💾 Archived View for dioskouroi.xyz › thread › 24989605 captured on 2020-11-07 at 00:44:02. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
________________________________________________________________________________
Good. Putting people with addiction issues in jail was the wrong approach.
Perhaps the addicted can seek help in other ways without the fear or risk of being incarcerated.
Agreed. I do not agree with decriminalising the trade in drugs, but criminalising their possession for personal use is a really important practical step in fighting the trade in hard drugs and reducing addiction rates for many reasons.
It decouples the interests of drug traffickers from those of users making users more likely to cooperate with law enforcement, frees up social workers and medical professionals from the risk of criminal liability for associating with drug users in possession of or using drugs. It also makes it easier to address incidental associated health issue such as infections from dirty needles. Treating it as a health issue destigmatises it making it easier for users to talk about it and seek help.
This is not theoretical, this is from actual findings from countries like Portugal the Netherlands and Norway where trading in hard drugs is still illegal but possession and use are treated as public health issues. This is a policy that works.
> I do not agree with decriminalising the trade in drugs.
Why not? Do you support criminal cartels making lots of money off of them or do you think that the War on Drugs will actually get rid of that criminal element which profits from them at some point?
I don't see a problem with anyone putting anything they want into their own body. Arrest them when they commit an actual victim-ful crime like stealing but not before that.
To that end, I say sell them with regulation just like Alcohol. Keeping sales illegal means questionable sources, questionable quality and enormous profits for criminal gangs.
what he says.
criminalization should be reserved to actions which cause harm to another person who didn't agree to the respective interaction.
If an adult decides to take a drug - fine.
If another adult sells a drug to another adult - where's the problem?
OTOH I'd like to see the concept of mitigating circumstances removed in criminal justice. If somebody takes a drug and commits a crime - full responsibility.
In an ideal world theres no problem but the reality is murkier. Im thinking of crime against vulnerable people, especially that these drugs impair one’s senses. I’d like drug trading to be legal but heavily regulated and the enforcement taken seriously.
It would also do a very good thing to educate people about the risks of addiction, the simptoms of it and where to ask for help for it.
Consent is a tricky issue when it comes to drugs. You could even argue that consent isn't possible when you are heavily addicted.
I am sympathetic to the libertarian argument, I agree that alcohol is also a dangerous drug and is the cause of a considerable amount of crime so why is it different?
On the one hand there is a considerable culture around alcohol that is difficult or impossible to expunge. Banning it simply isn't practical in a democracy where alcohol is popular across all sections of society. Hard drugs like cocaine and heroine simply don't have the cultural and social context that alcohol has, there isn't a consensus that it's acceptable.
Arguing that, well alcohol is dangerous too is a bad argument. We do this bad thing so therefore we should also be allowed to do this other bad thing doesn't follow at all. Ideally we shouldn't do either bad thing. Both alcohol and hard drug use impose considerable costs on society. If society has chosen to accept those costs in one case but not the other (while fighting to limit them) well, making such decisions is what democracy is for.
Ultimately I think the libertarian argument works for decriminalising uses, but fails at decriminalising the trade. There's no inherent right to make a profit whatever the cost to others or society.
Because heroin is a poison, and the whole "i do what i want with my body" hides the fact that young adult often will just try random stuff just because its available and / or their friends do it. Its not 100% rational free will.
This is a terrible reason for making something illegal. Alcohol is just as bad, why not just introduce age limits like alcohol?
I think heroin has much higher dangers and usually the accidenal deaths are very swift and come from nowhere. Alcohol on the other hand kills a lot more people but because it does so slowly they have higher chance to pick themselves up, go to detox, AA, etc
This is an absolutetly 100% valid reason, if not the best reason, to make a substance illegal. 90% who try get addicted, so better keep people, especially young ones, far from it.
> why not just introduce age limits like alcohol
Because they don't work..
Where did you get your 90% addiction figure from? If you're going to argue your side, then at least cite correct information.
On the high side, only 30% of people who try heroin get addicted
https://www.livescience.com/62701-odds-of-heroin-dependency....
Nicotine has a higher addiction rate
Fully agree with you, I just want to point out that Norway has a very strict stance against all drugs, so much so that you can lose your drivers license for having cannabis metabolites in your blood due too a lack of "soberness". It's mental.
I think it's really important to dissociate supporting decriminalisation of possession and use from being "pro drugs". They are very much not the same thing.
Not everyone who consumes drugs, "hard" or otherwise has an addiction issue or needs to seek help, though of course imprisonment is especially cruel when it targets those who do.
You're right, some people simply enjoy occasionally consuming drugs. It's not much different to people consuming alcohol really, the only real differences are alcohol is generally more socially accepted, and that alcohol is generally considered to be more harmful to society.
If there was a guaranteed safe supply chain for recreational drugs that are currently illegal, things would be a lot safer too.
> It's not much different to people consuming alcohol really, the only real differences are alcohol is generally more socially accepted, and that alcohol is generally considered to be more harmful to society
I would amend your analogy: "people comsuming alcohol _to get drunk_". Lots of people enjoy a glass of wine or a beer or sipping whiskey or whatever, not because it makes them drunk, but because they enjoy the flavor (e.g., wine pairings, etc). I'm pretty sure almost everyone who does drugs does so to get high. Note that I'm _not_ arguing that alcohol is better than drugs, only that I think this distinction is important.
But everyone who's drinking alcohol is doing it at least in part for the effect. Non-alcoholic beer is a thing and there are plenty of wine replacements and mocktails, but they're nowhere near as popular as the real thing. Obviously there's a difference in a glass of wine with dinner and being roaring drunk, but that's true of any drug. You can micro-dose LSD, or you can take it until you're seeing pink elephants on the ceiling.
So if I don’t bring my own non-alcoholic beverage to the party (or restaurant), does that mean I must secretly be drinking for the effect? Of course not! It just means that I can avoid the effect without going out of my way to buy alcohol-free. Also, “not drinking for the effect” also encompasses people who are okay with getting buzzed or drunk, but that’s not what they’re setting out to do. For example, I don’t drink to get drunk or buzzed (I don’t have anything against it; I just don’t enjoy the sensation), but I’ve had a strong drink on an empty stomach. That doesn’t mean I was setting out to get buzzed (again, I wasn’t), only that I’m not going out of my way to avoid it.
As a sample size of 1, I do not drink alcohol for the effect. I don't like the disoriented feeling. But I do like the flavor of a good beer, wine, or single-malt Scotch.
You can spin it also that ie weed makes tastes go to overdrive, so you can do quality sweet/salty 'food pairing' with same intentions and results as wine pairing - things taste better. In fact, ridiculously way better.
Munchies ritual became part of my trips when I used to smoke, since such an experience in regard of taste can't be provided by any michelin star restaurant, no matter how hard they try (although they do provide great experience in other forms). Its unhealthy, its practically impossible to just nibble, rather devour a metric ton and some more.
Let's stop pretending people do drugs for anything but drug's effect on them. Wine is no different, plenty of folks who are alcoholics run purely on wine, albeit on different quantities than small glass of red. Try drinking half a liter of red wine every days for few years though, where it will lead you.
You’re missing the point about the “taste” bit—the point isn’t that they’re doing it for the taste, but that they’re _not_ doing it for the psychological effect. In your example, changes to taste _are_ the psychological effect of weed. Again, this isn’t a moral argument, just observing a distinction.
