funds,[3] and has been perpetually criticized for spending on harm reduction instead of treatment.[4] We actually closed the only local sobering center in 2020! 1. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-measure-110-for-slow-rollout-of-addiction-treatment-funds/ https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-mea... 2. https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-largest-social-services-nonprofit-says-things-are-really-bad-now-he-has-the-data-to-prove-it/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-l... 3. https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-tracks-funding-for-homelessness-behavioral-health-services-sobering-stabilization-beds-portland-oregon-homeless-crisis https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-trac... 4. https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementing-new-harm-reduction-plan/ https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementin...
- Spinnaker_ 3y ago
  Right, but the plan has still failed. If all the key players are on board and you can't even begin to implement the plan, then it was a bad plan, and the people who developed it had little comprehension of reality. We should not attempt this elsewhere.
  - swalling 3y ago
    No, actually we should be trying to fix the stupid mistakes that were made in implementation of the plan, not roll it back and keep on fighting an equally moronic, ineffective, and racist War on Drugs elsewhere. The best available evidence is that decriminalization essentially had no effect on overdose deaths (https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/ballot-measure-110-did-not-lead-to-more-fatal-overdoses-study-finds/ https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/ballot-measure-110-di...). It was going to go up no matter what because of the nature of fentanyl. The only thing the failure of Measure 110 has demonstrably done is waste taxpayer funds and give businesses in downtown an excuse for why they are failing (when in reality it has more to do with the death of downtown for purely economic reasons post-COVID, just like other major West Coast cities).
cratermoon 3y ago
> They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. That's false. I'd say "prove me wrong", but first, define "huge". Compare and contrast to cities of similar size in the US and globally.
stainablesteel 3y ago
yeah cities are zones of massive economic importance, we can't keep penalizing the people who work there because some drug addicts won't abandon the corner they sleep on. its literally insane. who are we prioritizing in this situation and why? i care more about the people who have their lives together, they deserve priority.
huytersd 3y ago
No, you’re right. Empathy doesn’t work with certain drug use (opiates, meth, crack etc.). They need to be forcibly put in rehab that is akin to jail until they’re clean for a while. It still shouldn’t be a felony on your record though because that effectively ends any chance of rebuilding your life if you do recover.
acchow 3y ago
Prohibition also failed horribly. We need a middle ground. What about drug use as a privilege? If you’re living on the street, your litter is all over the street, and you never pay taxes, then you lose your privilege.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I thought we solved this with alcohol already. Can you drink? Yes. are you allowed to be shit faced drunk in the streets? No. Are there lounges to drink safely and responsibly? Yes. Granted, it may be much harder to make a "drugs bar", but we can use comparable metrics to deem who is too unfit to independently do that stuff and if they need intervention.
  - hamburglar 3y ago
    Indeed. You don’t get put in prison for being drunk. Maybe you spend a night in the drunk tank and then get released and are free to go repeat the same mistake. We don’t just let you roll around on the sidewalk downtown while continuing to drink. Just because drugs are decriminalized doesn’t mean it has to be a free for all.
  - 1253513452 3y ago
    I don't know about a "drug bar" but I'm of a similar mindset in that I think solutions which punish functional users are unhelpful. It's less obvious who those people are in the case of things like fentanyl but there's no shortage of healthcare, legal, and culinary workers making routine use of illegal stimulants. There's maybe a dialogue to be had there about if it's actually desirable such people's jobs be so demanding they feel the need to use the substances they do of course. But it hardly makes sense to jail them or force them into rehab if they're maintaining a productive lifestyle in my opinion.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    And somehow in Europe people drink on the streets all the time and its mostly fine. Cities are not overrun by drunks and people live and work there just fine. People chilling in the streets and parks together drinking beers and so on. I find the alcohol culture n the US pretty outputting. The US model of 'get hammer in a bar and then drive home'. Not a great model. So to say 'we solved this' is kind of ridiculous at least from my outside perspective.
anvuong 3y ago
Portland has way more problems than just drug. I don't feel safe walking in downtown even during the day. Parking is a gamble whether or not you get your windows broken, almost a third of my friends had terrible experience when parking overnight in Portland, doesn't matter if it was a public park or in a hotel park.
beezlewax 3y ago
ODs have more than doubled because of fentanyl but I suspect you know this already.
- sneak 3y ago
  Cigarettes kill 7x as many as fentanyl every hour, day, week, month, and year. One is available without prescription on every streetcorner, with use allowed in public in proximity to others, and the other is a public health epidemic.
  - beezlewax 3y ago
    That being the case doesn't negate the fact that cigarette users are not turned into some version of the walking dead but who'd do literally anything for a fix. Tobacco has a lot to answer for but it isn't the same kind of issue at all. It doesn't destroy communities so directly.
    - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
      I've seen plenty of people do nothing but drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, and complain, all day, every day, year after year. You might argue that it's the alcohol doing the zombification but I posit that surely the tobacco also has something to do in this equation.
  - blackshaw 3y ago
    Cigarettes kill you slowly over decades, fentanyl can kill a first-time user with a single dose. Moronic analogy.
gigatexal 3y ago
Former Portland native here: it hasn’t worked. I was back just a year or two ago and 5th ave near the waterfront was overrun with homeless openly shooting up and accosting folks. All the food carts across from the building where I used to work left, the Indian buffet restaurant closed, walking up around 10th near the Target to check out other restaurants I loved many I saw many barricaded former businesses. The city used to be beautiful. It used to be vibrant and bustling with people and tourists and working professionals but when I was there last retracing my steps as if I was working and living there again it was not the Portland I remember. It’s disheartening. That’s not to say I’m blaming the homeless or those addicted to substances or dealing with mental Health problems. I’m not. I believe in helping people when they can’t help themselves. But allowing open drug use, camping in front of businesses, etc., doesn’t do much for said businesses and people to invest in your city leaving you with less tax revenue to help these very same folks with.
- stillwithit 3y ago
  WFH means biz isn’t coming back there any time soon even with the homeless gone. It’s why homeless are downtown now rather on the fringe; fringe used to be emptier more frequently as downtown filled. Now folks are home on the fringe all the time. I was just downtown for lunch on weekday and it was a ghost town. I worked for PSU for years, am aware of what it should look like and it’s just dead. That’s been the case since 2020. If you want services, good luck. Feds extracted that money and feed it to cloud app companies to keep you all happy and you still aren’t. Let’s keep giving Elon forever to fail to reach Mars and complain government experiments are failures right away. Americans have a credibility problem. Work less and less but expect more and more because we have a lot of hallucinated wealth. Where do the real workers come from if everyone is doing office work? Now that other nations have matured after WW2 rebuild, how do we justify taking more for less output? 1945-2000s was a statistical anomaly. America needs to sober up.
