Just to make things clear, decriminalization is not legalization. Drugs are still illegal, and users risk a $100 fine, especially if they are uncooperative. The difference is that it is now a civil violation instead of a crime, so no record, no jail time, kind of like a parking ticket.
Here's what's meant by "a small amount" in Oregon law:
Less than 1 gram of heroin.
Less than 1 gram, or less than 5 pills, of MDMA.
Less than 2 grams of methamphetamine.
Less than 40 units of LSD.
Less than 12 grams of psilocybin.
Less than 40 units of methadone.
Less than 40 pills of oxycodone.
Less than 2 grams of cocaine.
Also interesting from that article is that the law changes things for "reasonable suspicion", so they may see fewer arrests for more than one reason.
"This prevents law enforcement from then searching vehicles because they can't develop reasonable suspicion, which is the grounds that allows them to ultimately continue to search for evidence of a crime, Parosa said."
Why are you allowed to have up to 40 tabs of LSD but no more than 5 pills of MDMA?
In general, possession-vs-dealing is such a weird line to cut based on quantity of the drug.
The fact that 10 pills of MDMA in someone's possession likely means that it won't just be one person consuming all of those doesn't necessarily turn that person into a professional dealer. Not any more than a pack of cigarettes turns someone into a tobacco company if someone bums a smoke off of you.
I'm wondering how they measure those. Like, one gram of dried mushroom is a whole heck of a lot smaller than the pile of mushrooms you'd need to get one gram of extractable psilocybin.
IANAL, but it looks to me that the text of the law doesn’t differentiate between dried mushrooms that contain psilocybin, and pure psilocybin of the same weight.
> (B) Twelve grams or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of psilocybin or psilocin.
I wouldn’t bet on that actually holding up in court. 12g of pure psilocybin is about 600 doses, which a judge may determine is illegal based on the intent of the law.
Drug “trafficking” should absolutely be legal. While Decriminalization is laudatory and beneficial, it solves far fewer problems than outright legalization.
With decriminalization:
1) drug users will still not know what they are actually consuming. They can very easily invest drugs heavily mixed with other drugs, or dangerous chemicals. This will lead to far higher levels of accidental overdoses and is a path to more addictive substances.
2) Drug sellers will still be subject to lengthy prison terms. This directly creates to massive amounts of drug violence. If you are a dealer, you will commonly hold large amounts of cash and valuable drugs, making you a prime target for robbery including home invasions.
Since you cannot rely on banks to deposit your sales, nor police to protect your property, you will need to be heavily armed.
And if you suspect a partner or customer to actually be an informant who can net you a sentence nearly as long as murder, there is almost no downside to killing them. How many innocent kids have been buried in fields because of the paranoia of their dealer?
3) Our individual rights have been reduced significantly because of drug sales prohibition. Because of the war on drugs, police can get no knock warrants to burst in your house, kill your dogs, maybe even you, and not even apologize when it turns out their “tip” was wrong.
If you are driving or flying with a large amount of cash, police can simply take it from you without showing it was linked to any crime, and force you to spend thousands on a lawyer to even have a chance of seeing it returned.
Then there are zero tolerance laws that allowed police to seize your property because anyone on it was using drugs.
We all pay the price for the drug prohibition, whether we use drugs or not. Time to end it completely.
Whenever I see these discussions I only ever see the drawbacks of restricting drug manufacturing and distribution and never the drawbacks of legalization. An honest analysis would acknowledge the drawbacks of legalization too. It's difficult to tell exactly what the long term consequences of complete drug legalization are, and I guarantee there are some negative consequences.
For example, legalization might reduce the scale of drug trafficking, but I doubt it would eliminate it completely. Tobacco is completely legal yet due to high taxes there is still a large multi-billion dollar bootlegging business to smuggle cigarettes across tax gradients. Also, highly taxed drugs will likely result in an increase in related crimes like theft. I had a friend from high school who was addicted to heroin. When he ran out of money he was willing to mug old ladies to come up with the cash for more. If heroin were instead legal... why wouldn't he just steal directly from the legal distribution source now that the threat of violence is no longer there? You don't steal from the dealer because you might be killed, but stealing from Walmart or CVS or whoever is carrying it? Why not? Corporate policy probably says not to do anything.
Lastly, unless marketing is highly restricted, legalization of drugs will absolutely lead to an increase in usage across all demographics. And a net increase in usage will cause some % increase in DWI rates, overdose rates, health care impact, etc.
We will pay some price for legalization as well, it's just TBD and nebulous at this point.
>I had a friend from high school who was addicted to heroin. When he ran out of money he was willing to mug old ladies to come up with the cash for more. If heroin were instead legal... why wouldn't he just steal directly from the legal distribution source now that the threat of violence is no longer there?
That seems like more of a net positive IMO. Theft of institutions must be less deadly/detrimental than the alternative. Even if people were to steal more from (say) Walmart than rob grandmas, it'd still be positive.
>And a net increase in usage will cause some % increase in DWI rates, overdose rates, health care impact, etc.
This might not be the case because of increase purity/social and institutional support because of destigmatization/re-invested profits taken from taxing the product.
Ya, like how if you get the recipe for a drug only slightly wrong you turn it from useful tool to deadly poison. I want the FDA inspecting facilities. I want them testing purity, and then testing the tests that they use test the previously tested test. When I buy aspirin I want to know it is aspirin and not anything else. "Let the market decide" doesn't help me once I'm poisoned. Please government, regulate drug manufacturers.
For people who believe that legalization is a net good, there is a tendency to view any discussion of the (very real) drawbacks as an attempt to maintain the status quo, which is causing enormous suffering, and is thus unethical. I myself have been guilty of this.
(See the "Balancing conflicting priorities" heading for some (admittedly sparse) discussion of drawbacks.)
Drugs would be manufactured and sold only by government-licensed operators, in unattractive packaging with prominent warnings, and advertisement would be strictly forbidden.
I also think that legalization and regulation can't happen in a vacuum. This may be an unpopular opinion in the United States, but I think that a social safety net (like welfare or even UBI) that allowed your friend to purchase legal heroin instead of mugging old ladies would be an excellent use of my taxes.
Are you seriously comparing tobacco bootlegging with drug trafficking? Wake me up when tobacco bootleggers are having gang wars in large cities using semi-automatic weapons and responsible for a large percentage of our murder rate.
Tax avoidance happens everywhere and it’s contribution to our violent crime rate is minute.
And why would your friend rob anyone if his heroin cost a fraction of today’s price, and he could easily procure it? And if he faced no Neil time for buying it legally?
Depends on the location. Using cigarettes as an analogue... they are really cheap to manufacture, but some places like NYC tax at a rate even greater than 100% (nearly $6/pack flat tax last I checked, which means once you add in margin and vendor costs you are looking at $10+/pack which is brutal for an impoverished pack-a-day addict). So as a result there is a massive bootleg market where cigarettes are smuggled in from low or no-tax areas and sold illicitly.
