7 ms·

Two things can both be true: - Decriminalization of drugs creates better health outcomes for drug users. - Criminalization of drugs creates better outcomes fo

by ethbr1 3y ago

Two things can both be true: - Decriminalization of drugs creates better health outcomes for drug users. - Criminalization of drugs creates better outcomes for non-drug users. It's unreasonable to ask people to be okay with open drug use, and the consequences thereof, for the good of drug users. A balanced policy between compassionate enforcement and properly funding treatment seems more socially palatable.

mathgradthrow 3y ago
What a coincidence, literally 30 minutes ago I saw a man openly smoking something I did not recognize (meth probably?) at a bus stop for the first time. I suppose it beats breaking into cars to do it.
uoaei 3y ago
Public use and illicit sale is still illegal even if possession is decriminalized. It's unclear what this recriminalization accomplishes from a legal standpoint to address the primary concerns of the public. Appears to be little more than a shallow political play.
- chrchr 3y ago
  The Oregon decriminalization experiment had several really puzzling elements. One of them is that isn't clear that public use was illegal, at least not in a way that police could actually enforce. In a fun example of "the exception proves the rule", a few weeks ago the state leg. passed a law criminalizing drug use on public transit. Decriminalization was really badly implemented in Oregon. Part of it was the pandemic. Part of it was the confluence with the fentanyl surge. Part of it was that our public agencies just didn't seem to know how to coordinate with one another on the issues that arose. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/bill-using-drugs-public-transit-passes-oregon-legislature/283-07d60257-42e4-4a28-bfe1-9de94bf8730e https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/bill-using-drugs-p...
zzzeek 3y ago
alcohol is perfectly legal, yet it's illegal to walk down a public street with an open can of beer. This all seems to work out fine. Why didnt this work with other kinds of drugs?
- HEmanZ 3y ago
  In many places it’s perfectly legal to walk down the street with an open containers of alcohol, and there are not the kinds of problems we see with other drugs. Opiates and amphetamines are entirely different animals than drugs like alcohol and weed. You can’t really treat them as the same kind of thing.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    You've never seen a gaggle of drunks in Vegas or New Orleans? Drinking in public absolutely can be a problem, similar to using opiates or whatever else. I'm not implying the laws should be exactly the same, only that public alcohol consumption also has problems that are visible to non-drinkers/locals.
- lancesells 3y ago
  Alcohol has bars to go to? Bars have bartenders to cut you off? Drug use doesn't provide a social place. Also, certain drugs are an order of magnitude way worse than having a moderate amount of alcohol. Legalizing public drug use, outside of marijuana, seems idiotic to me.
  - zzzeek 3y ago
    I guess I dont understand what the actual problem was. People were doing drugs on public street corners? this is my question. It's not hard for people to drink alcohol in places other than street corners, even on days that the bars are all closed.
    - thomastjeffery 3y ago
      It's not hart to drink alcohol on the street, but it is easy to drink it indoors. To contrast, people addicted to heroin or meth are much more vulnerable to unemployment, homelessness, etc.; which pushes them into public spaces, and incentivizes them to commit petty and violent crime.
mjevans 3y ago
I don't have any data at hand, but prefer 'diversion' / redemption programs. Drug use should happen in safe spaces that don't negatively impact others. For any airborne use, I want a 'fume / chemical hood' like negative draw with scrubbed exhaust.
- jakupovic 3y ago
  I want the same for tobacco smokers. Also I don't want to see people consuming alcohol nor have it readily available. I'm wondering whether either of us will het what we want.
mattmaroon 3y ago
Is it criminalization that is better for non-users or did they just do decriminalization incorrectly? Did they need to decriminalize drugs in all cases? Couldn’t it be legal to do heroin in private but not on the sidewalk? I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > Is it criminalization that is better for non-users or did they just do decriminalization incorrectly? They didn't even really do the decriminalization. The full law never came into effect, and the most of the treatment programs they promised to create as an alternative to incarceration were still in the process of being set up. The state never approved the funding for many of them, so they killed the initiative before it ever started. > I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work. That's exactly what happened. The funny part is that the evidence has shown quite clearly that criminalization doesn't "work" either. But it's treated as the societal default, that which can be accepted and trusted without any evidence.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Right. Criminalization is entirely illogical since it just exacerbates the root causes and doesn’t even really help with the symptom. And most people can’t even fathom that there’s an alternative.
- Curvature5868 3y ago
  I think your point is well made. Unfortunately, there are a substantial number of drug users in Oregon (and Portland in particular) who do not have a private place to do drugs. They live in tents on the sidewalk[1]. You see people smoking fentanyl on the sidewalk or in parks all over town. One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business. 1: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/multnomah-county-purchased-more-than-22000-tents-for-homeless-in-recent-years/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/multnomah-county-purc...
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
I assume safe public housing and public health care are prerequisites to universal drug decriminalization.
- nyargh 3y ago
  I wish I could upvote this more. Its proven to be cheaper, too.
- badwolf 3y ago
  It's bizarre the amount of money and resources we spend in futile efforts towards "solving homelessness" except for just... building homes.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > just... building homes A component of this is minimum building standards. Homeless is a direct consequence of socially deciding that no new housing under certain standards (and therefore building costs) can be constructed. If we were okay with building cost- and density-optimized cubes, we could probably solve homelessness in a year. Instead, we've decided that it's better to have minimum building standards, with the side effect that some people cannot afford such a dwelling.
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      And minimum building standards are mindlessly being set by local municipalities, who frankly don't have the engineering competence to understand whether it's excessive or should be required in the first place. Just mindlessly chasing "newer code is better", without understanding how it affects housing affordability. Or maybe it's an intentional payout to developers to let them profit from increased complexity?