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    Bucks are free, just print them. Wait, no, money are digital now, press a button and make money numbers.
janalsncm 3y ago
I don’t see why it has to be one way or the other: either no enforcement or sending kids caught with a joint to prison. For people who have clear drug problems, they need to go into rehab, voluntarily or not.
- u32480932048 3y ago
  This would require selective enforcement under current laws, or defining "clear drug problem" for purposes of a new one.
Pxtl 3y ago
One thing all these cities with catastrophic street drug use have in common is also bonkers housing crisis. Homelessness correlates pretty tightly with prevailing rents. People end up on the street and do drugs because once you've hit rock bottom why not?
danielvaughn 3y ago
I don’t want people locked in jail, but I do think that something akin to the Baker Act needs to be implemented. There are clearly many people who need help but are not willing to seek help themselves. It’s safe to say that they aren’t in control of their own actions and are a danger to everyone around them. It’s not compassion to simply let them rot on the street.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  But some people actually do prefer to rot on the street on their own terms, than rot in some asylum cell locked up. Still, I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed, so I don't see an easy, clean solution solving everything at once. But banning public drug use, is very fine with me.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    Of course some people prefer a to b. It doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to it. I could build myself a really cool James Bond-style tent house in Central Park and live there in the summers for basically free. I'd like that. I'm not entitled to it. Voters can easily decide that the sidewalk is no longer a place for people to rot on.
    - john-radio 3y ago
      When does James Bond live in a tent house?
      - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
        The house at the beginning of No Time to Die is roughly a tent house like those in the Four Seasons in Chiang Rai.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Yeah, I agree and that is what I said .. "I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed" And when you ban public drug use and enforce it, you automatically remove all junkies from public spaces.
cynicalsecurity 3y ago
People should be locked in jail for being drug addicts. Give it a few more years and you'll change your opinion on that too.
- Intermernet 3y ago
  Many functioning, respected and powerful people in society are drug addicts. You will almost certainly know some.
  - polski-g 3y ago
    How is that relevant to the naked twerking person at the top of the metro stairwell? If everyone on the entire planet was addicted to meth and did it daily, but there was a single meth user who decided to twerk naked at the top of the metro stairwell and assault people, that one person should be imprisoned. Why you ask? Because every other person on the planet is (as you say) functional. Nobody cares if you decided to do drugs and then fall asleep at home while paying your bills (ie: functioning). People do care about naked twerking people at the top of metro stairwells who routinely assault passers-by.
    - nullc 3y ago
      That would be "lock up publicly problematic addicts" not "addicts" in general. The aforementioned "functioning, respected and powerful people" are able to conceal or internalize the cost of their problems and aren't usually a problem for the public at large. With that in mind, the problem is really just being persistently a public danger/nuisance. The only relevance of addiction to this is that addicts are frequently unresponsive to incentives that would be sufficient for non-addicts.
- kzzzznot 3y ago
  That viewpoint is both draconian and fiscally irresponsible
bradleyjg 3y ago
If you are unwilling to lock people up—whether in jail or elsewhere—that’s the only opinion you get to have. Every other “rule” you propose is meaningless. Right now the nyc transit system is on the pay what you wish system because the voters have decided they can’t bear to see people locked up for not paying. You can hem and haw, but that’s the consequence.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  I suppose you meant "option" and in general that, the only solution is locking people up? I see lots of other ways, the most simple one: just take away their drugs, if they use drugs in public. If you do this regulary, no junkie will go somewhere, where he will seriously risk loosing his stuff. Locking up people at some point is also possible, but there are lots of other ways before that.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    > Just take away their drugs, if they use drugs in public. Seems short sighted. Do you know how people act when they want to get high and can't? When they're going through serious withdrawal? Just taking their drugs is going to get people hurt. They will either hurt themselves, or they will hurt other people.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      If you have competent police - than taking the drugs away is sort of a lackmus test. Meaning if they get violent - then they are a danger and further meassures are needed. So yes, jail (conventional or mental) is then the temporary solution.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
thworp 3y ago
> Portland did everything! [...] They got all of the carrots sure, but there was no stick. The reason these programs have success elsewhere is that they give people the choice of prison or treatment. Also, nowhere except the US just decided to legalize public drug use. In fact one of the goals of harm reduction programs in other places is to get the users out of public spaces.
panick21_ 3y ago
That's a very American perspective. Downtown in European cities (that I know) are as vibrant as ever. Europe has done just as many social programs as Portland or probably more. It seems to me this problem is much larger then drug law enforcement. The US had far better economic growth then Europe in general. With much of Europe barley growing since early 2010. Why do people no live in these areas? Why are there so many homeless in the first place.
xyzelement 3y ago
I appreciate your sharing and open mindedness. It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with. It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc. It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies are fine and even privileged and therefore it’s fine to hurt them a little to benefit the “disadvantaged”. What I think we are seeing now that doubling down on druggies etc still doesn’t really help them (because frankly their problems are internal and a druggie by definition is in a baaaad place) while it also hurts the people trying to live a good life and who by the way pay for everything. I do hope that people start to recognize this. We need to feel good making choices in favor of families over druggies, when we have to.
- foobarian 3y ago
  How much is the effect exacerbated by Portland being a kind of a magnet? In a large country like the US there is a lot of potential for immigration and making the situation very skewed.
  - throwaway914 3y ago
    I often feel this is what's happening: Portland and a few other cities around the nation prioritize helping folks in a big way, and we wind up serving a national need not a city need.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    also by the milder climate.
happymellon 3y ago
So what exactly did they do that was their one step too far, was it just the tolerance of the drug users? Is it possible to decriminalise, yet also make it undesirable, or socially unacceptable? As an outsider, the increase in drug use does not appear to be helping your countries mental health.
whiddershins 3y ago
Locking people up for being addicts is not the same as locking people up for using in the street. What is wrong with this approach: Doing drugs isn’t a crime, but all bad behavior associated with it is. If someone’s addiction has become unmanageable to the point where they are doing drugs on the street, it is a kindness and a necessity to take their agency away from them. If someone is an addict but otherwise functions, it is none of anyone’s business.
- carlmr 3y ago