I'm not super familiar with street prices of drugs, but if politicians tax drugs the way they tax cigarettes and alcohol, it will be burdensome for drug addicts and cause increased theft and bootleg operations that have some (but not all) of the same problems as drug trafficking.
It would be so cheap your friend from high school could afford it with a standard burger flipping job. He'd have no need to resort to violent crimes to afford heroin.
How much are we talking? Is this pre or post taxes? Cigarettes are super cheap pre-taxes, but post-taxes they can be extremely expensive, especially in places like NYC.
Are there a lot of armed robberies committed by smokers in NYC because they can't afford cigarettes?
They might buy from bootleggers if they can't afford the fully-taxed cigs. That's a crime too, obviously, but somewhat less serious than armed robbery.
> Are there a lot of armed robberies committed by smokers in NYC because they can't afford cigarettes?
I can't really quantify "a lot" or whether the thieves were smokers that couldn't afford them, but it's clearly happening. Here are some armed robberies from 2020 in NYC that involved stealing cigarettes at gunpoint: [0][1][2]
> They might buy from bootleggers if they can't afford the fully-taxed cigs
I would guess this is the preferable option to robbing stores, but if you literally have no money, even bootleg cigarettes are off the table.
Heroin is a simple chemical readily extractable from an agricultural crop. I wouldn't expect the base price to be higher than vitamin supplements. Of course how high that's pushed by sin taxes is a matter for legislatures.
I agree, I see this in many forms: (From IT projects, to dealing with huge homeless problems, to drug crime)
We shouldn't do this, because this doesn't 'solve' the problem in 100% of cases.
That is how nothing ever gets done. I think we should absolutely hit the low hanging fruit.
I mean, a few years ago, Oregon legalized Weed. This last election, they legalized shrooms (in certain clinical settings). Once people see progress being made, they are much more likely to go with the next step.
The measured approach is a problem too. You see it in marijuana legalization, where some state’s are so restrictive about licensing sakes outlets that legal weed costs more than illegal.
How can that kill off a dangerous black market?
Someone who is going to try heroin is going to try heroin. They can live a mostly long, healthy, productive life if they get clean drugs and needles. Where are they going to get that from decriminalization?
An idea I’ve noodled around with is adding drug (and alcohol) consumption as a badge to your drivers license. Every time you go to a drug dispensary you have to show your license.
If you get out of line, driving intoxicated, or commit any crimes while drunk or high they take your license until you complete rehab. And if you go too far off the deep end, maybe they keep your badges off your license for a very long time.
At least that way we can eliminate all the other crimes the war on drugs helps create.
> The measured approach is a problem too. You see it in marijuana legalization, where some state’s are so restrictive about licensing sakes outlets that legal weed costs more than illegal.
I don't think this is as big a problem as people make it out to be.
In NYC, there is a black market for smuggled cigarettes because of the large taxes on them. Most people buy them from legit places regardless because it's much more convenient.
There are high alcohol taxes in Oregon and Washington, yet very little modern bootlegging. People prefer to buy legal alcohol in spite of the fact that moonshine is cheaper.
The risks of dealing with illegally manufactured substances are worse than the increased cost of buying from legitimate sources.
"You see it in marijuana legalization, where some state’s are so restrictive about licensing sakes outlets that legal weed costs more than illegal. How can that kill off a dangerous black market?"
Look at consumer products: generics or store brands are available for all kinds of products yet the substantial majority of sales are for branded products. And here the generics/stores brands are fairly similar to the branded products. But in the illegal drug market you have little idea of the quality of that product--so consumers will pay substantially more for products where they know exactly what they are getting [in this case the legal products].
> Someone who is going to try heroin is going to try heroin.
Tautologically correct, but I think the implication here is that availability doesn't affect whether someone will try heroin. I have a hard time believing that: it seems obvious that on the margin, there are some people who would try heroin if it were easier to get (and wouldn't if it were harder). We can argue about how big that margin is, but it seems hard to argue that it doesn't exist.
(Apologies if that's not actually what you were implying.)
I would argue that n my sling hard drugs illegal leads to more involuntary addictions, because when your favorite drug is mixed with a much harder drug without your knowledge it opens a door you may never wanted opened.
Do people buy alcohol for teenagers? Of course, but a few highly publicized cases of people prosecuted for procuring drugs for an unlicensed friend will help keep it to a minimum.
I wholeheartedly disagree with you. Criminalization of drug production and distribution has been an abject policy failure from the start. Ending the criminalization of drugs and bringing all drugs into a regulatory framework that is guided by health outcomes rather than the one-size-fits-all goal of eradication is the only path that has a hope of reducing the harms associated with the hardest of drugs.
You can't stop people from using even the most devastating drugs simply by making drugs illegal to produce and distribute. There will always be someone willing to take the risk, regardless of the penalties. Criminalization is the WORST form of regulation. Instead of ending up with a dangerous, yet pure product, from a trusted, regulated supplier, you end up with an impure and potentially deadly product from an unregulated and completely untrusted supplier.
You can judge drug users all day long, but they're going to seek these drugs regardless of the prohibitions. And there will always be a criminal willing to supply the addiction, because the demand is 100% inelastic (i.e. totally unrelated to price).
Drug criminalization has created a $400B global market that fuels terrorism, human trafficking, child exploitation, and the destruction of democracy in many corners of the world.
>> bringing all drugs into a regulatory framework that is guided by health outcomes
Outcomes for who? The individual or the population? Seriously. Ask a doctor and they would probably agree that, for a particular patient, having access to legal safe alternatives is a good thing. But ask them about drugs as a whole, for the entire population, and the answer will always be "less is better but zero is best." Stemming the supply will damage current users, but illegality also suppresses uptake by new users.
Opioids are different than pot. LSD is different than rohypnol. Cocaine is not the same as ketamine. Balling all "drugs" into one category and declaring them legal for traffic and sale is a horrible idea. I don't want to see GHB to ever be sold or transported openly.
Clearly that's not true, as evidenced by the enormous illegal drug trade. Highly regulated availability of safer substitutes for the worst drugs might reduce uptake of those worse drugs.
Balling all "drugs" into one category and declaring them legal for traffic and sale is a horrible idea.
That's not what the parent comment said. They specifically said based on health.
> Clearly that's not true, as evidenced by the enormous illegal drug trade. Highly regulated availability of safer substitutes for the worst drugs might reduce uptake of those worse drugs.
Hold on, that logic isn't sound. You are saying because the illegal drug trade is enormous, therefore the illegal status of drugs has no suppressive effect on new user uptake? Why can't both statements be true? "The illegal trade is enormous and making drugs legal would make the drug user base even more enormous"
Illegality status might suppress 50% of new users and impulse buyers, who knows. You can claim illegality does not suppress 100% (that much is clear), but I guarantee illegality has suppressed some non-zero % of potential users from trying it.