by ethbr1 3y ago

mathgradthrow 3y ago

What a coincidence, literally 30 minutes ago I saw a man openly smoking something I did not recognize (meth probably?) at a bus stop for the first time. I suppose it beats breaking into cars to do it.

uoaei 3y ago

Public use and illicit sale is still illegal even if possession is decriminalized. It's unclear what this recriminalization accomplishes from a legal standpoint to address the primary concerns of the public. Appears to be little more than a shallow political play.

chrchr 3y ago
The Oregon decriminalization experiment had several really puzzling elements. One of them is that isn't clear that public use was illegal, at least not in a way that police could actually enforce. In a fun example of "the exception proves the rule", a few weeks ago the state leg. passed a law criminalizing drug use on public transit. Decriminalization was really badly implemented in Oregon. Part of it was the pandemic. Part of it was the confluence with the fentanyl surge. Part of it was that our public agencies just didn't seem to know how to coordinate with one another on the issues that arose. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/bill-using-drugs-public-transit-passes-oregon-legislature/283-07d60257-42e4-4a28-bfe1-9de94bf8730e https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/bill-using-drugs-p...

zzzeek 3y ago

alcohol is perfectly legal, yet it's illegal to walk down a public street with an open can of beer. This all seems to work out fine. Why didnt this work with other kinds of drugs?

HEmanZ 3y ago
In many places it’s perfectly legal to walk down the street with an open containers of alcohol, and there are not the kinds of problems we see with other drugs. Opiates and amphetamines are entirely different animals than drugs like alcohol and weed. You can’t really treat them as the same kind of thing.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  You've never seen a gaggle of drunks in Vegas or New Orleans? Drinking in public absolutely can be a problem, similar to using opiates or whatever else. I'm not implying the laws should be exactly the same, only that public alcohol consumption also has problems that are visible to non-drinkers/locals.
lancesells 3y ago
Alcohol has bars to go to? Bars have bartenders to cut you off? Drug use doesn't provide a social place. Also, certain drugs are an order of magnitude way worse than having a moderate amount of alcohol. Legalizing public drug use, outside of marijuana, seems idiotic to me.
- zzzeek 3y ago
  I guess I dont understand what the actual problem was. People were doing drugs on public street corners? this is my question. It's not hard for people to drink alcohol in places other than street corners, even on days that the bars are all closed.
  - thomastjeffery 3y ago
    It's not hart to drink alcohol on the street, but it is easy to drink it indoors. To contrast, people addicted to heroin or meth are much more vulnerable to unemployment, homelessness, etc.; which pushes them into public spaces, and incentivizes them to commit petty and violent crime.

mjevans 3y ago

I don't have any data at hand, but prefer 'diversion' / redemption programs. Drug use should happen in safe spaces that don't negatively impact others. For any airborne use, I want a 'fume / chemical hood' like negative draw with scrubbed exhaust.

jakupovic 3y ago
I want the same for tobacco smokers. Also I don't want to see people consuming alcohol nor have it readily available. I'm wondering whether either of us will het what we want.

mattmaroon 3y ago

Is it criminalization that is better for non-users or did they just do decriminalization incorrectly? Did they need to decriminalize drugs in all cases? Couldn’t it be legal to do heroin in private but not on the sidewalk? I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work.

chimeracoder 3y ago
> Is it criminalization that is better for non-users or did they just do decriminalization incorrectly? They didn't even really do the decriminalization. The full law never came into effect, and the most of the treatment programs they promised to create as an alternative to incarceration were still in the process of being set up. The state never approved the funding for many of them, so they killed the initiative before it ever started. > I am afraid they badly implemented a policy that, if implemented correctly, could have made a big difference, and now everyone will think it just doesn’t work. That's exactly what happened. The funny part is that the evidence has shown quite clearly that criminalization doesn't "work" either. But it's treated as the societal default, that which can be accepted and trusted without any evidence.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Right. Criminalization is entirely illogical since it just exacerbates the root causes and doesn’t even really help with the symptom. And most people can’t even fathom that there’s an alternative.
Curvature5868 3y ago
I think your point is well made. Unfortunately, there are a substantial number of drug users in Oregon (and Portland in particular) who do not have a private place to do drugs. They live in tents on the sidewalk[1]. You see people smoking fentanyl on the sidewalk or in parks all over town. One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business. 1: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/multnomah-county-purchased-more-than-22000-tents-for-homeless-in-recent-years/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/multnomah-county-purc...

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

I assume safe public housing and public health care are prerequisites to universal drug decriminalization.

nyargh 3y ago
I wish I could upvote this more. Its proven to be cheaper, too.
badwolf 3y ago
It's bizarre the amount of money and resources we spend in futile efforts towards "solving homelessness" except for just... building homes.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > just... building homes A component of this is minimum building standards. Homeless is a direct consequence of socially deciding that no new housing under certain standards (and therefore building costs) can be constructed. If we were okay with building cost- and density-optimized cubes, we could probably solve homelessness in a year. Instead, we've decided that it's better to have minimum building standards, with the side effect that some people cannot afford such a dwelling.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    And minimum building standards are mindlessly being set by local municipalities, who frankly don't have the engineering competence to understand whether it's excessive or should be required in the first place. Just mindlessly chasing "newer code is better", without understanding how it affects housing affordability. Or maybe it's an intentional payout to developers to let them profit from increased complexity?