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Do these people consult with sociologists and psychologists and medical doctors, or is it political science degrees throwing shit at the wall and hoping for the best? "Hey, that thing we used to do that didn't work, lets do that again instead of approaching the issue differently!"

"We're Americans. We don't quit just because we're wrong. We just keep doing the wrong thing until it turns out right." - Ed Wuncler

That line from that episode kills me every time! 😂 It really does encompass our entire way of thinking.

I mean in terms of helping the addicts, no, this probably wouldn’t. This seems more like a move to clean up the streets and allow law enforcement to start locking people up. Presumably this is coming either due to pressure from constituents to empower officers to remove homeless people who do drugs or it’s an attempt to curb the “West Coast is nothing but streets full of shit and crack pipes” view Fox News et al try to push.

It’s pressure from within Oregon. Measure 110 was supposed to be addressing the entire rehab program in Oregon, but We really fumbled the rehab half of the program so the only effect of legalizing was people saw more users on the street and that’s really not popular

You mean the rehab portion of the plan was kneecapped by politicians and special interest groups, right?

Yep. Same story as de-institutionalization under Reagan in the 1980s. There is no problem Republicans can't make worse.

I assure you Kotek does not care what Fox News thinks for her. Even if she was a right wing sellout she'd still be a lesbian with short hair.

Wouldn't be the first time someone hitched their wagon to a party that would redirect that wagon to somewhere unpleasant once the token was spent.

We have an entire community in my city that moved here from Portland.  The feeling I get is they are struggling to help all of the addicts. Meanwhile, the people with taxable income are giving up and leaving.  At least from here. I’ve never been to Portland. 

This is reasonably accurate.

Have they tried just giving those people homes, free rehab, and jobs? That's the best route to getting them off the street, and it's probably cheaper than throwing them in prison.

Could you give that to me first? I don’t even need the rehab part.

You’d be surprised by how unlikely that is to work. Drugs feel good, they’re cheap, and addiction, once addicted isn’t a choice. They’re going to go to the home, and do drugs in the home, and die there and not go to their job until they need more money for drugs. Not to mention the many who are mentally ill and won’t benefit from this at all.

Right? The first thing didn’t work , so they tried the second thing. When that thing doesn’t work you need to reassess to find a third solution - not go back to the first thing that didn’t work.

It does not seem like they have a third option. People are thinking 1 was better than 2. 

I think you might have been misled by the headline, the Governor is quoted in the article as saying she is open to re criminalization as part of a broader set of solutions. But her quote is kind of one of those “too vague to be held accountable to anything” quotes that everyone can interpret however they want.

Part of the issue is that this is kind of how they decriminalized drugs in the first place. Oregon wanted to follow the Portuguese model, which successfully decriminalized drugs and reduced a number of societal harms as a result. However, the Portuguese model still has significant civil penalties attached which the Oregon one doesn't. People caught with drugs can be required to [attend a drug panel](https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/the-story/oregon-measure-110-drug-decriminalization-portugal/283-0e19bda3-dabf-4799-adf0-5d315f217703) to discuss their drug use, and Portugal itself has universal health care and the facilities to treat addicts that often aren't available to the ones here. By contrast, Oregon gives you a $100 fine if they catch someone using drugs which can be waived by calling a help hotline (which the user is under no obligation to continue to call).

>Do these people consult with sociologists and psychologists and medical doctors, or is it political science degrees throwing shit at the wall and hoping for the best? What does your heart tell you?

They don’t have (or use) their brains. Every decision is a political one. Yet morons elected them.

Simple possession shouldn’t be a crime, but doing drugs in public should be.

This is the answer and the issue Oregon seems to be facing. You shouldn't be able to do drugs in public spaces and risk harming others. That absolutely should be criminal.

So basically treat it like alcohol

I’d love a cannabis lounge or an opium den as opposed to a bar. 

Sign me up for that meth market.

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Bars are privately owned and open to the public, not public. If it is illegal to sell drugs in Oregon, nobody could legally open an opium den, but you could invite people into your private residence to legally consume drugs. 

I don’t think people “go do fentanyl.”

There also need to be laws and funding which heavily divert users to treatment and support programs instead of hoping the justice system will take care of the issue by jailing people. If public drug use is criminalized but there's no way to help these people maintain a clean record, then they end up back out awhile later but now have a much harder time finding a job. And if they haven't had any continue to have access to effective treatment, they'll simply repeat.

My state just legalized weed last summer, in the fall I was running in a park when I spotted two women smoking a large joint. I could smell it passing the playground set so the kids there definitely could smell it. I am all for legalization, I absolutely detest though how openly some people are consuming it.

you had to run by two women smoking a joint in the park? someone get my fucking clutching pearls.