  > Doing drugs isn’t a crime, but all bad behavior associated with it is. Exactly. I can't imagine somebody on weed would bother people that much. But if you steal from people, leave your unclean syringes lying around, etc. you're a hazard to society and need to be dealt with. So we need to enable law enforcement to deal with that properly. If you're drunk and belligerent, which happens a lot, you shouldn't be able to do that legally either. So as long as you're not a menace to society, I don't see why you shouldn't have that freedom. But as soon as your freedom causes issues for others, it needs to be dealt with. Maybe allowing meth, fentanyl, heroin and such is the problem. I would bet almost all the big problems are due to the users of these.
ghoogl 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
doubloon 3y ago
So the Shelters are half full? That is higher success rate than most VC startups and cost a lot less too
dougmwne 3y ago
I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it still fail horribly. That’s because it was never the laws that were working, but the society and culture as a whole. You can’t bring good laws to a place with a disintegrating social fabric and expect the same results.
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  Absolutely this. A country needs a healthy government and public employees dedicated and honest. A culture of sacrifice for public good. Not "but meeeeee!" culture. It does not work where the "Deep State" is the enemy and grifters run for Congress to become Twitter trolls.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Which congress trolls? You are blaming Portland's currently fail[ed|ing] policies on federal congress members that have nothing to do with Portland?
  - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
    I don' think this one is on the Republicans, a group that effectively doesn't exist in Portland politics. This is a progressive failure
  - mminer237 3y ago
    I don't disagree with you, but I don't think that's the problem here necessarily. I admittedly don't know much about the attitudes of Portland's commission members. I think more to the point the issue is that you can't legislate morality. Some people will break the law no matter how harsh the penalty, and some people will take advantage of permissiveness no matter how much you try to help. Some problems the government just can't fix.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  Yes. Exactly same way that trying to transplant ideas like agile or microservices or testing driven development fails so miserably most of the time. It is not that the ideas are wrong. It is that they are not the correct moves for a team that is not ready for them. I know it sounds like a silly parallel. But changing societies is hard, long, unique and not well understood process. It makes sense to try to learn from examples where it is much easier to gather some information. When I come to meet a team that has trouble (I work as an advisor and help teams that have trouble), I am not coming with a library of good solutions BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING NOT WORKING. Time and time again, I am repairing after previous people who did just that -- they came with a solution thinking they know it all because it worked somewhere. More often than not they have observed something working, they learned elements they could easily understand and they tried to transplant and failed miserably. So whether you are trying to fix a team or fix a homelessness problem, you have to come with an empty mind and willingness to relentlessly problem solve. And look at those other successful examples as examples to learn from but not necessarily duplicate.
cultureswitch 3y ago
I think you're completely correct in local terms for the interest of Portland. And personally I think this was a wholly predictable outcome. However, isn't this a little bit like state gun control? Legislation and public services being wildly different across a border that anyone can cross at will creates border effects. Is it possible that Portland is attracting a ton of junkies from elsewhere? Also this is another exhibit for my pet theory that progressive and idealistic politics are more effective at large scales whereas conservative and managerial politics are better suited to the local level of governance.
namlem 3y ago
They most certainly did not do everything. The Portuguese model works fairly well, but that requires arreatijng drug users and making them show up to court. They don't send people to prison for drug use but they still entangle them in the legal system.
ibeckermayer 3y ago
You’re probably discounting how much “everything” actually meant blank check subsidies for addicts, which obviously leads nowhere good.
mock-possum 3y ago
The problem isn’t drug legalization, the problem is the inability to deal with irresponsible drug users. Blanket drug bans unjustly punish responsible users, and enable selective enforcement based on the bias of those in power e.g. the police and we all know where that gets us. If I want to pop some mdma and enjoy myself at a live show, or do shrooms and go hiking, or smoke some weed and relax in a hammock and listen to my favorite album, or do some speed and clean my house, or spend a weekend dozing off with some heroin, then I ought to be allowed. If however I get into fights, puke and shit in public, nod off laying spread eagle across the sidewalk or in the doorway of a business that’s trying to open in the morning, trespass and steal anything that’s not nailed down, start completely unsafe and inappropriate fires, and menace innocent passerbys on thoroughfares - I should be stopped. Drugs writ large are not the problem. Drugs are what you make of them. Users who cause problems should be dealt with. Users who don’t should be left unharassed. Drunken brawling? Straight to jail. Drunken hugging? Let people have fun.
arandomsapien 3y ago
I voted for 110. I regret it now. An idea I have in my darker moments, which as I said in another comment here are becoming more frequent... Is that we should have single occupancy rooms where drugs are provided to people and they can get high as much as they want so long as they stay put there. As soon as they want to stop, support swoops in and gets them in a system. If they want to go back, they are free to do so.
katabasis 3y ago
I live in Portland and I 100% agree with this. I say this as someone who voted for Measure 110 and now regrets that vote. At this point I would support a straight-up repeal. At least under the old system some people who were arrested were able to get clean in jail, or were able to enter court-mandated treatment programs. The reality is that people in the throes of drug addiction have already lost their agency, so some kind of coercive intervention will often be necessary to break the cycle. By refusing to do this out of a (commendable) compassionate impulse, we are making the situation worse. In general the last ~5 years of living here has been a lesson of how important order (i.e. the enforcement of rules and norms) is for a functioning society. You could say it is the foundation of all social goods. Watching the city's decline up close has deeply altered my political beliefs on a number of topics – this is one of them.
scionthefly 3y ago
Does this analysis also consider the wide ranging massive impact of fentanyl and similar drugs that have skyrocketed drug overdose problems in all communities in the past five years?
mannyv 3y ago
Realistically speaking, homeless drug users don't want treatment or shelter; they want to be left alone to do drugs. Most drug users don't want to get off drugs. That's why you need an intervention. No addict likes interventions either. You have to be really self disciplined to turn yourself into treatment.
stefek99 3y ago
Worth differentiating recreational drugs that are not perfectly fine to use and continue with normal (if not better) life. VS Fentanyl. Opioid epidemics. Addition as business model. See the chart: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-... I'm worried that cannabis is less likely to be legalised elsewhere due to pharma drugs being so harmful.
smsm42 3y ago
Portland is not a good test case to decide on one specific policy. It's like testing a cold drug on a person with several cancers - the test can't show any improvement because everything else is so hopelessly broken. I mean, I'm sure their drug policy is broken too, but one should not conclude from this that in a sane city legalize could never work, because Portland is not a sane city.