This is not true.
psychedelics are widely used for micro-dosing, which isn’t about being high - its meant to be sub perceptible dosing.
Also for therapy and mental well being.
Fair enough. TIL.
> I'm pretty sure almost everyone who does drugs does so to get high.
This is not the case. I know people who use them to manage chronic pain. It's not all that different from getting a Vicodin prescription, but without shifting most of the cost to society.
Hence "almost". I'm pretty sure such people don't make up a significant portion of drug users, but I could be wrong.
Its a false difference. Most people take mdma for the feeling of happiness, not to get wasted.
Of course you will take a substance for its effect... the real distinction is wether you are addict / overconsuming, or not.
> and that alcohol is generally considered to be more harmful to society.
Alcohol is definitely not more harmful to society than most prescription opioids, tobacco, meth, heroin, PCP, etc. The harm of each drug needs to be assessed on a per capita by user basis.
There have been studies showing that it is the most harmful drug to society, including Professor Nutt's rather famous 2010 Lancet paper.
The fact that alcohol is legal and generally socially acceptable of course means that it's also the most consumed recreational drug by far, which no doubt contributes - but it can't be denied that alcohol is addictive, and alcoholism is a _huge_ problem.
Its incredibly dangerous because of its social acceptance. I don't see a difference between heroin and alcohol addicts, they are both desperate souls and mere shadows of their potential. Countless families are destroyed because of alcohol. Family violence. Drunk driving.
Per capita, back home, and in many many places like russia, it is by far the deadliest substance. Because its legal and +-accepted.
No its on the addict / per user.
Its not because almost no one takes heroin and that it kis no one that its not dangerous.
How dumb is that reasoning..
There are certain drugs that simply should not be encouraged by legality. Heroin and meth, for example. Incredibly toxic, highly and immediately addictive, and easy to overdose.
There are drugs that, if you use them, you should be encouraged not to.
Lets look at heroin a little more carefully.
Incredibly toxic? Hardly--it actually has a quite good safety profile when used as intended.
Highly and immediately addictive? About 5 weeks ago I had a close chemical cousin of heroin. 3 times in fact. Addicted? I never felt the slightest desire for it once the cause of the pain was gone and I certainly didn't like what it did to my digestive system. (Morphine, given by a doctor for a kidney stone. Heroin is basically two morphine molecules stuck together.)
Easy to overdose? The extremely limited medical use of heroin means we don't have good data, so lets look at morphine instead as it should be similar. The therapeutic index is 70. (This is the ratio between the proper dose and the dose that might kill, the higher the number the better.) For comparison, the therapeutic index for acetaminophen is 3--and yet it's over the counter!
Heroin overdoses are common because of two issues:
1) Unknown purity. Users deliberately go close to the limits to get the biggest high, if they get heroin with a higher purity than they expect they can go over the edge. In a world where you bought your heroin from a pharmacy rather than the street such deaths would pretty much not happen.
2) Jail. Someone has been in jail for a while and not using, they get out, they take what they're used to taking--but now they aren't habituated. Now the dose is lethal. This one could certainly be reduced by having a required class for all druggies about to be released from jail--explain the problem and warn them that their usual dose is probably now a lethal dose.
Another common way to die is to take heroin and benzos at the same time (both are respiratory depressants). This happens with the similar prescription painkillers as well.
There are some other combinations that can cause similar trouble too (alcohol plus benzos, alcohol plus opiods).
Accidental overdose can also happen after relapse, most easily if avoiding the substance rather than receiving medical addiction treatment. Or if taking combinations of drugs that combine to impair judgement.
Yup. A friend's girlfriend lost her daughter to alcohol plus benzos and she wasn't even a druggie.
Don't forget about the huge ramp up in overdoses over the last few years due to street heroin being cut with fentanyl. I lost my best friend two years ago from this. If he could have been getting a known pharmaceutical quantity from a medically supplied source this wouldn't have been an issue.
I don't think you're right about heroin, addictive, yes, but actually far safer than say paracetamol.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalc...
Either way, a public health approach is the only rational way to keep people safe and battle addiction.
> paracetamol
In this USA and some other countries, this is normally called acetaminophen. It's the active ingredient in Tylenol.
>There are drugs that, if you use them, you should be encouraged not to.
Yes but how does throwing someone in jail and giving them a felony record thus destroying their life help?
Exactly.
There are drugs (crack cocaine, bath salts, maybe meth) where I think _dealing_ should have severe penalties, but most of the people who are using these drugs are doing so because they are already struggling with life issues. Putting them in prison is almost certain to cost taxpayers a ton of money and utterly destroy that person's life.
I don't think the poster is of this kind but some people want to label other people as 'bad' and watch them get hurt. Prison for drugs is one way.
I didn't say that.
Rather, that decriminalizing is good for some, but I'm glad we haven't legalized all of them.
I think you can legalize things and still discourage the use of. Look at tobacco as an example. Or even alcohol. I'd argue that it's actually easier to discourage with legalization that without, but this is debatable. My position is that if it's legal that makes it easier to seek treatment. Seeking out treatment isn't going to get you fired or put in jail while you're trying to turn your life around.
> Incredibly toxic
cite?
> highly and immediately addictive
Depends on the person. Crack wasn't interesting for me. Never used H but a proportion of people who can use it safely, like I would have a drink and know when to stop is ~50% (figure from memory from a letter in newscientist which I've been unable to find).
> and easy to overdose
What's the safe range? I think you are saying something I and many ohters could agree with but they need backing up.
Well, that's your opinion - but reality would like to have a word with you. Doctors in the US are giving out Adderall (similar to meth) and Fentanyl (even more addictive and dangerous than Heroin) like candy.
[Edit: This comment was an erroneous reply when I misread the comment to which I was replying, and is now removed.]
Which part?
People view LSD as a non-addiction drug because it only works bi-weekly is the argument.
Drugs legal and illegal might be a ticket item BUT the health issues are still the same, even if they are "non-addictive."
Baseless Anecdote: I once met a man that claimed he took acid more often than that in the 70s. He said he would get intravenous B vitamin supplements to trip more often. not really arguing anything, I just found his story fascinating.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. Addiction is a disease and shouldn't be criminalized. Part of the reason the opioid epidemic is so bad is that people don't seek help or call emergency services for fear of criminal punishment.
One of the sad realities of American politics is that jailing people, and jailing people under inhumaine circumstances remains _very_ popular. For any given behavior that is socially undesirable it’s easy to find a large enough constituency that says “lock them up and throw away the key”, even if as a society we all agree that our criminal justice system is ineffective and out of control.
> under inhumane circumstances remains very popular.
I recently read an article about the popularity of '/r/justiceserved' type forums (the original tagline of this subreddit was "Now with 40% more police brutality" but was changed as it became more popular). I can't for the life of me find the article, but it was a fairly ambivalent account of how this kind of forum taps into a deeply innate arousal from visceral punishment. Something that the author decides, sadly, appears to be in all of us.
> lock them up and throw away the key
The "empathy gap" rears its ugly head.[1]
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_gap
Part of the issue is that nobody ever got elected to local law-enforcement/judicial positions (sheriffs, state atty generals, judges) by saying "I'm definitely going to arrest fewer people in your town".
This returns to my original point; people win elections promising to lock more people up because locking people up is very popular.