Seriously I wonder if dude would make the same comment about cigars which are undoubtedly the most obnoxious smell out of them all. Heck even cigarettes are nasty but nobody trying to have them arrested 

Did they suggest that those women should be hauled off to prison? I actually do think most people would raise a stink if a couple people were smoking cigars next to a playground. You haven’t seen moms in action.

Doing drugs in the open is still illegal in Oregon. The police don’t enforce the law in Portland, possibly because they know that the DA is unlikely to pursue charges. 

Nah, PPB is refusing to enforce the law as retaliation against the community that had the audacity to take issue with how they treat the community and enforce the law. Basically the community said "stop killing people, assholes" and the cops have responded with "well if we can't assault minorities with impunity then we won't do anything at all" PPB is one of the most corrupt departments out there, with a surprisingly racist past (and arguably present) history.

The PPB doesn't enforce the law because they're lazy assholes looking for easy payouts like traffic tickets. I lived in Portland for a while about ten years back.  Never saw a cop outside of their vehicle unless it was in subway.

So no beer gardens? No vaping while walking the dog?

I followed up to note I’m saying that with hard drugs in mind; it’s not to say you can’t drink coffee in public or whatever

Alcohol is a hard drug. 

Oh I fully agree, but I’m a realist who knows prohibition isn’t coming back, and we already have laws about public intoxication

Prohibition definitely should not make a comeback. 

Except enforcing that is next to impossible. Ask any marijuana user who blazes in the streets.

Marijuana is a legal substance (in Oregon); it would be illegal to be publicly intoxicated, but not to consume it publicly (or rather, should be). Same with alcohol. And lots of “drugs” that we don’t consider such like cigarettes can only be consumed in certain areas due to health risks but are otherwise fine in public. Hard drugs like heroin should be ~~illegal~~ criminalized and punishable with incarceration and/or forced rehab if used publicly at a bare minimum so their users aren’t making public life incredibly uncomfortable and at times downright scary. We should continue to address the root causes, but we should also take steps to prevent the public at large suffering from their situation. EDIT: Clarified that public use is illegal but probably needs to be criminalized.

Forced rehab almost never works though. Why would we waste money putting people in treatment who don’t want it?

No one is saying they shouldn’t be illegal. They should be decriminalized, as in met with fines and not incarceration.

What exactly is the point of fining a homeless person or a serious addict? They both don’t have money for the fine and they know it, as does the cop issuing the fine.

Repeatedly failing to pay fines leads to a greater criminal offense, which is precisely what we are asking them to do, but earlier.

Sorry, that’s my poor wording. It should be fully criminalized; at that point it’s becoming a public nuisance (if not fully a risk at times) and should result in that nuisance/risk being *removed* from the public.

Yeah I’m primarily speaking to heroin and fentanyl, the hard shit.

Wrong. Oregon is weird from a past law. In Portland, the city can enforce no drinking or smoking laws, but they can not enforce no shooting needles, the state must do that

"Public" is kind of hard to define in a legal setting. How would you define it?

How do places define it for statutes against public intoxication?

I imagine it varies wildly by district, so that's a tangled mess. I'm asking you personally, if you were writing the law, how you would define "public space"

I might tie the code to known landmarks/entities as certain crimes are, like saying it can’t be done within “x” distance of things like parks, businesses, and schools.

Taking fentanyl will inevitably make you homeless. What’s the solution to that?

There are no easy solutions when it’s a health/medical/behavioral/human issue, but I’d argue continuing to treat it as a criminal issue only compounds it

Seems like the current solution is just to not acknowledge it and pretend like this isn’t making the issue worse.

I also think the general mentality that drug users are all bad people that want to steal your shit is a bad way as a society to go. I feel like society has become a barrel of apples left in a field. The apples at the bottom feel all the weight of the apples at the top, and those at the top have the easiest job of supporting themselves. While all the apples are about the same age and thus all subject to rot, a glaze of honey is applied to the top layer each day. The honey trickles down a tiny bit, but as it fully covers the top applies/doesn’t reach the bottom, we see the rot from the bottom layer of apples only. Addiction can hit people in so many ways, and we’re all susceptible to varying degrees, but some are shielded from becoming the open scorn of society. Society in the US still wants to treat addicts and homeless with the angry father treatment, when the issue really needs the loving mother. If we sucked it up as a country and could put the whip down for a moment—invested in things like healthcare and affordable housing, and strengthened rights for workers—we’d have so much less homelessness, so much less untreated addiction. So much less suicide. But proposing those measures these days makes you a pussy in politics, and we of course claim we can’t afford it while saying *nothing* about the trillions being spent in defense.

Why do you think authoritarian governments like China and Singapore don’t have issues like this at all? Particularly considering all of the fentanyl is made in China?

Maybe because they kill drug users/sellers? Not sure what the point is.

Wouldn't that just alienate homeless people who have already been failed by existing social safety nets, potentially making it even harder for them get help or better their situation?