xvector 3y ago

I feel the same way about SF. This whole experiment has been a massive failure.

hooverd 3y ago
Eh, all the stimulant use you don't see on the streets is surely responsible for much Value Creation.
- thrawy2to15 3y ago
  A lot of drug users are trying self medicate their ADHD or BPD (the most common), or just their sense of existential dread. So at least in the case of ADHD some amount will be actually treating their condition with the stimulants whether they realize it or not.

qingcharles 3y ago

This is such a hard problem to solve. I work with drug and alcohol addicts regularly and addiction is such a damned nightmare. And every homeless person hates shelters. They have way more rules than prisons and all of the drama. I don't know what the solutions are :(

alostpuppy 3y ago
We appreciate you
gafage 3y ago
[flagged]
- iAMkenough 3y ago
  It is a hard problem to solve. Criminalizing drugs and throwing addicts in jail doesn't resolve the problem.
  - skippyboxedhero 3y ago
    ...apart from in every country that does this and doesn't have lots of addicts? It is quite strange because you go almost anywhere else in the world...no addicts, no-one uses drugs, they find it strange that anyone would use drugs...go to the US, you not only have drug addicts but a whole industry dedicated to offering very knowledgeable-sounding opinions about what should work...it never is explained why the drug problem in the US is so out of control with so many people who know what "should" work. The only places where I have ever been that have had lots of drug addicts have been places that have tried to decriminalize (for some reason, almost always with help from the police who just want this stuff off their books altogether).
    - argc 3y ago
      AFAIK there are drug addicts all over the world, including in the Middle East and Philippines where drug addicts are met with severe punishments. The problem is IMO more the availability of drugs vs the potential punishments people face. People are willing to take risks to do drugs. Unless a government completely controls everyone's private life there remains an ability to evade detection and take drugs while telling oneself that one will not be caught. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/middleeast/saudi-drug-capital-mime-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/middleeast/saudi-drug-capital...
  - 3y ago

jdminhbg 3y ago

> Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. Huge sums were collected, but they haven't really been spent. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the first detox center built with M110 money only opened two months ago, and only has 16 beds: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portland-detox-center-measure-110-funding/283-fa52722f-97b8-4dfc-96b8-a25e98a8ba65 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/new-se-portl...

legitster 3y ago
While this is true, there were a lot of programs that existed before M110, and part of the bill of goods that was sold with M110 was that it was going to make it easier for people to access existing resources without fear of law enforcement. And again, literally written into M110 is the idea that treatment is supposed to be cheaper than incarceration. Perhaps it's due to really bad red tape, but the treatment programs are not looking terribly cheap or effective.
- Consultant32452 3y ago
  There's two problems with these programs. The first problem is that the people we're really talking about, the ones living/defecating/etc on the street do not want help. The second problem is that in order to want to get better, an addict has to hit their personal rock bottom. Programs that keep people floating above their personal rock bottom are like family members enabling addicts. It ultimately doesn't help them. It's VERY difficult to create social programs that help people want to not be ill, while simultaneously not letting them fall to their own rock bottom. And then consider the position from the legislature of creating incentives for government programs/NGOs which align with the desired outcomes and it becomes expoentially harder.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    Plenty of people on the streets want all kinds of help. They don't want shit programs with a million hoops and strings attached, nor do they want gross dilapidated shelters also with hoops and strings plus predators prowling around looking to steal their shit (or worse) while they sleep. Also, while the whole rock bottom trope probably holds some truth for many people, when you make every story all about it you kind of lose the plot. If you try hard enough, you can look at just about anyone's life who has recovered from addiction and create a narrative based on an upward trend after the "worst" moment or period of their addiction. If they had two periods that were basically exactly as bad, you dig around until you find some trivial reason to label the second period as worse, and thus the "real bottom." If someone had their worst period of addiction many years before they actually got to a place where they could maintain sobriety long term it was just a long journey for them. Etc.

TheBlight 3y ago

Does Portland's program do anything to address the mental health problems underlying much of this drug abuse?

legitster 3y ago
$1.3 billion statewide approved in 2021: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/Pages/index.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/Pages/index.aspx This is in addition to the ~$1.3 billion the state already paid in mental health services: https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2021/oregon-spends-on-mental-health-with-few-results/ https://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2021/oregon-spends-on-ment... In addition to resources available at the county level ($2 million came from police defunding): https://www.multco.us/justice-agenda/budget-priorities https://www.multco.us/justice-agenda/budget-priorities
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TheBlight 3y ago
  I guess it won't make much of a difference if people can easily opt-out for a life of addiction on the streets.
paulcole 3y ago
No. From what I see daily, if what Portland is doing is working in any way, then I’d hate to see things if they weren’t working at all. It’s a very sad state of affairs here and it’s hard to recommend that anyone move here unless you’re being paid extremely well AND you love the outdoors AND you’ve lived in a city with a severe drug/homelessness/mental health crisis before. I moved here in 2007 from the extremely rural South. The day I moved into my Old Town apartment a homeless guy spit on me! What a wake up call to a kid from the country. But I ended up living in that apartment for 10 years and never once felt actually scared in that neighborhood. But now, I actively avoid that neighborhood and getting spit on might be the best possible outcome! Source: I live in Portland very near Downtown.