I'm not familiar with the rest of Altemeyer's work but I found this book fascinating to read; it tries to go into where some of that might come from.
https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
Yeah, this is a big problem. A few years back there was white heroin being sold as cocaine in Amsterdam. So the Amsterdam government put up signs and issued warnings to call an ambulance immediatly if someone became unwell after using 'cocaine'.
Soon after it was discovered that a lot of American and British tourists were not doing this out of fear for getting arrested.
The Amsterdam government had to add a specific part to the signs (in English) saying you wouldn't be arrested if you called for help.
Creating a atmosphere of fear costs lives.
Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/02/you-w...
Sign:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
(Bottom part)
Was it downvoted? It's currently top of HN, isn't greyed-out, and is only 2 minutes old.
It was when I commented.
The intent expressed is likely laudable, and the helpful approach overall preferred by the HN crowd -- however, the context, specifically associating drug consumption with addiction might not be popular among people who use psychoactive substances occasionally and no see themselves as addicts.
This isn’t an actual problem though, addiction is. If some people who do acid sometimes get their feelings hurt over something people aren’t even really accusing them of, I’d say that’s acceptable collateral
Not every person using drugs is addicted. Let's not make that kind of claim.
> Good. Putting people with addiction issues in jail was the wrong approach.
A big problem is that addictions are expensive and people are willing to commit crimes to feed addictions when they run out of money. Anecdata of 1, but one of my friends in high school got addicted to heroin, and he ended up in jail not because of possession of heroin, but because he started stealing so he could come up with the money to buy more... so in that sense decriminalization won't necessarily help, but I agree that possession of drugs for personal use should not necessarily result in jail time.
Addiction is only expensive because drugs are criminalized.
The drugs themselves would be cheap if legalized.
legalization and decriminalization are slightly different.
Drugs will only be cheap if:
- they are legal to commercially manufacture and distribute (not merely decriminalized)
- they aren't taxed excessively
Cigarettes, for example, are cheap to manufacture, but still expensive due to high taxes in a lot of places (up to $10+ per pack).
Yeah, but who's giving handys under the bridge for a carton of cigarettes?
If you are already committing crimes every day buying and possessing something, then committing crimes to feed the habit isn't a big jump. Conversely, if you haven't done anything illegal yet, most people will pay a hefty premium to avoid having to do anything illegal.
So you’re saying alcoholism isn’t expensive? There are tons of homeless alcoholics.
Alcoholics end up homeless because they can't maintain a job to pay for housing.
Alcoholism isn't expensive. There are russian vodkas that are cheap and yet triple filtered. I personally help and know a few homeless by the train so they've shown me these things.
Alcoholism isn't expensive.
Only if you discount opportunity costs. Alcohol isn't inherently expensive. Alcoholism can consume your entire life.
> Alcoholism isn't expensive.
Tell that to someone who spends most of their money on those cheap russian vodkas.
It only costs all of their money because they are less likely to have a steady income source (job). Not because the alcohol is expensive.
These guys drink the whole day, the very definition of alcoholics. And they still have plenty of spending money. I don't know what evidence you have, but it sounds like it's pretty much just a "tell that."
You don’t know crippling alcoholics. The withdrawal will kill you if you don’t drink or take benzos.
Are you referring to delirium tremens being fatal, or the symptoms of DT and the onset of other factors being responsible for death? A critical distinction, I think that deserves being called out
Seizure
These guys start shaking if they don't get alcohol. I've had to give them some of my valium script because the liquor store was closed one night and we visited one of their friends in the hospital. Again, where is the evidence for your claims? Have you ever befriended any homeless people?
What factors lead to their addiction? What factors lead to their homelessness? Are these factors mutually exclusive? Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
Well when withdrawal starts setting in you pretty much need to drink or take benzos to sleep, not go insane, or die.
If you don’t have a good family or friend support system homelessness is easy to fall into.
They'll be cheap if sale and distribution is legalized- this just amps up the demand side of the curve.
That assumes an economic elasticity that I don't think drugs have.
A lot more people would die of heroin if it was "cheap" and available. It's very easy to OD with it. Not to mention it turns anyone into a junkie in the span of a few weeks, and it's _very_ difficult to get off it.
There seems to be this false equivalence in the minds of some folks between hard drugs and e.g. pot. This has no basis in reality. Pot won't fuck you up. Meth most definitely will.
> _It's very easy to OD with it._
No.
Many/most overdoses happen because the illegal supply has very uneven strength. If the new batch is twice as potent as the previous one, you won't know until you wake up dead.
When you get your Heroin at Walgreens, this never happens.
> Many/most overdoses happen because the illegal supply has very uneven strength.
this is true, but opioids in general have a low therapeutic index (ie, the ratio between an effective dose and LD50 is rather low). even with a known dose, the risk of OD is among the highest of commonly abused drugs. in fairness, I should note that the therapeutic index for most opioids is close to that of alcohol. people die of alcohol poisoning every year (though far fewer than OD on opioids) despite the proof being printed clearly on the bottle.
Not to mention acetaminophen/paracetamol. Alcohol is something like 10:1, tylenol may be as low as 3:1. Morphine is much safer, 70:1 or so - not sure about heroin.
I do think inconsistent supply is a larger contribution to OD risk than the relatively tight TI, but this is hard to study properly partially because of criminalization.
I was going off this table:
https://web.cgu.edu/faculty/gabler/toxicity%20Addiction%20of...
(page 689), which does not include morphine. it's surprising that the margin is so much larger for morphine, since heroin is essentially a prodrug for morphine. the figures I found for morphine all seem to assume an oral ROA for morphine, but IV for heroin. perhaps that explains some of the difference? it could also be that the definition of "effective dose" is different in an abuse context vs. a medical one. also now that I go back and look more closely, it seems the TI of opioids is a fairly wide range, so my comment is not entirely correct as written.
I'm glad you brought up paracetamol as well. I find that people often overestimate how dangerous illicit drugs are, while at the same time being totally blase when it comes to stuff you can buy off the shelf at any pharmacy. frankly, I find tylenol kind of scary and try to use it only when absolutely necessary.
Except of course it's pretty difficult to consume 10x the amount of alcohol without puking, and people develop tolerance to morphine, which shrinks the safety margin, and makes it dangerous if a formerly "normal" dose is injected after a relapse.
Pot will definitely fuck you up if you're on the wrong end of the response curve.
That said, criminalising drugs has absolutely made the situations around and with them worse for more people. Those with the greatest gain in the current situation are the warlords in South America, the commercial jails and politicians stoking fear of drug use.
A great number of people can and have used a wide range of drugs successfully, peacefully, creatively, introspectively and with joy for 1000s of years. The current predominant legislation doesn't seem to reflect the will of a huge number of people. I don't have stats to say "a majority", but it wouldn't surprise me, especially if you include alcohol.
The problems exist. Better methods need to be sought to deal with them than criminalisation.
> A great number of people can and have used
And a great number of people have died because of this use. I mean, are you really going to argue that it is possible to have a "normal" life and take heroin or meth at the same time? I'm not saying taking heroin should be a felony, but selling it definitely should.
I had a relatively normal life, working a job in tech and keeping up a stable relationship with my girlfriend while also using heroin every day. Of course I would rather have not been going down to the Mission every morning to procure the stuff. The lifestyle that accompanied the illicit use was ultimately the problem for me, not the use of the substance itself.
Thousands of people are high functioning and doctor-prescribed amphetamine users (Adderall) in this country and we don't bat an eye. As soon as you call it "meth" people get weird about it.