Legalization probably increases the user base somewhat. But does it increase negative outcomes? The evidence is already in: the legalization of alcohol after the 1930s definitely improved outcomes.
I'm not advocating selling heroin at the corner store. Perhaps it should be sold over the counter at pharmacies? A licensed pharmacist can advice the buyer of the risks and can connect them with resources to help with addiction if there is a desire for that.
We already massively promote and sell alcohol nearly everywhere. It's a deadly drug that is more dangerous to use than many illegal drugs. Tobacco is similarly broadly distributed, yet causes cancer and early death in millions of people.
If drugs were regulated based on their risk level, then it's likely that tobacco would be sold in plain packaging at pharmacies and MDMA would be available in a vending machine...
> We already massively promote and sell alcohol nearly everywhere.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Alcohol and tobacco are "grandfathered in" to the current system due to widespread usage for centuries. If I were king for a day, alcoholic beverage marketing would be made immediately illegal, but in our current democracy there's no way the alcohol lobby would allow that.
> Ask a doctor and they would probably agree that, for a particular patient, having access to legal safe alternatives is a good thing. But ask them about drugs as a whole, for the entire population, and the answer will always be "less is better but zero is best."
I guess doctors would say the same about alcohol. However, I would prefer to have my glass of beer once or twice a month and I don't want to go to jail for it, thank you very much.
Very well said. The real world pain caused by drug money going to black market criminals can’t be ignored. It’s easy to bury our heads in the sand and ignore how drug money fuels victimization through exploitation and human trafficking.
And I’m sure someone will pipe up that they know some nice weed dealers etc, but you have to realize that’s a nice little bubble you’re living in. For many, the drug dealers are linked to some very nasty individuals, and the criminalization of drugs has simply given them huge income streams.
Rest assured that the friendly weed dealer is buying upstream from someone who is significantly less friendly. And the person he or she is buying from is likely a murderous psychopath. _By definition_, the most successful in the drug trade are those who are willing to do anything for profit.
Tobacco and alcohol are two legal drugs. They have vastly more usage than any of the illegal drugs. They incur vast costs--including hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.
Why do they have vastly more usage than the illegal drugs? A major reason is because they are illegal--such as risk of arrest, poor and uncertain quality, hard to find. Legalizing them would vastly increase usage.
Why should we force drug trafficking in to the underground, creating a black market and all the murder that comes with enforcing contracts within it, when people are just going to buy and consume drugs anyway? Because drugs are bad for you? The trade-off doesn't seem worth it.
"Bath salts" are popular because far better alternatives are illegal... If pure meth, cocaine, heroin, MDMA, and other "hard" drugs were made available in a regulated format, many destructive and dangerous alternatives would no longer have a market.
This is the big concern about making (any) drugs illegal. There is zero way for a user to ensure safe supply or with consistent dosages. This puts an additional burden on our healthcare system.
Meth is actually available by prescription in the US for ADHD and obesity [1] (at a much lower dosage than what addicts take)! Opiates obviously are as well.
>is meth, heroin, and cocaine supposed to be safe for you?
Most likely not, but definitely much safer than unregulated "bath salts". And keep in mind, "safe" is not binary, it is a spectrum. Even a lot of common household OTC drugs are not safe if taken in improper dosages or without following the instructions carefully.
And even regarding those drugs that you've mentioned, a giant chunk of the deaths and overdoses occur due to impurities and unknown mixes that are unaccounted for due to the illegal status of those substances.
For example, let's say a heroin addict keeps buying from the same dealer and knows his safe "dosage", which is N grams. The thing is, that's not the real dosage, because street heroin is mixed with tons of garbage fillers to prop up the value and make the drug cheaper to manufacture. So his real "safe" dosage could be 70% of N, with 30% being fillers. Then at some point later, he either switches dealers or his usual dealer switches suppliers, and the fillers only account for 10% of the final product now. So the addict buys his usual "safe dosage" of N grams, without being aware of decreased filler amount(dealers don't post an accurate percentage of fillers in their drugs on the package, cause why bother if it is illegal either way, and it could be that they didn't even know it themselves). Even though the addict thinks he is buying his usual "safe" dosage, in reality his dosage becomes 29% higher (0.9N grams vs. 0.7N grams), hence the overdose.
Note: numbers and percentages are absolutely made up, because i have zero idea about typical heroin dosages and percentage of fillers in those. But my point should still be valid, even with the real life numbers probably being much different.
Absolutely not. Those are very dangerous substances to take. Now add in the additional dangers posed by criminal production. How does a drug user know whether it's really cocaine? Of course, they don't. It's completely unregulated the most extreme manner possible.
Apparently, synthetic compounds analogous to those found in Khat. From what I gather, there are several compounds that qualify as "cathinones" and I expect they have varied effects. Drugs often have different effects on different people, too (see alcohol intolerance). Also, with any home-cooked organic chemistry, there will be a lot of variance in the product. Also, with any street supply, you never know what it's cut with (even if it appears to be beautiful dank nugs).
A few doses of LSD likely saved my marriage. Things were very frozen and the drug let us really talk for the first time in a year+ (having kids is hard lol)
It’s insane to me that doctors can’t prescribe this stuff. If there was any justice in the world you could go to your doctor for a safe dose of anything on your birthday.
It actually seems really problematic for drug trafficking to be a crime while consumption is decriminalized. It creates an easier market for organized crime to sell into, which reduces their risk. IMO instead we should do something along the lines of allowing doctors to prescribe pure versions of illegal drugs to people who are addicted. Then the drugs can be made by legitimate firms that can be regulated heavily.
Reducing risk for traffickers is probably a good thing. Because it will flood the market with competitors. Organized crime thrives because of the risk, not in spite of it. They are the only ones willing to take the risk, so they own the market.
They are also inclined to violently remove competition, or force competitors to operate under their control, so I think it remains to be seen how it will play out.
"especially if they are uncooperative." Oh yeah. I really don't like the idea of an officer having discretion in these situations. First sign of bad legislation IMHO.
Police officers always have discretion. It would be impossible to legislate that away. It's been a while since I read the law (I'm an Oregon resident, so I read it before I voted for it), but I'd imagine that the law doesn't give any particular discretion in enforcement, but in the real world an officer can always choose not to issue a ticket/make an arrest.
Really? How about in the case of armed robbery? Or murder? Can they choose not to arrest? Yes, but there will be serious consequences. BTW I voted for it too.
If a single officer is the only witness to a murder, what consequences will there be if the officer chooses not to make an arrest? Yes, there's nuance and as soon as multiple people are involved there's the risk of public outcry, but as far as I know, there's not a legal obligation for a peace officer to make an arrest just because they have witnessed a crime. Whether there is a social obligation to make an arrest is highly situational and depends on not only the crime but the surrounding circumstances.