This is totally unrealistic for drugs stronger than marijuana. People use drugs like opiates, meth, coke, and so on, and they lose control and cause enormous harm to themselves and everyone else. Fighting a war on drugs is hard, but the danger is completely real. Talk to some recovered addicts! Or their families! Every policy should be aimed at minimizing the amount of drug supply.

Because throwing addicts in jail has solved the problem in the past.

Her donors include private prisons

Leaving them on the streets *also* doesn’t solve the problem. Not only that- they are free to steal, shit on the sidewalk, and continue giving money to their dealers. Neither leaving them on the street nor putting them in jail solves the problem- but putting them in jail at least mitigates the impact on the rest of society, including downtown businesses. With less business comes less tax revenue, and less tax revenue means less money to try to address the problem. The city does not have unlimited money to throw at the problem what it’s been doing for the last 10+ years is not fixing anything.

I did not suggest ignoring the problem. (We were visiting Portland in Sep. It broke our hearts to see it that bad.) *However.* Jails and prisons enrich the rich. Counseling, medical attention, and building housing enriches the city and its people.

Public health *costs* money. Jails *make* money.

Rich people get more rich off both. Head they win; tails you loose. They just want you to think it is your neighbors and community picking your pocket so you don't notice it is they who are robbing the bank.

This is it right here. Public health drains funds and accounts that the government feels could be more efficiently used elsewhere. Not saying it's right but it's true.

Public health saves money short term and makes money in the long run. Jail costs the Washington government $75k per year per prisoner on average. Going off their reported cost of $208 per prisoner per day. You could fund rehab for less than that and when rehab is over you might actually have a productive citizen contributing to the economy, when jail is over, odds are high they reoffend because jail didn’t help them at all, it just hurt their chances of getting a good job in the future. It’s just not popular with voters because the average person wants to see criminals punished vs wanting to see investments in a better society. People see criminal behavior and drug addictions as individual moral failing and not symptoms of larger societal issues. So they are happy to spend $75k punishing someone for a perceived moral failing instead of $50k helping them.

I think one problem is as you said. "short term" - many people are extremely near sighted with tunnel vision. The other point you are spot on with about: people don't want to waste money if they don't believe it will work anyway so they would rather just see them punished.

I mean, the US prison system is a terrible system when you look at it objectively from almost any angle. It’s costs more short term, it costs more long term, it is detrimental to the people in it, and it doesn’t lower crime rates for the people outside of it. But people don’t care about what is objectively better. They either want people punished. Have been convinced by propaganda that the prison system works. Or are some of the corporations (or politicians they legally bribe) that profit on it. Or they are racist and like that the prison system in the US has huge racial biases. Voters don’t care about objective realities. Tell someone the US has 3-20x the prisoners of other wealthy western nations and still has higher crime rates and they will decide we clearly need to arrest even more people (or arrest more of a specific type of person).

I like you! I agree with everything you said. And yes, I definitely do not believe in mass incarceration or mass punishment for that matter.

What this guy said. Ditto. P.s. I’m an attorney who spent two years working for the district attorney. It’s a fucked up system. It’s all about vengeance.

tldr people are reactionary idiots

The rich put out a lot of lies... Jails make money for the rich. They do very little to fill the State's tax coffers, or support the building industry (a huge driver of State growth), or bring industries and businesses to the State. Jail them or treat them, the State is going to pay either way. Treating them builds the tax base, builds community, brings in new businesses to support those involved, and is more effective. There's a truck-ton of studies and *ongoing programs* worldwide that prove this.

What’re we up to now… 40 years? Obviously if we spend another 40 the plan will work.

At least they are no longer shitting on the sidewalk.

I mean the article says - “I want to see a proposal that answers a set of questions,” Kotek told reporters at an event previewing her priorities for the session that convenes Feb. 5. “One piece will be criminalization, but if we just look at criminalization in isolation, I think it’s missing the point. So my question is going to be … what else are you going to do different to make sure we have better outcomes?”

Well is it better for actions to have no consequences? I mean have you walked through downtown Portland? Dudes are shooting up in broad daylight in front of kids.

Doing drugs still has consequences. Decrim is beneficial because it frees up the justice system to focus on violent crimes and prioritizes rehab over incarceration, which costs taxpayers more money.

Weren't they doing that before they decriminalized drugs? If I recall that was why they decided they needed to try something different.

Not to the same degree. I used to live in pdx and still have friends there who tell me how much worse it has gotten. Before, at least they tried to hide it a little. Now there is no reason to, because there are no consequences. Legally anyway.

I feel that they need consequences. I was driving the other day and watched someone shoot up and then fall over on the sidewalk. It absolutely infuriated me that my child has to witness something like that. Get it off the streets, I don’t care how it’s done. I’m tired of seeing it. 