I agree, those two in particular seem to fuck people up. We need to do something about that.
But I am going to argue that a VAST number of people take caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, sugar, 2CB, DMT, ayahuasca, amphetamine and many others in a wide variety of settings with largely positive results. As such, the general trend of legislation around the world against (most) of these chemicals seems grossly at odds with on-the-ground opinion and practice.
I'm in full agreement with you there. I see no reason to jail people for taking non-addictive psychoactive substances. I voted to legalize pot in my state (measure did pass), even though I'm not a user myself. IMO, pot, for example, is strictly better than alcohol from both health and addiction standpoint. I think that not only should we allow pot, we should allow people to grow it for their own consumption. As to other non-addictive drugs, I'll defer to those who have studied them. LSD, for example, is known to sometimes fuck people up in its own ways, and it is generally not safe to take without supervision.
> I'm not saying taking heroin should be a felony, but selling it definitely should
And in Oregon, it still is, presumably because the people agree with you?
Yes. People in the thread suggest it should be "cheap" and "available at Walgreens".
> Not to mention it turns anyone into a junkie in the span of a few weeks,
This isn't true. Quick google search says only 25% of people why try it will become addicted.
Maybe not anyone, but 25% is still a horrendous statistic
"People who try heroin" is not a random sample. It's hard to draw significant information from that, even if the survey is accurate.
A better comparison, assuming legal pharmaceuticals, would be: What percentage of people who try Oxycontin become addicted?
I don't know that number, but I suspect it is relatively low.
It's a weasel statistic. 75% of people try it once or twice and "don't get addicted". Those who partake with some regularity are almost guaranteed to get addicted. We're losing tens of thousands of people in this country to opioids per year, but if you mention that opioids are dangerous, there will always be a HN "statistician" "quickly googling" things.
In that specific case decriminalization would indeed help, those caught stealing to feed an addiction that end up with a criminal record then face the difficult reality of trying to find employment with a that record. On top of that doing jail time often means soliciting with other criminals, making contacts and building the wrong kinds of networks.
Decriminalization in combination with rehab and community service programs sets those people up for a far better chance of overcoming addiction.
Correct me if I'm wrong, decriminalization just means you won't be charged with a crime if you are in possession of drugs, but you will still be charged with stealing if you steal. Stealing for the purpose of buying drugs does not get a free pass under drug decriminalization afaik.
Yeah this does make sense and my comment didn't really take that in to account. I guess I imagined more leniency when a drug addict is no longer seen as a criminal.
From what i know that is correct, there definitely would have been more backlash if they changes the laws on theft along with this.
Incarceration is what triggered a family member to finally have success fighting their addiction. Loss of job and family wasn't rock bottom for them. Incarceration was. And they've since rebuilt their life and their family. Incarceration was the trigger that made that possible.
I'm sympathetic to your point and to all who are subject to any drug or alcohol addiction. But I feel compelled to comment that incarceration is not always the inhumane dead-end that it's painted as. It's one of many tools that can be used to rehabilitate those in need.
When we can't deal with issues openly, especially mental health issues, we often see the "tough" route promoted.
That would be "rock bottom" in your anecdote.
Consider how PTSD used to be treated back when it was "shell shock" and considered a personal moral failure. People were told there was nothing wrong. Many of those people "recovered," too. But was that the right way to treat people facing real problems?
I'm SURE that there are MANY people for whom incarceration "worked" (i.e., didn't get back in jail, broke their addiction), but on the whole, there's a lot of evidence that incarceration is simply not the most effective (expensive/doesn't work well for many) strategy for reducing drug usage and drug-related health and social ills.
We don't have to guess, there's a lot (
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125....
) of evidence (
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727270...
) that locking people up for drug use isn't _very_ effective (isn't very effective != completely ineffective) at reducing crime or recidivism, and great evidence that decriminalization (i.e. portugal
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1464837
) sends crime (AND drug usage) downward, as well as a host of drug-related medical conditions.
(^ first page of google scholar results people)
Incarceration is not aimed at rehabilitating, it's aimed at punishing. That it occasionally rehabilitates by accident is not an argument in favor.
If the goal is rehabilitation, then let's talk about how to best do that.
Thousands of people have had their lives ruined by being incarcerated for possession of cannabis. Hundreds of thousands maybe. Most of them weren't addicts, or committing other crimes, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time with a bag of weed in their pockets or whatever.
It's good that your family member finally had success fighting their addiction, but at what price?
Did this person have a home to get back to? People to support them financially once he was out?
The way incarceration impacts people is extremely different.
I wonder what the proportion of people is for who incarceration is the start of recovery vs people for who incarceration is the start of a downward spiral.
My guess is that incarceration for non violent drug offenders has way more negative outcomes vs positive outcomes. I used to work out at a boxing gym and there were quite a few people whose possibility of finding an ok job was almost zero because a marijuana or cocaine conviction had put a negative mark on their background checks. This is especially true for poor neighborhoods where families don’t have the financial ability to support other family members who have problems.
If incarceration was a common rock bottom that addicts could build up from, I might agree with you, but knowing what we know about recidivism among addicts, it is likelier to be an aggregate negative even if a few people find a way to recover during their sentence.
How do you rehabilitate a person if they’re unable to find a reasonable job afterwards?
> But I feel compelled to comment that incarceration is not always the inhumane dead-end that it's painted as. It's one of many tools that can be used to rehabilitate those in need.
Most of Europe has compulsory treatment options instead of incarceration, but due to abuses in the past it's a non-starter in the US.
I agree with the general sentiment of that, however the nuanced reality is far more complex than that. For many people the only treatment that actually worked is precisely prison. The reality of the rehabilitation industry across the board is not exactly a shining example of success, while prison does seem to show significant advantages. The question we have to ask ourselves these is essentially this one; what is better, someone that goes to prison for 5 years and gets treatment and comes out with a higher likelihood of recovery, or someone that spends 5 years in and out of treatment and living in drug addiction misery of exploitation and abuse and with a notably lower likelihood of permanent recovery?
Of the two examples the former is obviously better, even though a third, hybrid option that no one talks about is likely the best; a kind of reform complex/community akin to boot camp of the past broken people are broken down and rebuilt into new, functioning adults. For anyone who knows anything about the military, especially of the past, will know that in treatment of people, the bootcamp model is the very best option. It builds character, it shatters bad habits and compulsions, it builds support structures and deep bonds, it creates a pathway to hope, success, and achievement, it uses sticks and carrots to set people on a graduated path. It's literally everything that drug addicts need if one actually cares about them getting the devil off their back, and is not just interested in trying to feel good about themselves.
At the same time I would have serious concerns about public safety for certain drugs. While I agree jail isn't the answer, I think house arrest or curfews would be a good middle ground for drug abusers to maintain public safety while they engage in rehabilitation programs at the same time.
There have been attempts to categorize and measure the social harms caused by heavy users of various drugs, and the actual measurable impacts don’t really line up with what people worry about. The study I saw put alcohol at the top of the list, due to the social cost of drunken fights, spousal abuse, and DUIs.
I’m sure there are some public safety issues that we should deal with for the various “hard” drugs decriminalized here, but I also find it fascinating how much social desirability affects which drugs we decide are a problem that require special treatment, since I’ve never seen anyone recommend house arrest or curfews for alcoholics.