I'm curious where the definition of a class E violation can be found. I didn't find anything through a search.
It seems odd to me that the government can charge a fine without a crime being committed. In my mind, this would remove the rights and protections that someone would have under a criminal charge.
What are you talking about? It's a civil violation, like a speeding ticket or almost every other ticket that cops write that don't involve you being hauled off to jail.
An offense doesn't need to result in imprisonment or custody to be criminal. A citation is an arrest without custody - you are promising to appear at court. This is generally how summary offenses are handled in many states. This includes summary traffic citations. If you look at the rules for judicial proceedings they will fall under the criminal proceedings. They will also show up on your record. That's how my state and neighboring states work.
I guess maybe your state is very different. Which is part of what I was asking about. Any offense, civil or criminal, must be defined in statute or code. So can you point me to that?
Speeding is a crime. If a cop suspect you of speeding they can pull you over, search your car and basically ruin your entire day if they so choose. Proper decriminalization would mean that cops, even with strong suspicions that you are carrying drugs, would not be allowed to stop/search. That would be akin to a parking ticket.
THey still need cause to search your car. Not that they won't manufacture it if they want to. But I've been pulled over for speeding, expired tags, and other minor traffic issues a few times and have never had my car searched.
So you did get pulled over. So you were in detention/arrest (insert lawyer debate here) as in you were physically stopped. At that point the cop can search your car. He probably did. He almost certainly looked in the back seat and counted the number of passengers/objects there, something he could not do as you sped by. He then examined your life in that he looked to see if you had outstanding warrants and whether your insurance/license/registration was all in order. Had he wanted to, he could remove you from the vehicle and pat you down for weapons. Speeding, being a crime, allowed him to do these things that parking tickets do not.
"Speeding, being a crime, allowed him to do these things that parking tickets do not."
That's not entirely true (excluding the pat down). The "search" you are talking about is simply plain sight/smell/etc. A cop writing a parking ticket can look through the window of your car and run the plates to see if it's stolen, lacking registration, etc. In either case they need probable cause to do an actual search of your vehicle.
Not to mention, they can stop (in most states) you even if you didnt commit a crime, like at a DUI checkpoint.
The level of what qualifies as probable cause varies by state too. For example, I've heard that the courts in MD have held that police can pull you over and search your car on the basis that the owner has a carry permit from another state (as shown in NCIC when scanning your plate).
The measure makes it a noncriminal violation similar to a traffic ticket to possess the following:
Less than 1 gram of heroin
Less than 1 gram, or less than 5 pills, of MDMA
Less than 2 grams of methamphetamine
Less than 40 units of LSD
Less than 12 grams of psilocybin
Less than 40 units of methadone
Less than 40 pills of oxycodone
Less than 2 grams of cocaine
The measure reduces from a felony to a misdemeanor simple possession of substances containing:
1 to 3 grams of heroin
1 to 4 grams of MDMA
2 to 8 grams of methamphetamine
2 to 8 grams of cocaine
I'm confused why people are saying non-criminal traffic tickets. In my state, traffic violations are usually summary offenses. I'm not familiar with how all the states handle it, but I haven't come across non-criminal traffic citations.
LSD is effective in such small quantities and it's been delivered in so many different forms I think the normal "grams"/ "ounces" metrics are irrelevant. The one time I used it, it was a single "hit" about half the size of a micro SD card and paper thin.
In most states any amount over some small amount can be prosecuted as trafficking. I dunno what the limits are for Oregon.
I'm pretty sure they get the same people who think a six pack is "binge drinking" and one range day's worth of ammo is a "stockpile" to come up with those limits.
Indeed. Six of my favorite microbrews from Cascade Brewing and I would be very drunk. Heck, a single 750ml bottle of Sang Noir will last me a whole evening. Speaking of which, I have a bottle in the cupboard right now. Hmmmm.
Start with dinner at 6 and go to bed at 9 and that's 2/hr. Not exactly keg stands and jungle juice territory. The human body processes 1-2 drinks/hr so at the end you'll have a buzz on the order of one stiff mixed drink (~3-4 shots of stuff in the 40% ballpark spread out over a tall glass of sugary fruity stuff).
Edit: And since apparently this needs saying "drink" = "the standard alcohol/drink unit that all the professionals who measure this stuff use"
I have no doubt that much higher levels of consumption are possible.
I don't really have a position on what "binge" should mean, but that doesn't exactly sound like it's not. Could just be my perspective. I probably drink most days. Usually one beer. Rarely, I might have two in a day. I can't remember that last time I had more than that.
I roughly define binge as any amount of drinking that leaves you with a hangover the next day. That usually indicates that you have consumed enough to lose your judgment on when to stop.
The original commenter might not have been using "drink" this way, but theoretically there is such a thing as a "standard drink": roughly 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is about 12oz of beer, 5oz of wine, or 1.5oz of liquor.
This "standard drink" is what an average person can roughly process per hour. It's all fuzzy because of how many confounding variables there are with alcohol (and because "average person" is kind of a nonsense phrase), but there you go.
That website just defines a “standard drink” in the US as 14 grams of alcohol. It doesn’t say anything about how much an average person can “process” in an hour. I can’t even come up with a good reason for the utility of a measure of alcohol without it being a ratio of how much can be processed in an hour.
That’s why the NHS metric is better suited for discussions about how much alcohol per unit of time one can/should drink, or to discuss the effects of different rates of alcohol consumption over time.
From the NHS website:
>One unit equals 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol, which is around the amount of alcohol the average adult can process in an hour.
My estimate was based on half of the population being women, and the fact that fat doesn’t assist with processing alcohol as much as muscle, and most American men are not exactly muscular.
The most muscular dude I ever knew was so solely because he had so much weight to carry. Unless you are wheelchair-bound, fat necessitates at least some additional leg and core muscle.
My whole life I’ve been watching the “safe” amount of alcohol go down and down, study after study. The idea of casually drinking multiple beers after work every day is crazy to me.
I feel like they "cold brewing" process they use(at least that was what they were doing a few years ago when I read up on it) has more in common to distillation than finding high ABV tolerant yeast strains and actually brewing high gravity beer. I have taken apple cider and done a similar process to make Applejack. Its just a matter of freezing out the water/other non alcohol components. I mean, its interesting and all, but I dont really feel like its beer at that point.