namesbc 3y ago

"We've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas

CydeWeys 3y ago

The first priority should be cleaning up the cities for the benefit of the actual taxpayers. Absolutely do not let drug addicts overwhelm your downtown cores and make them terrible. You don't need to lock them up indefinitely, but you do need to move them somewhere else where they won't have hugely negative effects on the city and its populace. It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either, while it will make life for everyone else substantially better -- and we should be prioritizing the welfare of the productive members of society who actually pay to make all of it possible. Right now way too many cities have lost the plot by being too permissive of violations of the social contract, and everyone suffers as a result.

prawn 3y ago
I think you can provide services (shelters, etc) AND crackdown with a view to cleaning the city for regular people (rather than just specifying taxpayers).
- fragmede 3y ago
  More than a service, bring back the projects. Yes there were problems with them the last time around, but the problem we have now seems worse on all fronts.
vineyardmike 3y ago
I hate the messaging of “for the actual taxpayers” phrase even if I agree mostly with the sentiment. There is more to life than paying taxes, and people contribute to society in many ways that aren’t financial. I think “productive members” has the same phrasing problems. We need to make life better for members of society that contribute and benefit from it, for people that want to be a part of society, regardless of their ability to contribute back.
- freetanga 3y ago
  Well, I agree halfway… at the core of any social contract are rights and obligations. I think part of those obligations are to contribute to society (I think we agree up to this point) However, I believe a part of that contribution has to be in an objective, quantifiable way - which translates to taxes. The rights we consume from society are tangible and expensive. A city populated only by of poets would collapse of starvation after 12 hours… That said, if a Society feels they need to foster a specific part of it (culture,social work, etc) they can enact tax breaks to reduce the financial load of those making that contribution. But taxation comes first (as an obligation).

tunesmith 3y ago

I don't believe Portland's efforts caused the rise of fentanyl, though. How do we know it wouldn't be worse, if not for Portland's efforts?

adolph 3y ago
My recollection is that in 2007 Mexico banned pseudoephedrine in order to remove feed stock from meth labs supplying the US.[0,1] As a result of this and other factors suppliers in Mexico found fentanyl, which bypassed growing cycles of agricultural drugs like pot and heroin. During the pandemic, Mexico grew additional trade ties with China which included fentanyl precursor chemicals.[2] 0. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-crime-pseudoephedrine-idUSN1927125520070719/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-crime-pseudoephedr... 1. https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2005/06/the_mexican_connection_pseudoe.html https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2005/06/th... 2. https://coffeeordie.com/china-mexican-cartel-alliance https://coffeeordie.com/china-mexican-cartel-alliance
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Plenty of other precursors to use if you can't get pseudoephedrine at scale. Trying to control ultra-small scale producers doesn't accomplish much other than sweeten the cartels (and purity/yields, so I guess that's a positive). Opioids being more dependence-inducing than stimulants would better explain a production shift. Big legitimate trading volumes with China (and any other large producer of goods/inputs) make a customs-focussed effort at controlling supply basically impossible.

dylan604 3y ago

With my personal experience of knowing so many addicts that have been in/out of various recovery programs, I'm totally at a loss. I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want, but that's back when I thought people were only doing things for recreation. I didn't have experience with true addicts until I was older. I've even played with liking the idea of a version of The Wire's Hamsterdam on the sole basis of the yo-yo lifestyle of recovery/relapse is just something that has no real answer.

thrawy2to15 3y ago
Just giving a voice to those who do maintain responsible recreational use, because that crowd very much exists. It might go unnoticed since they usually don't die or screw up their lives because of it. --- On the flip side I've seen addiction become a much more devastating force in recent years and smart solutions are badly needed.
oneshtein 3y ago
> I too leaned libertarian with let people do the drugs they want ... unless this harms other, isn't? Drug addicts are causing harm and are burden to society, so why libertarians support them? In liberal philosophy, value of human life is infinite, thus all humans are equal, thus it's not allowed for someone to cause harm or abuse others. However, why we limit this to humans only? In my opinion, is a bacteria, virus, ideology, hate, chemicals, drugs, pollution, technical problems, climate change, ecology causes harm to humans, then it should be equal to harm done by a human directly. Why it's illegal to shot someone, but legal to smoke weed near to someone, which leads to addiction and further death? IMHO, it's the same harm, but with extra steps.
- dylan604 3y ago
  What nonsense is this? Smoking weed next to someone does not lead to addiction. Every place that I am familiar with some form of legalized marijuana consumption says you can't do it just any old place you feel like. So this is also just more BS being spread. You have a very misconstrued understanding of something, and now you're calling it libertarianism.

anon291 3y ago

[flagged]

jes5199 3y ago

it's not like we have room in the jails either, we still routinely release people due to lack of space

swalling 3y ago

"Portland did everything! They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc." This is not even remotely true. Everyone in the city, from the mayor [1] to the head of the largest services non-profit [2] has been yelling from the rooftops about the glacial slowness to effectively spend the allocated funding for drug treatment. Until just months ago, Multnomah County has been sitting on tens of millions of unspent funds,[3] and has been perpetually criticized for spending on harm reduction instead of treatment.[4] We actually closed the only local sobering center in 2020! 1. https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-measure-110-for-slow-rollout-of-addiction-treatment-funds/ https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2023/03/20/wheeler-slams-mea... 2. https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-largest-social-services-nonprofit-says-things-are-really-bad-now-he-has-the-data-to-prove-it/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/11/15/the-ceo-of-portlands-l... 3. https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-tracks-funding-for-homelessness-behavioral-health-services-sobering-stabilization-beds-portland-oregon-homeless-crisis https://katu.com/news/local/multnomah-county-chair-fast-trac... 4. https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementing-new-harm-reduction-plan/ https://www.kptv.com/2023/07/08/multnomah-county-implementin...