> alcohol at the top of the list
So criminalize alcohol abuse as well. Not jail-criminalize it, that's too expensive for taxpayers. But I sure would love if the streets are clear of drunk, violent people fighting. Impose curfews and cameras in their homes.
We tried it, it failed miserably.
> Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
Did you even read what I wrote?
I want to criminalize alcohol abuse, not alcohol.
Steady on friend.
> I want to criminalize alcohol abuse, not alcohol.
As leetcrew we already have laws in re: most of that, including "disturbing the peace".
> Because I watched cops do absolutely nothing...
If they're not enforcing the law in the first place, how does adding another law help?
My point about Prohibition is that this thing is cultural: Alcohol and tobacco are "in", pot and oxy and the others are "out". If you live in an area that tolerates drunken hooliganism you're gonna have a bad time with drunken hooligans.
I agree something could be done about alcohol abuse. But your last sentence is madness. Unless you mean it sarcastically, which is the only way I can understand it.
I don't understand why it is madness. Care to explain?
I see violent people on the street. They are a danger to me. I want safe streets. House arrest costs taxpayers very little.
If there was an angry bear on the streets threatening people it would probably be relocated, tagged, and confined to the forests as well. Not much different.
Putting cameras in private homes is an anathema, it is a non-starter and a horrific dystopian vision. You'll get no sympathy or understanding from me.
House arrest? I can understand the point. Its a cheaper form of prison. All prisons have cameras.
How about, they either go to prison, or agree to have their home fitted as a prison. Is that less dystopian?
Exactly my point. We want to reduce the taxpayer burden of prison, but still keep the streets safe. House arrest is a way to build a cheaper AND more humane prison, and one that is also much better for rehabilitation and access to education and employment.
The cameras would come off once their house arrest term is over.
Ah, I misunderstood where you're coming from. Yes, I think that could work. We do converging along those lines with parole ankle trackers.
House arrest is better than prison for certain kinds of non violent offenses.
how about we just make the specific thing we don't want illegal, as opposed to banning the myriad ways that a person could end up doing the thing? some poor soul sitting alone at home drinking cheap vodka all day doesn't actually hurt me. we already have laws against DUI, assault, public intoxication, etc.
I'm not opposed to some dude at home drinking cheap vodka.
I am opposed to some dude getting drunk and roaming the streets waving around a steel bar threatening to hit people, which I have witnessed (in LA).
Being drunk _in public_ is a safety hazard to others and should be at least a misdemeanor, IMO, unless you are on your way home or to medical help.
I added public intox to the list just to show how many ways we already have of going after intoxicated people that are behaving badly. I think it's actually another example of an unjust law. the simple act of being drunk in public doesn't hurt anyone either.
> some dude getting drunk and roaming the streets waving around a steel bar threatening to hit people
this is already clear cut assault. why do we need yet another charge to pile on?
> this is already clear cut assault. why do we need yet another charge to pile on?
Because I watched cops do absolutely nothing, because although it was pretty goddamn dangerous with mothers with children around and whatnot.
At the very least, then, make hate speech and threats on strangers ground for arrest. Make wielding any object as a weapon ground for arrest. If they make threats while drunk, they don't necessarily need to be jailed, I'm happy if they're just escorted home and required to stay home for the day.
maybe not hate speech, but threats on strangers and wielding an object as a weapon are _already_ grounds for arrest if an officer feels like doing anything about it.
I feel like we almost agree? the issue is not that we don't have enough laws already, but rather that perfectly good laws are not actually enforced.
On the flip side, I can see some potential bad outcomes for young children being exposed to this.
While you chose not to share what poor outcomes you are considering; your comment compels me to state the obvious: nearly all choices have trade offs.
I thought it was obvious. Young kids are easily influenced. If you create an environment where there are no restrictions on drug usage, kids get exposure to it.
I agree that was not the right approach. I'm not sure this is the right approach either.
Keeping it criminalized, but as a summary offense with the punishment being an educational presentation/course on rehab options might provide some better outcomes. There are some tangentially related things to consider here too, like drug convictions preventing addicts from buying weapons.
It's a health issue, not a criminal issue. Drug laws cause more crime -- by design.
How would a summary offense with a punishment of education on rehab options create more crime?
How is it necessarily a health issue? Not all drug users are addicts.
Edit: And perhaps the most obvious support for it being a criminal issue is that the first time someone does the drug it would only be a criminal issue and could not be a health issue since they had no prior exposure to become addicted.
>_How is it necessarily a health issue? Not all drug users are addicts._
1. If you are a drug user, not even necessarily an addict (in which your need to consume the drug gets in the way of other life functions), then society is already accepting. Cocaine use, for example, is far less stigmatized in the US and UK.
2. If you step back from your biases and view addiction as a "sickness", then throwing addicts in prison makes as much sense as throwing someone in prison for a broken leg. Sure sometimes it _might_ work, but it's clearly not the most optimal solution. Other countries that have taken this approach have far fewer recidivism rates - which is the metric that should be judged.
Finally to answer your point "_summary offense with a punishment of education on rehab options create more crime_" is not at all what happens in the US today. Drug use & possession carries prision term, in which cutting cold turkey (or, likely more commonly sneaking drugs into prison) is the only option. After which, you are likely to lose your job and turn to more crime to make a living once released from prison. A more realistic counter to your point however is that the current American criminal justice system has little flexibility for nuance, and without major police reform, leaving this issue to police simply does not produce the intended results.
Did you read the first sentence of my original comment? I'm agreeing that the existing system doesn't work. I acknowledge addiction as a sickness and see how the current process fails to address it.
I'm saying that decriminalization isn't the the best option in my opinion either - essentially you have a system ignoring people's drug use rather than offering help. My suggestion was to have a low level summary offense which only punishes the person with education on rehab options. This would require users to recieve information on treatment options that they might otherwise not be aware of. It would also track the offense so that if an addict resorts to crime to pay for their habit, they would not be legally allowed to buy a weapon.
>_My suggestion was to have a low level summary offense which only punishes the person with education on rehab options._
What I'm saying is you have to consider who would be responsible for such a system? Decriminalization isn't about ignoring the issue, it's about getting these people out of the criminal justice system. What you are advocating for, to be implemented successfully, would require a reform of the entire police force to treat these people as patients instead of criminals. (I'm focusing on America here, in your country the police may be less hostile, especially to drug users.)
The eventual path that is being set, for which decriminalization would be a first step would then to have hospitals/health care provide save alternatives to buying hard drugs/needles on the street, which you can then check them into and begin the rehab process there. Essentially forcing people to rehab under threat of punishment isn't successful, and the American police force has spent the last 40 years treating drug users as criminals. Depending on the justice system isn't likely to work.
Why would the police need to treat them as patients? When you get a ticket for a traffic violation, they typically (the good ones anyways) educate you on what you did that was unsafe. This is usually just a summary offense with a fine. I'm saying that drug users should get a similar treatment but even without the fine.
> How would a summary offense with a punishment of education on rehab options create more crime?
I'm not sure if I'm mis-understanding you or if you aren't familiar with the legislation in question. What you suggest here seems an awful lot like a marginally more sever version of what this law does.
Can you explain what's wrong with Portugal's approach?
Why is this downvoted?
_The passage of Oregon’s Measure 110 means the state’s residents will no longer face arrests or prison sentences for carrying small amounts of drugs like cocaine, heroin, oxycontin and methamphetamine. The measure, which passed by almost 60 percent, also lays out groundwork for people with addictions to receive treatment as opposed to jail time._
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/04/election-dr...