I'm a proponent for legalizing drugs. But I believe there will be negative long-term consequences from drug use becoming normalized and so easy to obtain. People who wouldn't otherwise use drugs could be forgiven (after reading about legalization in the binary and positive way it is often reported, or from walking around a city with an upmarket weed shop every few blocks) for believing it can't be that bad for you and trying it out. I can say from first hand experience with weed that it slows down your cognition and makes you less productive, and it can easily become habitual and hard to stop. I hate to think of how many new addicts we might get if the hard stuff like heroin becomes normalized. I think legalized drugs should come with scarier warnings, like cigarettes, and there should be marketing campaigns against their use, like with alcohol. The primary objective is to not lock people up for drugs, to give them support they need, and to move their sale (to people who are buying them anyway) from the black market to a taxed and regulated one. There should be a secondary objective to not get a whole lot of new people hooked.
I used to favor full legalization, but now I think it's a bad idea. If you can simply go to a store to buy heroin (like you can with weed in many places now), I think we will inevitably have more heroin addicts. People will get addicting just trying it out, and get addicted because they are self-medicating.
There are middle-grounds between full legalization and full prohibition. It seems obvious that prohibition has been a failure. I think instead we should base it on how harmful and addictive they are. Drugs with low harm and low addiction potential should be easy to get. Other drugs should be legally obtainable (and manufactured and distributed by legitimate means) by addicts, but hard to get for most people.
Sometimes people bring up the case of alcohol, which seems to have relatively high addiction potential and harm, yet is still legal. I think this is a case of path dependence though. I don't know if I would advocate making a similarly harmful drug legal and easily obtainable today, but the cat is out of the bag on that one.
I’ve thought for a while that “hard” drugs ought to be made available with a license. Every year you check up with your doctor and a mental health specialist, and if things seem to be in order (no physiological damage from drug use, no arrests, no job loss from drug abuse etc) you get your license to buy consumer quantities of cocaine, mushrooms, whatever.
I’m sure there are solid arguments against a license structure but I haven’t imagined a better middle ground between total prohibition and 19th century style cocaine in cough syrup.
Sure, but there's a huge difference between meeting up with "a guy" in secret to buy it versus popping into the shop and picking some up while running errands.
There's also an implied suitability in the sense that "stores wouldn't be allowed to sell if it was really that harmful". This may or may not be true but it certainly impacts our cultural mindset around alcohol.
In looking at the data for pot usage in CO around legalization, the data is mixed. Teen usage rates of pot went down after legalization, while adult usage rates went up. The 2020 data is not yet out from what I could see. Like with all drugs, potentiation will alter the dosage rates of individuals, so data on weight of drug sold needs to be calibrated over time. Though pot and heroin are vastly different drugs in terms of effect and addiction, the pot legalization effects provide some guidance on usage among those that can purchase it legally. Per what little data I could see, it does seems that legalization increases use of the drug. As to what that does towards safety and health, I've no clue and would love it if another HNer could enlighten us.
This is especially important considering that it seems most overdose deaths are due to it being laced with fentanyl or similar. My brother died this way
Sure, there will be some consequences. But think about all of the people who won't enter adulthood already excluded from the (good) job market because they have a criminal record? I feel pretty confident that this law is going to be a net positive.
Full agreement that it's a net positive. Nobody should ever get a criminal record for using. I just hope that the messaging is clear that because its legal/decriminalized doesn't mean its good for you.
Totally agree. Especially since I have two children rapidly entering that phase of their lives when they will be exposed to the most peer pressure. I hope we take a bunch of the money we'll save on useless enforcement and put it towards education, in addition to rehab and other diversion programs.
Of the people that wouldn't use drugs there will be some that legality is their only reason for not consuming. But most in the non-consuming group wouldn't consume even if it was legal for a myriad of other reasons.
I prefer the warnings to be helpful for informing adults weighing risks in their decision. Scarier warnings like on cigarette packs are a means of forcing personal or governmental ideals on others through fear. Provide all the known facts and let people make their choice.
Yeah I think overall harm minimisation would have to take into account negative externalities.
Even if you decriminalised meth, for example, and removed the need for property crime to get it, it could still cause a lot of bad effects for people proximate to the users.
People stay awake for days, become irrational and violent. Prolonged use can trigger psychotic episodes.
There needs to be a balance between taking into account the safety and freedom of users and the safety and freedom of wider society.
Agreed. I don't think that would necessarily change for most people under the new setup.
On the other hand, if you were the kind of person who had a specific interest in any of those things, I think it is very likely that your friend group would enable you to get them pretty easily. (ie you'd probably have some friends for that purpose)
I really hope this leads to more research on the effect of psychedelics on treatment-resistant depression. People with depression suffer unimaginable anguish every day - we owe it to them to give them the best treatment options possible.
Oregon also legalized research into psychedelics, but that was a separate measure. I think it will take longer to get off the ground, because a committee needs to be established to figure out how to conduct the research.
The federal-state dynamic is certainly interesting. The federal government doesn't have the resources to enforce all the laws they have on the books and rely on states to enact similar laws to enforce most of them. I wonder if they will ever increase enforcement or if this state-level defiance/contradictions will continue to grow and spread to other states. I think there has been some talk of similar movements for gun rights.
There is significant research happening in this space, though most clinical trials seem to be happening outside the US. Canada is taking major steps towards psychedelics as treatment for depression/MDD, palliative/end-of-life care, PTSD, anxiety, etc.
Slightly hard to believe in data these days ... I went to uni in portugal and it was rare to find a student that didn't use weed. I guess this is why it was so easy to legalise it.
Well that 10% is highly unlikely to be evenly distributed amoungst the population. The percentage of those that smoke weed from a sample of university students is likely to be higher than the same sample taken from the age groups of 60yr old and above. You can make statistics say whatever you want, pretty sure I could get a pretty high percentage of weed usage if i limit my sample size to Bob Marley and Snoop Dogg.
You don't think it's probable that a) university years (18-22) are likely the peak point for consumption of all drugs (as they are where I live) and b) There's a substantial availability bias in which people you know who (you knew) were cannabis users vs the intersection of people you didn't know and people who didn't use cannabis without making a big deal out of it?
> I went to uni in portugal and it was rare to find a student that didn't use weed
On the other hand, this is also subjective and anecdotal? I'm not doubting that data can have errors, but I'm having hard time criticizing data because it's not what someone "expects" it to be.
I had a stopover in Amsterdam and ended up sharing drinks with a Norwegian who was there to party with friends after graduating from a prestigious school in Bergen.
I was actually taken aback at how negative his views on weed were. He made it sound like successful people in Norway won't touch the stuff. In contrast, I can't think of anyone in in my circle who would have shared his views.
It was a reminder of how we all live in our own bubbles.
I went to college in the US, in a state that has pretty heavy-handed drug penalties, and my experience doesn't sound much different from yours.
As another comment mentioned, using college-aged kids as a representative sample for the entire population is inherently flawed, especially when it comes to things like drug use.
Of interest, this is mostly a non-story in Oregon after it has passed. Our largest newspaper isn't even running a story on it: https://www.oregonlive.com/
Life continues as normal, just with fewer people in prison. As it should be.