Spinnaker_ 3y ago
Right, but the plan has still failed. If all the key players are on board and you can't even begin to implement the plan, then it was a bad plan, and the people who developed it had little comprehension of reality. We should not attempt this elsewhere.
- swalling 3y ago
  No, actually we should be trying to fix the stupid mistakes that were made in implementation of the plan, not roll it back and keep on fighting an equally moronic, ineffective, and racist War on Drugs elsewhere. The best available evidence is that decriminalization essentially had no effect on overdose deaths (https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/ballot-measure-110-did-not-lead-to-more-fatal-overdoses-study-finds/ https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/03/ballot-measure-110-di...). It was going to go up no matter what because of the nature of fentanyl. The only thing the failure of Measure 110 has demonstrably done is waste taxpayer funds and give businesses in downtown an excuse for why they are failing (when in reality it has more to do with the death of downtown for purely economic reasons post-COVID, just like other major West Coast cities).

cratermoon 3y ago

> They invested huge sums in shelters, treatment programs, counsellors, etc. That's false. I'd say "prove me wrong", but first, define "huge". Compare and contrast to cities of similar size in the US and globally.

stainablesteel 3y ago

yeah cities are zones of massive economic importance, we can't keep penalizing the people who work there because some drug addicts won't abandon the corner they sleep on. its literally insane. who are we prioritizing in this situation and why? i care more about the people who have their lives together, they deserve priority.

huytersd 3y ago

No, you’re right. Empathy doesn’t work with certain drug use (opiates, meth, crack etc.). They need to be forcibly put in rehab that is akin to jail until they’re clean for a while. It still shouldn’t be a felony on your record though because that effectively ends any chance of rebuilding your life if you do recover.

acchow 3y ago

Prohibition also failed horribly. We need a middle ground. What about drug use as a privilege? If you’re living on the street, your litter is all over the street, and you never pay taxes, then you lose your privilege.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I thought we solved this with alcohol already. Can you drink? Yes. are you allowed to be shit faced drunk in the streets? No. Are there lounges to drink safely and responsibly? Yes. Granted, it may be much harder to make a "drugs bar", but we can use comparable metrics to deem who is too unfit to independently do that stuff and if they need intervention.
- hamburglar 3y ago
  Indeed. You don’t get put in prison for being drunk. Maybe you spend a night in the drunk tank and then get released and are free to go repeat the same mistake. We don’t just let you roll around on the sidewalk downtown while continuing to drink. Just because drugs are decriminalized doesn’t mean it has to be a free for all.
- 1253513452 3y ago
  I don't know about a "drug bar" but I'm of a similar mindset in that I think solutions which punish functional users are unhelpful. It's less obvious who those people are in the case of things like fentanyl but there's no shortage of healthcare, legal, and culinary workers making routine use of illegal stimulants. There's maybe a dialogue to be had there about if it's actually desirable such people's jobs be so demanding they feel the need to use the substances they do of course. But it hardly makes sense to jail them or force them into rehab if they're maintaining a productive lifestyle in my opinion.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  And somehow in Europe people drink on the streets all the time and its mostly fine. Cities are not overrun by drunks and people live and work there just fine. People chilling in the streets and parks together drinking beers and so on. I find the alcohol culture n the US pretty outputting. The US model of 'get hammer in a bar and then drive home'. Not a great model. So to say 'we solved this' is kind of ridiculous at least from my outside perspective.

anvuong 3y ago

Portland has way more problems than just drug. I don't feel safe walking in downtown even during the day. Parking is a gamble whether or not you get your windows broken, almost a third of my friends had terrible experience when parking overnight in Portland, doesn't matter if it was a public park or in a hotel park.

beezlewax 3y ago

ODs have more than doubled because of fentanyl but I suspect you know this already.

sneak 3y ago
Cigarettes kill 7x as many as fentanyl every hour, day, week, month, and year. One is available without prescription on every streetcorner, with use allowed in public in proximity to others, and the other is a public health epidemic.
- beezlewax 3y ago
  That being the case doesn't negate the fact that cigarette users are not turned into some version of the walking dead but who'd do literally anything for a fix. Tobacco has a lot to answer for but it isn't the same kind of issue at all. It doesn't destroy communities so directly.
  - hypertele-Xii 3y ago
    I've seen plenty of people do nothing but drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, and complain, all day, every day, year after year. You might argue that it's the alcohol doing the zombification but I posit that surely the tobacco also has something to do in this equation.
- blackshaw 3y ago
  Cigarettes kill you slowly over decades, fentanyl can kill a first-time user with a single dose. Moronic analogy.

gigatexal 3y ago

Former Portland native here: it hasn’t worked. I was back just a year or two ago and 5th ave near the waterfront was overrun with homeless openly shooting up and accosting folks. All the food carts across from the building where I used to work left, the Indian buffet restaurant closed, walking up around 10th near the Target to check out other restaurants I loved many I saw many barricaded former businesses. The city used to be beautiful. It used to be vibrant and bustling with people and tourists and working professionals but when I was there last retracing my steps as if I was working and living there again it was not the Portland I remember. It’s disheartening. That’s not to say I’m blaming the homeless or those addicted to substances or dealing with mental Health problems. I’m not. I believe in helping people when they can’t help themselves. But allowing open drug use, camping in front of businesses, etc., doesn’t do much for said businesses and people to invest in your city leaving you with less tax revenue to help these very same folks with.

stillwithit 3y ago
WFH means biz isn’t coming back there any time soon even with the homeless gone. It’s why homeless are downtown now rather on the fringe; fringe used to be emptier more frequently as downtown filled. Now folks are home on the fringe all the time. I was just downtown for lunch on weekday and it was a ghost town. I worked for PSU for years, am aware of what it should look like and it’s just dead. That’s been the case since 2020. If you want services, good luck. Feds extracted that money and feed it to cloud app companies to keep you all happy and you still aren’t. Let’s keep giving Elon forever to fail to reach Mars and complain government experiments are failures right away. Americans have a credibility problem. Work less and less but expect more and more because we have a lot of hallucinated wealth. Where do the real workers come from if everyone is doing office work? Now that other nations have matured after WW2 rebuild, how do we justify taking more for less output? 1945-2000s was a statistical anomaly. America needs to sober up.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  Bucks are free, just print them. Wait, no, money are digital now, press a button and make money numbers.

janalsncm 3y ago

I don’t see why it has to be one way or the other: either no enforcement or sending kids caught with a joint to prison. For people who have clear drug problems, they need to go into rehab, voluntarily or not.

u32480932048 3y ago
This would require selective enforcement under current laws, or defining "clear drug problem" for purposes of a new one.