Thanks! This is much more informative than a Twitter link.
Here is more real information:
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminali...
Decriminalized != legal. Personal possession is still illegal, but the maximum penalty is a $100 fine, making it like a parking ticket. You now can't be arrested or jailed for personal possession, like you currently can't be arrested or jailed for a parking violation. Edit: And these possession tickets won't count as having a criminal record.
A "yes" vote supports making personal non-commercial possession of a controlled substance no more than a Class E violation (max fine of $100 fine) and establishing a drug addiction treatment and recovery program funded in part by the state's marijuana tax revenue and state prison savings.
See:
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminali...
It would seem that decriminalizing will attract more addicted users to the state. If that happens, does Oregon have plans for expanding social services to assist addicts and treatment resources to help them back into society?
Portugal can provide some insight:
https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalizatio...
I'm curious if there was any evidence of people moving to Portugal after they decriminalized things? Or any evidence of people moving to avoid the law when it comes to drugs like this. It probably won't be 1-1 b/c of language barriers.
I don't have as much experience with addicted users but my understanding is that they tend to stay closer to their remaining social networks. Moving to a new state just to avoid criminalization seems like a lot.
Immigration to a new country is a whole lot more onerous than just moving to a different state.
If I used hard drugs, I 100% would consider moving to a different state if it meant avoiding jailtime and a record.
> Immigration to a new country is a whole lot more onerous than just moving to a different state.
Not within the EU. It's not quite as easy as moving between US states but it's not far off.
Yep, I did it many times by now, it takes literally a few hours in the countries I moved between, paperwork wise.
Portugal did not make much of a difference as you can privately use in many EU countries for a long time already. In the Netherlands, in the 80s, we used to hear about drug tourism and that made us think it was all very strict in neighbouring countries, but when old enough to go there (germany, belgium, france, spain) to campsites etc, we saw it was everywhere and the cops only take action on dealers. In Spain, at least where I always go, almost everyone under 50 smokes weed in public, most drink and many do cocaine in the weekends. There is no violent crime (some break-ins in holiday homes, but those are rare enough that when it happens everyone knows about it) and you can get your fix everywhere even with the Guardia around. Practically, you won’t have too much issues in most of EU so PT did not change much.
San Francisco has an area (Upper Haight) where a lot of the gutter punks live and hang out. Stanley Roberts (former KRON 4 reporter) did a brief story on them. He found a majority of them in their 20s were from out of state and came to SF because of our lax drug enforcement laws. They said where they were from (most from Midwest) came to get away from the strict drug laws.
So it’s possible more drug users will move to Portland for refuge.
Yeah, while I 100% support such laws, they are pretty dangerous to implement state-wide vs country-wide. If this attracts problematic drug users to Oregon, people will point at it as an example of why it doesn't work. But it's likely that it will since it is easy to move states.
Yes they do have a plan, the measure included additional budgeting for social services.
They have a plan, but for anyone that knows Oregon politics it's doomed to have high overhead costs and government inefficiencies built in. I mean they couldn't adapt to the extra $600/wk federal unemployment or not having a waiting period because their systems were still programmed in COBOL...despite getting $80M set aside for upgrading the system almost a decade ago there has been no progress. Also see: Cover Oregon debacle
> It would seem that decriminalizing will attract more addicted users to the state.
I don't think this will be the case. But even if you assume it may, you can't let that possibility be a bugbear and that scares you away from doing what is right.
You put up a strawman. The OP wasn't saying they were against the ruling, but asking if the state is ready for the possible effects of it.
This is just going to result in increased blight and crime in Portland as it attracts larger and larger numbers of drug addicted homeless and jobless people. Not that Portland or Oregon actually charges criminals anyways, but the deterrence of criminality does matter. I feel bad for the Portland residents who didn’t vote for this.
One of the wonders of the Federation of States in the US is a ready source of beta testers for new governance ideas. A majority of voters in Oregon in this election have voted to decriminalize all drugs. The rest of the States get to see if that was a good idea and decide if they should consider it. There are enough legal backstops at the Federal level to snap this back to criminalization, well, instantly.
Citizens in those other States who see the Oregon model as a better deal for them have the opportunity to move there. And probably will. Drugs “are a hell of a drug” and moving will sound a lot easier to many heavy users than doing the hard work of breaking an addiction. That migration legacy won’t change so quickly.
I also feel for those who are being put in the middle of this social experiment against their individual will, especially the kids. But kids survived the communes of the 60s and, ironically, probably some of these now-adults are the sort who will be motivated by this.
If the 60s-80s were the California period, and 90s-10s the PNW period (starting with grunge), this might be a big, long nail that seals the PNW period in its coffin.
PS: If I were a cynical sort, I would wonder if CA and WA were working behind the scenes to make this happen. What an _elegant_ way to offload a social burden and deflect attention onto someone else. “You think parts of SF are bad, well check out today’s Portland. SF doesn’t look so bad now, eh?”
They could probably move across the river if they really hated it. I doubt many will, though. Portland is a pretty nice city.
Does this mean all drugs or just all the common street drugs? What about precursors and obscure phenethylamines?
Hello PIKAL. Great name.
Yes, it means all drugs. It specifically decriminalizes all drugs whether they're class I, II, III, or IV.
It only doesn't decriminalize more-than-personal amounts of specifically named popular "street drugs" as the article refers to them.
AFAIK, the truly "obscure" phenethylamines (ie, not 2C-I, 2C-E, 2C-B) were never illegal to begin with in the US.
There is the analogues act but it is unclear to me whether or how often that gets enforced.
you would have to have in-depth chemistry and legal knowledge to know exactly what is illegal under the US analogues act. but if you can't show that a substance is closely related to something already under schedule I or II, it is legal (or at least not illegal) by default. now that the popular 2C-x's have been explicitly added to schedule I, my guess is that the whole family is on thin ice, if not unambiguously illegal.
So possession is decriminalized but what about sale and distribution? Also is this in direct conflict with federal law prohibiting the same?
Nothing is changed for federal law. if you were in Oregon and some federal agent catches you with drugs, you will be facing charges.
> Also is this in direct conflict with federal law prohibiting the same?
This is no different from marijuana legislation in multiple states which "legalizes" marijuana. Federal agencies can still enforce federal laws, but state & local law enforcement and judges enforce the state legislation. Federal agencies have somewhat limited jurisdiction in the states. I think there have been cases where people have been convicted of marijuana possession in states where it's legal.
>>_but what about sale and distribution?_
No El Chapo Shacks: "the state’s residents will no longer face arrests or prison sentences for carrying small amounts of drugs like cocaine, heroin, oxycontin and methamphetamine. "
This does mean dealers can hold small amounts for sale at lower risk than before. Portland is already pretty accepting of open air drug markets though, so in reality not much may change.
It means delivery boys won't be at risk, but someone along the line has to have a large supply or shipping costs become untenable. Since almost all the risk goes away, those delivery boys pay will drop drastically too. I wonder what effect that will have? I suspect like all organized crimee that they'll move on to other rackets.
I think it's safe to assume that overall drug use won't go _down_ under this policy, so while their rate may go down due to increased labor pool, earnings may still go up. Especially with pandemic fears still out there.
I think the big impact will be sales through acquaintance/friend networks though, this will make it much easier to support an addiction through small sales.