The real story is the fact that mainstream media is ignoring it. The silence is deafening and trumpets their allegiance to big pharma and the criminal injustice complex.
Edit: I live in Oregon and voted for this. So yay, we're moving in the right direction.
I would consider these outlets more or less mainstream. I think the 'real story' in this case is not a conspiracy of big pharma and the prison-industrial complex, but the slow change of attitudes and policy in the US. Occam's razor.
"but the slow change of attitudes and policy in the US" as shepherded by the mainstream media. Yes, we disagree as to the complicity of the media and criminal justice system. I believe that they sold their souls for a paycheck a long time ago. We all have our price but I hope I would get a more than that in the bargain.
This amazing Ted talk [1] on the potential for ketamine as a miracle anti-depressant presents at least one reason; namely, that they don't own the patents to the drugs and therefore can't monopolize their production. Instead, iterative waves of SSRIs are pushed to the public, as Big Pharma stands to profit more from SSRIs they hold the patent to, even if they're arguably much less effective and more harmful.
> Today, Oregon became the first state in the United States to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs and greatly increase access to treatment, recovery, harm reduction and other services.
There are other states where drug possession is only a misdemeanor, e.g.:
I am strongly in support of this and have been for a long time. But having seen how things are playing out in Seattle has definitely given me more nuance to my support for this.
The major one is that decriminalizing drugs cannot mean decriminalizing crime(theft) done to support addiction. Seattle has moved in this direction which has thrown its legal system into utter chaos as it has pretty much legalized petty crime for a certain class of people.
Being compassionate does not mean letting people do whatever they want. That being said, not treating people as criminals for putting substances into their own bodies is a great step and I hope other cities follow suit.
AFAIK, nothing. Unless the governor does some kind of sweeping commutation, every case that has already been adjudicated is not automatically affected by this law. Admittedly, I only skimmed the text before voting yes. I imagine it could be used as an argument if the convict can get their case before a judge on appeal.
Say what you will about your opinion of what the results of this will be, it does create an experiment for us to learn with. I think one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough, so when ones like this pop up naturally, it'll give us great data.
> one of the great tragedies of politics is that we do not experiment enough
I kind of agree, but we do have 50 states, each running their own experiments. Massachusetts has right to repair. Nevada has legalized gambling. Some states have stronger employee freedom, some stronger employer freedom. Lots of different educational experiments. Helmet laws, concealed carry, state income tax, no state income tax. Can you pump your own gas?
Oh stop it, that's not nice. We are slowly, slowly increasing the ability for people to pump their own gas. Right about the time nobody needs to pump gas any more, we will fully legalize it.
We also have no sales tax, and I consider that a pretty big plus.
No worries, I was only mock-offended. We are used to being taunted about the self-service gas law, and everyone I know who lives here would like to see it changed.
I'm curious how will it be different from the experiment that's been going on in Seattle for the last few years? Has hard drug use decreased there? Are there fewer needles on the streets? Fewer people visible in public that are obviously under the influence? Has drug-related crime gone down? Are there more people housed who were previously not housed due to their addiction?
I think the real solution here is to better empower potential parents to have more freedom to make the choice of whether to become parents or not. If someone doesn't want to become a parent then I think it's a good idea to remove any obstacles between them and avoiding being a parent.
Too often that choice is forced on folks and the major impact that has on your life can leave people resentful and angry which just isn't a good place to start being a parent from.
The experiment doesn't have to be on people, it can be on budgets and resources. Tracking whether or not or how many people get help vs punished might be a place to start
Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment.
No one is denying these drugs are harmful, yet Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs".
Seeing what is happening with the Marijuana lobbies coming in and putting in billions in lobbying should scare everybody. We have big tobacco to look at for where this leads.
The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives.
Unless we as a society take a stand on some of these issues, we will be in deep trouble in a few years.
The way I think of it is, people will do drugs whether or not they’re legal. The current system is to throw drug users in jail, which has been proven to cost a lot of money and not do anything to rehabilitate the drug user. They need treatment, not jail time. This bill has greatly expanded access to treatment programs, which will help much more than incarceration ever could.
Well, I mean it's pretty hard to stay using if you're in jail. Yes some contraband does leak in but it's far less available than on the street. So a stretch in jail will very likely have you sober whether you like it or not. It's all the other negative attributes and consequences of prison that are the problem.
Your first sentence isn't necessarily true. Speaking from 1st and 2nd hand experience, there are people who would have experimented with harder drugs if they were easy to obtain.
> Oregon is basically saying "go ahead, it's fine, use these drugs".
Not at all. Oregon is saying they are going to stop using police resources to punish people for self-destructive behavior. Most drug users are struggling to begin with. Adding prison time for something which is not hurting others is cruel.
> The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives.
As opposed to ruining people's lives for a behavior which isn't inherently harmful to others.
The idealist in me wants to agree, but drug use does often hurt others by way of crime, social disfunction and destroying family relationships/unity (which is a hurt that can affect a subsequent generation at least).
Not always, but often.
The self-contained, highly functional, occasional heroin user is real but there are plenty that do not live up to the expectation of being responsible drug users.
Prison works as a stand in for involuntary rehab, and a very poor one. But While thinking Oregon is over correcting, I will watch from afar with an open mind to see the outcome.
The state can still crack down on dealers and supply chains. They can also prosecute for related crimes.
We've had this weird state for a long time where it is legal to own and abuse anti-depressants and opioids, but you can go to prison for a long time for owning small quantities of far less destructive/ addictive drugs like LSD.
Drug use is very harmful to society, and people who deny that just fall into the opposite end of the reality-denial spectrum opposed to those who deny that mass incarceration is harmful. Aside from all of the antisocial behaviour associated with drug use, having a large group of people who are a drain on society’s resources is certainly a harm to society as a whole. Which may sound callous, but it’s a very real consequence of large scale drug dependency.
I still think this is likely a good law though, because the justice systems current approach to drug crimes creates such a tremendous harm to society, there has to be some rather obvious benefits to curtailing that. If you look at how relatively minor drug convictions can affect people’s lives, it’s beyond any measure of proportionality. It’s just a harm easier to ignore because it mostly affects societal out-groups.
He argues (convincingly) that all drugs should be decriminalized. Putting someone in jail is the most extreme thing that our society does, and needs a serious justification. Every individual being put in jail deserves an answer, and no satisfactory answer can be given for putting someone in jail for a nonviolent drug use (or possession).
>The next obvious step is to legalize all drugs, and let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives.
Nah, the next obvious step is to legalize them and have pure supplies of known purity and dosage distributed by the government at near-cost + tax to exclusively fund social programs and rehab. There's no need to bring profit into it.
Prohibition doesn't work. We've seen it time and time again. Let's be adults about the fact that addicts have, do, and will exist in our societies and take steps the minimize the harms to both them and society at large from their existence.