Pxtl 3y ago

One thing all these cities with catastrophic street drug use have in common is also bonkers housing crisis. Homelessness correlates pretty tightly with prevailing rents. People end up on the street and do drugs because once you've hit rock bottom why not?

danielvaughn 3y ago

I don’t want people locked in jail, but I do think that something akin to the Baker Act needs to be implemented. There are clearly many people who need help but are not willing to seek help themselves. It’s safe to say that they aren’t in control of their own actions and are a danger to everyone around them. It’s not compassion to simply let them rot on the street.

hutzlibu 3y ago
But some people actually do prefer to rot on the street on their own terms, than rot in some asylum cell locked up. Still, I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed, so I don't see an easy, clean solution solving everything at once. But banning public drug use, is very fine with me.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Of course some people prefer a to b. It doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to it. I could build myself a really cool James Bond-style tent house in Central Park and live there in the summers for basically free. I'd like that. I'm not entitled to it. Voters can easily decide that the sidewalk is no longer a place for people to rot on.
  - john-radio 3y ago
    When does James Bond live in a tent house?
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      The house at the beginning of No Time to Die is roughly a tent house like those in the Four Seasons in Chiang Rai.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Yeah, I agree and that is what I said .. "I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed" And when you ban public drug use and enforce it, you automatically remove all junkies from public spaces.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago

People should be locked in jail for being drug addicts. Give it a few more years and you'll change your opinion on that too.

Intermernet 3y ago
Many functioning, respected and powerful people in society are drug addicts. You will almost certainly know some.
- polski-g 3y ago
  How is that relevant to the naked twerking person at the top of the metro stairwell? If everyone on the entire planet was addicted to meth and did it daily, but there was a single meth user who decided to twerk naked at the top of the metro stairwell and assault people, that one person should be imprisoned. Why you ask? Because every other person on the planet is (as you say) functional. Nobody cares if you decided to do drugs and then fall asleep at home while paying your bills (ie: functioning). People do care about naked twerking people at the top of metro stairwells who routinely assault passers-by.
  - nullc 3y ago
    That would be "lock up publicly problematic addicts" not "addicts" in general. The aforementioned "functioning, respected and powerful people" are able to conceal or internalize the cost of their problems and aren't usually a problem for the public at large. With that in mind, the problem is really just being persistently a public danger/nuisance. The only relevance of addiction to this is that addicts are frequently unresponsive to incentives that would be sufficient for non-addicts.
kzzzznot 3y ago
That viewpoint is both draconian and fiscally irresponsible

bradleyjg 3y ago

If you are unwilling to lock people up—whether in jail or elsewhere—that’s the only opinion you get to have. Every other “rule” you propose is meaningless. Right now the nyc transit system is on the pay what you wish system because the voters have decided they can’t bear to see people locked up for not paying. You can hem and haw, but that’s the consequence.

hutzlibu 3y ago
I suppose you meant "option" and in general that, the only solution is locking people up? I see lots of other ways, the most simple one: just take away their drugs, if they use drugs in public. If you do this regulary, no junkie will go somewhere, where he will seriously risk loosing his stuff. Locking up people at some point is also possible, but there are lots of other ways before that.
- bluefirebrand 3y ago
  > Just take away their drugs, if they use drugs in public. Seems short sighted. Do you know how people act when they want to get high and can't? When they're going through serious withdrawal? Just taking their drugs is going to get people hurt. They will either hurt themselves, or they will hurt other people.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    If you have competent police - than taking the drugs away is sort of a lackmus test. Meaning if they get violent - then they are a danger and further meassures are needed. So yes, jail (conventional or mental) is then the temporary solution.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

thworp 3y ago

> Portland did everything! [...] They got all of the carrots sure, but there was no stick. The reason these programs have success elsewhere is that they give people the choice of prison or treatment. Also, nowhere except the US just decided to legalize public drug use. In fact one of the goals of harm reduction programs in other places is to get the users out of public spaces.

panick21_ 3y ago

That's a very American perspective. Downtown in European cities (that I know) are as vibrant as ever. Europe has done just as many social programs as Portland or probably more. It seems to me this problem is much larger then drug law enforcement. The US had far better economic growth then Europe in general. With much of Europe barley growing since early 2010. Why do people no live in these areas? Why are there so many homeless in the first place.

xyzelement 3y ago

I appreciate your sharing and open mindedness. It seems like some things don’t have perfect solutions and we are “stuck” picking which downsides we want to deal with. It seems that if we want to be the most kind to druggies (not lock them up) it comes at the expense of the normies - people trying to live, work, raise families, run businesses, etc. It seems that for the last few decades society decided that normies are fine and even privileged and therefore it’s fine to hurt them a little to benefit the “disadvantaged”. What I think we are seeing now that doubling down on druggies etc still doesn’t really help them (because frankly their problems are internal and a druggie by definition is in a baaaad place) while it also hurts the people trying to live a good life and who by the way pay for everything. I do hope that people start to recognize this. We need to feel good making choices in favor of families over druggies, when we have to.

foobarian 3y ago
How much is the effect exacerbated by Portland being a kind of a magnet? In a large country like the US there is a lot of potential for immigration and making the situation very skewed.
- throwaway914 3y ago
  I often feel this is what's happening: Portland and a few other cities around the nation prioritize helping folks in a big way, and we wind up serving a national need not a city need.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  also by the milder climate.

happymellon 3y ago

So what exactly did they do that was their one step too far, was it just the tolerance of the drug users? Is it possible to decriminalise, yet also make it undesirable, or socially unacceptable? As an outsider, the increase in drug use does not appear to be helping your countries mental health.

whiddershins 3y ago

Locking people up for being addicts is not the same as locking people up for using in the street. What is wrong with this approach: Doing drugs isn’t a crime, but all bad behavior associated with it is. If someone’s addiction has become unmanageable to the point where they are doing drugs on the street, it is a kindness and a necessity to take their agency away from them. If someone is an addict but otherwise functions, it is none of anyone’s business.