There'll be more money flowing to the traffickers so they're not going anywhere.
> I think it's safe to assume that overall drug use won't go down under this policy
I don't exactly think people actively weigh the probability of punishment when considering to consume drugs. There's a wealth of research that suggests stiffer penalties don't dissuade drug use. If this is true, then the inverse is likely true.
I also think it's fairly well understood that traffickers thrive best in an illegal marketplace, since the threat of violence and imprisonment is effectively a barrier to entry for people with less violent means. If the outcomes of marijuana legalization hold true for other drugs, we'll see more market participation from legal organizations and that additional market competition will drive the violent cartels into other unregulated markets where their competitive advantage in violence can be better leveraged. The takeaway is that violent cartels work best when they can exploit their advantage in violence. Take away that advantage by making the market legal, and you cut the economic legs out from those organizations.
I agree with you, but I don't think your takeaway applies here. This market remains highly illegal, it's just the final distribution layer and end user that have been decriminalized. I don't see that reducing demand anytime soon.
It will become easier to support an addiction, yes.
But it will also help people who want to seek help because now it means the first step doesn't include admitting to a crime.
While pop ups do exist in Portland, it's really only for cannabis, sass, psilo, and maybe L.
You'd be beat up if harder things were on your table. True yesterday, true today.
Good to know that nobody will go to prison for neither the drugs nor the assault
True, but cops know them and will wait till they have more than the limit. Or the narcs can be helpful and add a few grams....who's watching? :)
I wonder what kind of commercial avenues this opens up, not obviously the illegal sale of drugs, but products aimed directly and openly at heavy users. Not to mention the marketing potential, "hey if you like cocaine, you're going to love X,Y,Z impulse buy!", "Hey here's Arby's with the Stoner Burger, for those with the munchies." Etc
For fun, here's a bunch of cocaine related ads from the 70s and 80s
https://themindcircle.com/cocaine-ads/
One of the user selections in the initiative is between a $100 fine or "a health assessment with a addiction treatment professional." Given responses to non-court traffic fine adjudication I would expect that there will be $89 online comedy health assessments.
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminali...
The differences in state and federal law will probably mute many second order commercial effects since any success will draw the attention of the feds either in the form of DEA customer scrutiny or commercial banking problems.
Maybe it could lead to some additional interest in cryptocurrency but the last mile of exchange between fiat and crypto has a dependency on the feds.
There's already a strong market for drug paraphernalia, which technically legal because it can be used for tobacco, I think this might be a boon for eye drops for example because I noticed stoners tend to use them a lot and would likely prioritize buying a brand marketed directly to them. Not stuff which could really catch the ire of authorities. Though that's a good point about crypto.
While there is a market servicing paraphernalia demand I'd not classify it as a strong market in that many competitors such as large retailers, distributors and manufacturers cannot enter it despite persistent demand. That is great for localism/small business and it acts as a tax on paraphernalia that limits demand.
In California glass shops I've seen crack pipes in addition to the cannabis water pipes.
This seemed like an interesting direction but nothing came of it:
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/833331/netflix-will-be-s...
Although I really like the idea that $100k of my tax dollars are not going to be spent housing and prosecuting someone for having $20 of crack or meth or whatever. My worry is this will attract an influx of people with addiction problems and a list of unintended consequences that could come with legalizing all drugs. I remember reading/hearing(NPR maybe), that when Florida took a harder stance against Doctors prescribing Oxycontin making it more difficult for people to acquire and abuse, there was an exodus of people to states that had more relaxed laws. These folks basically moved to a different state where they could support their addiction.
People don't become addicts because it's fun, something typically leads them down that road and perhaps the best strategy is to help them with their mental health issues and heavily prosecute the enablers/dealers/suppliers whether it's some guy down the street or a country like China.
I don't think this changes much for addicts directly. Just because possession is legal doesn't mean public intoxication or driving under the influence laws are void. The law will still have a way to deal with the worst offenders, without ruining the life of some college-age party-goer.
I agree there are great secondary effects of having more drugs available, and hope Oregon invests the necessary resources to curb illegal distribution of drugs.
Well this may be a good test of your theory. I'd rather try a theory than speculate forever.
> when Florida took a harder stance against Doctors prescribing Oxycontin making it more difficult for people to acquire and abuse, there was an exodus of people to states that had more relaxed laws
Is there a source for this? Florida was a MAJOR supplier of Oxycontin for other states near and far until the crackdown in 2011. Prescription monitoring reduced pill smuggling to other states.
Addicts didn't move to other states, they moved to another drug--heroin. Heroin is covered by the new Oregon legislation.
https://heroin.palmbeachpost.com/florida-cuts-off-oxycodone-...
Suck it up and stop being a coward. If we don't break the mold no one else will. We already get everyones homeless. Nothing will change except us saving money.
Your argument hinges on the conflation of decriminalization and legalization. We approved the former, not the latter and that absolutely makes a difference.
I am looking for how the decriminalization part of this bill is different than Oregon HB 2355,
https://gov.oregonlive.com/bill/2017/HB2355/
, that was signed into law on August 15, 2017. It seems to have the same language and amounts in the bill as Measure 110.
p.s. I live in Oregon and voted "yes" on measure 110 to decriminalize all drugs here!
I see this as having positive results minimizing drug trafficking and reducing petty crime but I don’t this having any impact on addiction. I have family with severe addiction problems and criminality is completely orthogonal to the behavior. You can make the argument that it’s cruel to imprison somebody for addiction problems but that doesn’t address the addiction.
The measure also included additional funding for addiction treatment.
If money alone could fix the problem in the US, it would have disappeared a long time ago...
I think that it’s a combination of well placed money and good policy. If drug use gives someone a felony conviction, it doesn’t matter how many times you send them to rehab, they’re not going to be able to hold down a job because almost no one hires people with records.
Without the element of criminalization, tools like rehab provide a way more effective path to being a functional member of society. Obviously it’s not a silver bullet, but it does make sense as a strategy.
Other discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24986517
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24987903
This is a good first step in reducing suffering for the people of northern Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan, and other places with brutal cartels supported by American drug users.
As someone who has witnessed and taken part in great healing from the use of plant healers, I'm glad to see that we're moving away from putting people in cages for seeking them.
Why link to a tweet of the article rather than the article itself?
Remember to flag it.
Turns out liberal states, not conservatives ones, are the ones in favor of personal freedoms and less intrusive government.
Sadly I don’t think that’s true across the board; it seems to me that each team in the American culture war has its own pet issues, and nobody is consistently applying “personal freedoms and less intrusive government” widely. The left/right culture war appears to be more important to devotees of these parties than consistency on this matter.
This is a nice step in the right direction, though. Shame about the DEA.
It's also difficult to even define consistency, as there are value judgements involved. We don't agonize about my freedom to have a flaming pool of gasoline in my front yard, because no one really thinks that is a worthwhile thing. But we argue a great deal about the balance between things like gun ownership and gun violence, because people value both lives and that freedom quite highly.
Except when it comes to speech
Can you point to a specific instance of a liberal state suppressing free speech?
I believe several liberal states have passed laws restricting the distribution of information related to firearms, specifically 3D printing designs.
Less state related, but still state tolerated... there have been schools that fire professors for minor speech related issue (the nega nega nega incident for example). Or restrict some political movements/organizations in schools while allowing others to be promoted (look at differences in (in)tolerance of NRA and BLM).
Why is this downvoted?