I'd love to no end if there is a major emphasis on the "rehab" part so the incentives AND disincentives are aligned. Less money flowing? Less need for remediation. More money flowing? More need for remediation. More money than we know how to spend efficiently? Spend it on neglected public infrastructure fixes.
Personally, I worry when "sin tax" money is used to fuel unrelated social programs. The incentives are now inverted. If drug usage goes down and the money flow decreases we're jeopardizing the foundation of other important things. Maybe its better to take the money when/where you can get it and deal with the problem down the road? I dunno.
Many drug addicts don't actually want to be drug addicts; they started off as drug users and then lost control.
Consider if alcohol was free; would you expect alcoholics to still want to enter rehab? I think the answer is quite obviously yes. I think it's a common error of reasoning to think that illegal drugs are very different to alcohol.
There's a huge gulf between saying "X is fine to eat" and "we will put you in jail for owning X". Drinking bleach is a horrible idea, but is completely legal, and nobody wants to put bleach owners in jail.
It has been prohibition that has caused most of the harm.
People have problems. Often people who have problems get lost, in madness, in violence, in drugs. Stop blaming madness, violence and drugs.
The people who have problems need help from their community, quite often. It seems (from the outside) that in the USA community is being deprecated.
Most people who use drugs have fun. They do not come to any harm, so long as they do not get busted by police, or beaten by the crooks that sell the drugs.
Time to get the law out of it. Time to start being kind to each other. People with problems do not need to be punished, usually that does not help.
Legalising drugs will lead, probably, to better drugs. Powdered injectable heroin came about because it is the best way to market such a illegal product. In the nineteenth century opium was mostly used in tinctures.
In South America cocaine was traditionally used completely differently chewed with lime (?)
Prohibition has been a catastrophe for the victims and good on you Oregon for looking for a way out.
> let these lobbies profit off the back of addicts and their families and their ruined lives
This already happens and has been the case for a long time. People get addicted to drugs regardless of their legality. The way to address addiction is through proper support programs and good healthcare for the people that suffer from it.
Unless administered by the government drug use, in the common parlance, isn't government experimentation of peoples' lives. People are experimenting with their own lives when taking drugs/narcotics.
The reasons to decriminalize drugs, or not, from a government perspective is policy that can be typically measured as cold numbers. Such numbers can include:
* cost of drug treatment / rehabilitation
* cost of lost/missing work
* decreases in numbers of incarceration
* changes in traffic fatalities
* changes in rates/frequencies of drug consumption
Then there are second and third order effects are large policy changes that aren't immediately clear such as related petty crime, homelessness, changes in education attainment, changes to medical insurance expenses and so forth. More complicated than that are social changes that everybody wants to guess at, but are really a wild card.
Portugal has had great results with drug decriminalization, primarily that demand dramatically tanked. It isn't clear similar results will be achieved in the US due to cultural differences, but I applaud Oregon for being a test experiment that other states can learn from.
Please note that I have not stated any personal opinion for/against drug policy changes.
I think it's very juvenile to equate legality with encouragement.
[edit below]
> Experimenting with people's lives is not a responsible way to experiment.
I find it to be much better than the alternative where we make a choice with no experimental data, and instead of a small test small test sample being impacted by the decision, we have an entire country impacted by it. I really don't understand the hesitancy among some HN participates to experimentation in political decisions. In theory, people here all have jobs where the products and changes they ship are thoroughly tested and justified with experimentation. Medicine experiments with peoples lives all the time. To me, it's no different with laws. If we want good ones, don't just dive all-in based on some feel-goody sentiments: justify it with data.
Meanwhile, there are reasonable arguments that to at-risk individuals (the youth in particular) making things like this illegal is a near-certain way to draw their attention to it and make it even more exciting.
It's not a perfect comparison, but there was an interview given by Alice Cooper about city officials in London trying to prevent him from doing a concert there back in his earlier days. The amount of publicity and attention it got him only helped make him more of a success, and he subsequently sent nice flowers and cigars to two notable detractors involved to say thanks.
If your concern for the legalization of drugs is businesses exploiting people, maybe the focus should be on preventing businesses from exploiting people and not limiting people's autonomy to make decisions about their own lives?
Everything you’ve said about marijuana applies to the alcohol industry. I’m not sure if you’re suggesting marijuana should continue to be outlawed, but if that’s what you believe, do you also believe we should outlaw alcohol?
This is not experimenting, other countries have done it before with positive results. Criminal punishment for drug posession/use is only making matters worse for those involved with "street drugs".
Who are you to legislate what people can and cannot do with their bodies? Regardless of the harms, I am glad we are moving towards personal autonomy, and not the nanny state that every country's people has had to endure for over a century.
The destruction of so many lives... For absolutely zero gain. The initial facial motivations for these laws in the first place is all you need to figure out that they should never have been put in place.
And for the millions of people whose lives were destroyed by this unjust criminalization? They will get zero compensation. Isn't the world fantastic?
the problem is we aren't going all the way, and removing societal support from those who use their personal autonomy for that kind of self abuse. The thing is, you want the nanny state to take care of drug users instead of jailing them; this is because drug use still destroys lives anyways.
People are going to use drugs regardless of legality. There has been great harm to individuals from ingesting substances of questionable purity. Legalizing cannabis has allowed adults that choose to consume get consistent quality and avoid sketchy circumstances when purchasing.
As for society as a whole it costs less to help people that abuse drugs than it does to imprison all drug users. We should not punish adults for what they choose to put in their bodies on their own time.
It would probably be helpful to define abuse of drugs as not being able to function in society as a result of use. The clinical definition of using more than the prescribed dose isn't very helpful. Depending on the drug a higher dose can be desirable for different reasons.
If somebody wants to check out of society I don't want to stop them. That is their choice. But if they are trying to participate in society and struggling with drug abuse we should try to help them.
Some, not all. You can see escapist users with nearly all drugs that provide it. I have encountered users that are consuming because they dont want to feel anything at least for a little while, to "check out". But most users of a variety of drugs are doing it for entertainment or experience, to enjoy living.
> Unless we as a society take a stand on some of these issues, we will be in deep trouble in a few years.
You say that like there isn't a mental health epidemic already going on right now that's being ignored. Solve that and we're 99.9% of the solving your doomsday scenario...
Everything is harmful when used incorrectly, but useful when used correctly. I for one think these drugs are not inherently harmful, everything has a use. Why should doctors get to be a gatekeeper of my health if I choose to self medicate?
Not only are they not inherently harmful, humans have a many millennia long history of consuming substances to alter perception. I argue that drug use is part of who we are.
Agreed, I think it's important to disrupt your normal thought process sometimes to get a new perspective that's still close to your heart, and I think there are several drugs that are good for that with little side effects when used responsibly. I think it's only in the past century that most drugs have been seen as evil, previously they were well used often for medicinal or religious or philosophical reasons.