carlmr 3y ago
> Doing drugs isn’t a crime, but all bad behavior associated with it is. Exactly. I can't imagine somebody on weed would bother people that much. But if you steal from people, leave your unclean syringes lying around, etc. you're a hazard to society and need to be dealt with. So we need to enable law enforcement to deal with that properly. If you're drunk and belligerent, which happens a lot, you shouldn't be able to do that legally either. So as long as you're not a menace to society, I don't see why you shouldn't have that freedom. But as soon as your freedom causes issues for others, it needs to be dealt with. Maybe allowing meth, fentanyl, heroin and such is the problem. I would bet almost all the big problems are due to the users of these.

ghoogl 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

doubloon 3y ago

So the Shelters are half full? That is higher success rate than most VC startups and cost a lot less too

dougmwne 3y ago

I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it still fail horribly. That’s because it was never the laws that were working, but the society and culture as a whole. You can’t bring good laws to a place with a disintegrating social fabric and expect the same results.

renegade-otter 3y ago
Absolutely this. A country needs a healthy government and public employees dedicated and honest. A culture of sacrifice for public good. Not "but meeeeee!" culture. It does not work where the "Deep State" is the enemy and grifters run for Congress to become Twitter trolls.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Which congress trolls? You are blaming Portland's currently fail[ed|ing] policies on federal congress members that have nothing to do with Portland?
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  I don' think this one is on the Republicans, a group that effectively doesn't exist in Portland politics. This is a progressive failure
- mminer237 3y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but I don't think that's the problem here necessarily. I admittedly don't know much about the attitudes of Portland's commission members. I think more to the point the issue is that you can't legislate morality. Some people will break the law no matter how harsh the penalty, and some people will take advantage of permissiveness no matter how much you try to help. Some problems the government just can't fix.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
Yes. Exactly same way that trying to transplant ideas like agile or microservices or testing driven development fails so miserably most of the time. It is not that the ideas are wrong. It is that they are not the correct moves for a team that is not ready for them. I know it sounds like a silly parallel. But changing societies is hard, long, unique and not well understood process. It makes sense to try to learn from examples where it is much easier to gather some information. When I come to meet a team that has trouble (I work as an advisor and help teams that have trouble), I am not coming with a library of good solutions BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING NOT WORKING. Time and time again, I am repairing after previous people who did just that -- they came with a solution thinking they know it all because it worked somewhere. More often than not they have observed something working, they learned elements they could easily understand and they tried to transplant and failed miserably. So whether you are trying to fix a team or fix a homelessness problem, you have to come with an empty mind and willingness to relentlessly problem solve. And look at those other successful examples as examples to learn from but not necessarily duplicate.

cultureswitch 3y ago

I think you're completely correct in local terms for the interest of Portland. And personally I think this was a wholly predictable outcome. However, isn't this a little bit like state gun control? Legislation and public services being wildly different across a border that anyone can cross at will creates border effects. Is it possible that Portland is attracting a ton of junkies from elsewhere? Also this is another exhibit for my pet theory that progressive and idealistic politics are more effective at large scales whereas conservative and managerial politics are better suited to the local level of governance.

namlem 3y ago

They most certainly did not do everything. The Portuguese model works fairly well, but that requires arreatijng drug users and making them show up to court. They don't send people to prison for drug use but they still entangle them in the legal system.

ibeckermayer 3y ago

You’re probably discounting how much “everything” actually meant blank check subsidies for addicts, which obviously leads nowhere good.

mock-possum 3y ago

The problem isn’t drug legalization, the problem is the inability to deal with irresponsible drug users. Blanket drug bans unjustly punish responsible users, and enable selective enforcement based on the bias of those in power e.g. the police and we all know where that gets us. If I want to pop some mdma and enjoy myself at a live show, or do shrooms and go hiking, or smoke some weed and relax in a hammock and listen to my favorite album, or do some speed and clean my house, or spend a weekend dozing off with some heroin, then I ought to be allowed. If however I get into fights, puke and shit in public, nod off laying spread eagle across the sidewalk or in the doorway of a business that’s trying to open in the morning, trespass and steal anything that’s not nailed down, start completely unsafe and inappropriate fires, and menace innocent passerbys on thoroughfares - I should be stopped. Drugs writ large are not the problem. Drugs are what you make of them. Users who cause problems should be dealt with. Users who don’t should be left unharassed. Drunken brawling? Straight to jail. Drunken hugging? Let people have fun.

arandomsapien 3y ago

I voted for 110. I regret it now. An idea I have in my darker moments, which as I said in another comment here are becoming more frequent... Is that we should have single occupancy rooms where drugs are provided to people and they can get high as much as they want so long as they stay put there. As soon as they want to stop, support swoops in and gets them in a system. If they want to go back, they are free to do so.

katabasis 3y ago

I live in Portland and I 100% agree with this. I say this as someone who voted for Measure 110 and now regrets that vote. At this point I would support a straight-up repeal. At least under the old system some people who were arrested were able to get clean in jail, or were able to enter court-mandated treatment programs. The reality is that people in the throes of drug addiction have already lost their agency, so some kind of coercive intervention will often be necessary to break the cycle. By refusing to do this out of a (commendable) compassionate impulse, we are making the situation worse. In general the last ~5 years of living here has been a lesson of how important order (i.e. the enforcement of rules and norms) is for a functioning society. You could say it is the foundation of all social goods. Watching the city's decline up close has deeply altered my political beliefs on a number of topics – this is one of them.

scionthefly 3y ago

Does this analysis also consider the wide ranging massive impact of fentanyl and similar drugs that have skyrocketed drug overdose problems in all communities in the past five years?

mannyv 3y ago

Realistically speaking, homeless drug users don't want treatment or shelter; they want to be left alone to do drugs. Most drug users don't want to get off drugs. That's why you need an intervention. No addict likes interventions either. You have to be really self disciplined to turn yourself into treatment.

stefek99 3y ago

Worth differentiating recreational drugs that are not perfectly fine to use and continue with normal (if not better) life. VS Fentanyl. Opioid epidemics. Addition as business model. See the chart: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-... I'm worried that cannabis is less likely to be legalised elsewhere due to pharma drugs being so harmful.

smsm42 3y ago

Portland is not a good test case to decide on one specific policy. It's like testing a cold drug on a person with several cancers - the test can't show any improvement because everything else is so hopelessly broken. I mean, I'm sure their drug policy is broken too, but one should not conclude from this that in a sane city legalize could never work, because Portland is not a sane city.