You see it all the time here. It's the "pragmatic urbanite" mindset on firearms: you're not supposed to support heavy-handed bans, but you're _absolutely_ not supposed to suggest that otherwise-favored politicians are trying to enact heavy-handed bans, even when they've already done it and when they brag about it as part of their campaigns.
https://observer.com/2019/05/kamala-harris-wants-to-ban-soci...
Last time I checked, Kamala Harris is neither a state nor President right now.
Right, she was just in charge of bringing a state's cases against people and is likely about to become second in line for the Presidency.
Both states and Kamala can't limit speech due to the current SCOTUS absolutist consensus on the first amendment, but that doesn't mean they don't want to. If we are to judge from colleges' foray into
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_code
in the 90s, the entirety of FIRE jurisprudence in the last 2 decades, and FAANG workforces demanding more censorship, colleges being a pretty close approximation of liberal views on the freedom of speech, especially future views, the moment SCOTUS lifts its absolutism, there will be numerous regulations of speech in liberal jurisdictions, and then federally.
The Oregon state constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and the state supreme court's interpretation of that is even stronger than the national 1st amendment protection. For instance public nudity is considered free expression, and exotic dancers typically dance completely nude, and there is an annual naked bike ride through Portland.
And firearms.
Unless it's Black people carrying firearms. Then conservatives love gun control:
https://theweek.com/articles/582926/how-ronald-reagan-learne...
Reagan started modern gun control legislation, because Black Panthers were exercising their rights to open carry.
This is a mischaracterization of an entire group of people based on the actions of a few. Even the NRA has pushed for protections that would benefit groups who may be discriminated against, such as promoting shall-issue or constitutional carry.
I didn't see anything like that on their Wikipedia page. Perhaps you could share it here.
I remember several years ago there were self-defense classes hosted by gay men, for other gay people in my city. Pre gay-marriage and post Matthew Shepard, obviously. My recollection was that it was entirely the gay community and no NRA outreach.
It would dramatically improve my opinion of the NRA to learn that they sponsored or materially supported such an effort.
The push to make carry permits shall-issue should be pretty evident. The point with that is so you don't have an issuing authority (like a sherriff) denying people a permit on a discriminatory basis when they otherwise met the requirements (commonly a racial issue in the past, such as when MLK was denied a permit). May-issue states like NJ, NY, MD, etc can deny a permit for people who meet the legal requirements on some other reason. Generally the wealthy and well connected are more likely to get a permit.
I don't know if there are any specific outreach programs. I know they have youth programs and recently started some geared towards women. Generally these distinctions in training are made if there's enough demand to form a new training program and also if the topics would be sufficiently different. For example, the youth training would be about basic safety and marksman ship. Women can join the same classes as men, but the women's course covers different defensive tactics based on general size and strength differences as well as topics like carrying in a purse. The NRA sets the curriculum, but the actual training is provided by a certified instructor. These instructors and the businesses they are affiliated perform their own outreach. Here's an example of outreach after the Pulse attack -
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-group-offering-f...
.
My experience at events has generally been that everyone is welcome. There can be an odd person or two who have personal beliefs which are biased, but the groups as a whole are welcoming. I don't like to make assumptions about people, and I also don't go around asking everyone their business - so I have no way of knowing if the people I've met are hetero, LGBTQ, or any other personal traits. What I can say, is that I've met people whom others might have stereotyped as being LGBTQ (whether they were or not) and were not treated any differently. This has been my observation when it comes to other personal traits as well. The only trait that I know of that will land some incendiary comments might be political opinions supporting candidates which are gun control supporters.
Edit: The negative side of the NRA from an LGBTQ perspective would be their support of pro-gun candidates may incidentally be supporting a candidate who's other policies may negatively impact the LGBTQ community.
The NRA supported the Mulford Act.
Yes, and they also set up chartered gun clubs in African American communities in the 60s. The one founded by Robert Williams is probably the most well known.
And the Democrats were the party of slavery.
The similarly is just as that isn’t the same Democrat party as today, neither is the NRA.
The NRA supporting some specific gun control schemes is what caused their coup.
They still support some gun control today when it's politically advantageous, such as the bump stock ban. Seems there's another coup based on the recent financial issues...
And increasingly religion, especially all but one religion.
So when can I expect them to legalize "personal use" amounts of machine guns and explosive devices?
The point I'm trying to make is that people tend to have "personal freedom" blind spots that encompass everything they don't personally care about.
Not a fair comparison. One item cannot be used to harm others. The other item can be. Personal freedom does not include freedom to harm others.
>not a fair comparison. One item cannot be used to harm others
Going looking for expensive power tools in unattended work vehicles to pawn because you're desperate for your next fix or driving drunk sure sounds like "harming others" to me.
I am well aware that that is the exception and not the rule. The same is true for guns and explosives. Most guns will never be fired at anyone, they will go home, trunk, range, trunk, home, repeat or they will sit in a closet collecting dust. Pretty much all non-commercial explosive use in non-warring nations is for entertainment (anvil tossing and the like).
The difference is the potential risk for your fellow citizens. All risks are not equal. In one case the risk is loss of property, in the other the risk is loss of lives of _dozens_ of your fellow citizens (in one case, a classroom of 6-year-olds) in a matter of a few minutes. Risk to your fellow citizens has to be figured into whether you are allowed to have something.
Theft and intoxicated driving are still illegal.
You can get explosives and machine guns, you just have to jump through a few hoops with the ATF.
>Theft and intoxicated driving are still illegal.
Shooting people is still illegal
>You can get explosives and machine guns, you just have to jump through a few hoops with the ATF.
You can get opioids and cocaine but not without jumping through a few hoops with doctors.
Side note: Explosives law is pretty interesting.
If you hurt someone or something using explosives, even if it was a complete accident and in no way foreseeable, and even if the person or thing was damaged because of /their/ negligence you are automatically 100% at fault as the person who set off the explosive. Because explosives are considered so dangerous that whomever uses them must be expected to take extraordinary precaution.
We need the same level of accountability for guns too.
We do, they're actually stricter because there's many more avenues for criminal prosecution.
Sedate yourself citizen.
Come on Georgia...
It's a nice excuse for dealers to say they are just addicts and this is their own stash.
It's always been the case that "intent to distribute" is not decided by quantity alone. Merely the presence of something like multiple plastic bags can tip the scales into "intent", even if the quantity of the drug is below the decriminalization threshold. And because this isn't full legalization, possession of any amount can still be sufficient grounds to get a warrant for further investigation.
Hey Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today!
I'm honestly torn on this.
The hammer of justice approach of the 20th century was _clearly_ a huge mistake that disproportionately punished minorities. The fact that people could 10+ year sentences for possession of cannabis (with no charge of intent to distribute) through a combination of mandatory minimum sentences and so-called three strikes laws was and is a massive travesty of justice.
I 100% support the legalization of recreational cannabis use.
I also support not criminalizing addiction.
That all being said, if you look at cities like Seattle or San Francisco (eg the Tenderloin) you see the negative externalities that a lack of enforcement brings. People open shooting heroin in the streets doesn't seem like a good outcome. For anyone.
I honestly don't know where the happy middle ground is here.
These people won't get much better if they go to prison though. Well, yeah, they'll have difficulty shooting heroin, but they definitely won't get better. They need healthcare and at the very least a safe roof over their heads.
Things go too far one way, then they go too far the other way, finally balance becomes closer.