Every state in the United States is its own little experiment in democracy, and every law passed therein experiments with someone's life, somehow. That's not a reasonable barrier to change.
This post being downvoted into oblivion is what irks me about the hacker news community. It’s not enough to disagree, you have to silence the dissenter by graying out their comments. That’s real democratic
Yea I agree with you. I heavily disagree with the commenter's opinion but I will never down vote on this site, simply because it suppresses a person's comment and that's not what I want.
Although the app that I use (Harmonic) shows all comments the same, which is nice :)
I wasn't a participant, but ... it definitely hurts that, like, I haven't the faintest friggin clue how HN's whole voting system works - in fact I'm not even sure where the downvote button is. There's a minus [-] next to them, but that seems to toggle viewing the subthread on and off. "Surely that's not the downvote button."
I just assume I don't have access until I have some sort of hidden karma value that's high enough.
A few tooltips would work wonders, and I believe can still be done with the nice, cleanly-simple html style they've gone for.
It comes with a certain level of karma. One must conclude that those with the most karma are the most sensitive to opposing opinions. I’m a bit jaded by the intolerance of the “community” (read echo chamber).
The not-homeless, not-drug-addict rest-of-society is already well on its way with its response...gated communities. No homeless, no open drug use...all protected by private property laws and private security. Get ready for more of them. It doesn't matter what laws you will pass, you don't get past the front gate unless your card scans.
In the end, the only people who will be forced to look at open drug use and homelessness will be people who can't afford to buy a unit in a SafeStreets(tm) community (YC Winter 25!).
edit since HN is rate-limiting me: my point is, you aren't going to be happy with the response everyone-else has to social-engineering legislation they don't agree with. If you don't want more inequality and social divisions, stop giving people a reason to build a moat.
The petty crimes fueled by drug use don't go away if you decriminalize it. We keep throwing money at homelessness but it doesn't seem to work at all because a lot of the problem homeless really need to be involuntarily committed for long term treatment of mental illness or addiction. Not many people want to go down that route, because we still don't really trust or are comfortable with that.
People are going to compensate the only way they can. You aren't going to chide them for locking their doors when policies make it easier for people to rob others.
Decriminalizing possession doesn't stop the need for people to steal to afford drugs, though. It also means people who do them will only interface with the criminal justice system when they commit these kinds of support crimes.
They won't get scooped up for a lesser offense, yes. But if anything, it means when they do get scooped up it will be for a worse one, and it will happen.
I'm having a hard time seeing, though, that it will really change the number of drug users substantially. So the ones who were going to resort to burglary still will, and we will catch them and put them into the criminal justice system. But the users who manage to be otherwise gainfully employed (or at least self-sufficient enough without crime), we can forget about.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. For a start you're conflating drug use, open drug use and drug addiction. Homelessness obviously has some correlation with some types of drug use but there's a lot of non-homeless, non-addicted drug users. And you haven't touched on hard vs soft, addictive vs non-addictive drug use.
I'm not disagreeing because I'm genuinely not sure what point you're making?
Gated communities are quite rare in Oregon. Sure, they exist, but they are very much the exception. Even in areas with multi-million dollar homes (this ain't California, remember ;-)), the roads are usually public (or private but ungated). I can't see simple drug decriminalization changing that here, and I haven't seen anything to suggest a desire to head that way.
Looks like you're getting downvoted for raising a valid point. Further evidence of the reddit crowd infecting HN with their downvotes of anything that raises an uncomfortable debate.
I'm proud of Oregon for trying this, but I worry that having one state go it alone will result in problems resulting from unequal strain on Oregon's social safety nets. Many drug users are productive members of society, but many are not. Hopefully this does not cause a homeless migration to Oregon.
I welcome anyone who is suffering from addiction to move to Oregon. I hope that as a society we can help them overcome their addiction instead of treating them as a criminals and perpetuating the cycle. It's a suffering human and I don't care what state they live in. I hope other states will move to enact similar policies. We are in this together.
I truly believe that legalizing drugs, taxing them, and offering treatment and rehabilitation is the way to go.
I think there’s a group of people that will view Oregon as a promising hospital and a another group that will view it as Disneyland. These reforms will welcome both.
"a group of people that will view Oregon as a promising hospital"
I don't follow you on this. Do you mean people will think that Oregon has good health care and will make a move based on that?
"another group that will view it as Disneyland"
I mean, yeah... It's going to be easier to get substances in Oregon than it will be in other states. I would like to see a study on this but I couldn't imagine a significant amount of people who are suffering from addition is going to make the move to Oregon because of this. Do you know someone who has been or is dealing with addiction? I'm not saying that in a condescending way.
Hospital - people will move there for a perceived openness to alternative drug therapy (however you want to interpret that), perceived safety nets including addiction treatment advantages.
Suffering from addiction - friend, I came of age in the nineties, and had friends hooked on everything you can imagine back then (and did my share). I’ve had friends die from and survive overdoses. I’ve done CPR on a man dying from an OD in a public restroom within the last three years (who lived, incidentally). The last close friend that died from an overdose was only about five years ago - a highly functional businesswoman. I’ll tell you this, a lot of people suffering from addiction don’t know or care that they have an addiction. Not every drug user thinks themselves a victim - in fact those that do, IME, are the exception, not the rule, but I’m sure that varies with time and place. Will those people that do move to Oregon? Probably not, but I’ve known a lot of personalities that would travel there for the fun of it, and wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few die there too.
I perceive by your comments that you feel very earnestly about the upside in this policy. I have no dog in the fight, and respect your hopefulness.
Undoubtedly there will be people that do this. I used to hang out with a group that would have considered Oregon a Mecca if such a law had passed. I’m sure that subculture still exists. Maybe Oregon will be the scapegoat for the country. Maybe our labs of democracy should specialize in things - a state for gambling and gambling addiction recovery; a state for drug use and drug use recovery, etc.
As a libertarian leaning person, I agree with this. However, I still think it will have a lot of negative consequences that people will be eager to sweep under the rug. Even if the net effect is positive, we still need to be honest about any negative results that we may see from this.
I think the key takeaway from other countries that have implemented this is to treat addiction clinically, not criminally. This makes a lot of sense really, given the effects on the body. Ethical sourcing of drugs is another issue, and should be looked at through a legal lens.
Yes, to me this experiment hinges on following through on the treatment side. I hope to see some ongoing reporting on whether the funding that used to be spent on police enforcement, prosecution, and punishment of drug possession is actually diverted to treatment. If counties instead try to "save taxpayer money" on this I think it will end badly.
That's become the status-quo with all policy changes these days though. e.g. it's not enough to say that "The Green New Deal" is poor policy, you have to say "Global Warming is a Hoax"
Drug trafficking is still a crime.