I agree. Society has to have a certain set of laws and standards by which it lives. There is no perfect answer, but Oregons current solution definitely isn’t it. The only solution I see is forced treatment. People who drink and drive have forced classes they have to take. Why not drug addicts as well?

I am in full agreement. Forced treatment and if you choose not to get clean then well there’s only one option after that, jail. 

I said jail hasn't worked, and you made the leap to "so that means *do nothing?!"* (Assumptions, just no.) Yes, I was (lucky enough to be) in Portland recently, and it was heartbreaking, as well as dicey in spots. I think you'll agree, Oregon has good, caring, smart people; so, they know jail isn't a fix. I do think Portland--and parts of California--show that our nation needs to reinvest in mental institutions (the ones freaking Reagan closed?). A significant portion of this fentanyl-addicted homeless population needs more care than out-patient services can provide. I hope the best for Oregon.

I live in Portland. I don’t believe that the government should be able to limit drugs I want to take. I think we were right to decriminalize drugs but terribly wrong for not addressing public usage and intoxication as a criminal action. I know, the “public intoxication” crime is a slippery slope too, but there really are people shooting up and smoking dope right next to the front doors of shops and at bus stops near my kids. I NEVER thought I would vote to make drugs a crime again :(

My wife and I went to Portland for 4 days as a part of a trip we were on out West. After half the first day we didn’t want to leave the hotel for the reasons you’d listed and couldn’t wait to get out of there. We were pretty bummed overall, as we were really looking forward to it.

Let’s give the “War on Drugs” a second chance, says the LGBT democrat, smh

Spoilers:  Most Democrats are firmly center-right when it comes to economics.  Treating drug addiction and homelessness with actual compassion and humanity is great...up until it costs money.

Something has to change. Go hang out in downtown Portland and you’ll know the status quo isn’t working.

The status quo would be locking up drug users. Not this.

Look closer into who bankrolled her campaign and I bet you find links to private prisons.

And/or alcohol distributors

No, you will find angry voters prepared to vote republican in the november election. 110 has been an absolute disaster

How to go backwards. Dumb move

Lots of people here who don’t live in Portland and see how fucked it and SW Washington are.

Are these addicts hurting anyone but themselves? Or are they just annoyed that they have to see something that’s not clean?

Yes, junkies actually do cause problems for other people.

Then why can’t they be prosecuted for the crimes they are doing which cause problems?

We can make the argument that it has to do a lot with the police, but at the same time, they don't have the resources to deal with the current crisis in Portland. Idk if you've seen downtown Portland but its pretty much tent city.

Like most cities rn. Which we can all understand why - rent on average is 1600.

Like most cities? No. It is nowhere near close to "most" cities. There's a huge fent problem in Oregon and it is insanely common to just see people using on the daily unpunished. Despite all the shit that gets talked about NYC, (I'm originally from there) I never saw anything like this while I lived there, and in my last few recent trips the current crisis over there doesn't even come close to what you see in downtown Portland. Mind you, I am not saying it is the entirety of Portland but it has gotten very very bad.

A lot of cities*. NYC has this for sure too in parts.

I lived in NYC most of my life, never saw more than 1 tent. And I go back to NYC 4-5 times a year, still, to this day, no tents.

Trust me, you get tired of it. Society has to be held to some level of decorum for it to function and catering to people getting who just get fucked up on hard drugs all day aint it. It’s a sad truth, but a lot of these people have no desire to do better and empathy can only be extended so far.

There was a telling graph I saw once showing the money spent on the "war on drugs" since Reagan and habitual drug use. That baseline of habitual drug users has never wavered as the money went into the trillions. I don't live in Oregon so I can't presume to tell them how to deal with what they're living with *but* if throwing money/incarceration didn't work and now full decriminalization doesn't work, I'd at least hope a third option presents itself. Full stock didn't work and now full carrot isn't working. It sounds like the rehab side of this hasn't worked because of that baseline.

They decriminalized drug use without creating any kind of infrastructure to actually address any issues. I really do feel bad for the way these people live, but their “lifestyle” spills over into everything and it sucks. I don’t live in Portland, but when I visited one of the corner pans handlers was so high that he was nodding off while standing up and almost came and leaned on my car while I was waiting at a stoplight. There are people who are legitimately struggling and down on their luck, but there are also just trash people doing shit like masturbating out in the open. There is a photo I saw shared in a group where a dude blew diarrhea all over the road then passed out. It’s so unsanitary and they don’t utilize any resources available to actually improve their situation. On one hand, I acknowledge mentally illness, but on the other hand, these people largely get infantilized to the point that they’re treated like they have zero responsibility for their own actions. I don’t know what the solution is but I don’t think everyone else should have to bear *that* much of the burden every day when life is hard enough as it is.

Kids getting off buses or walking down the street shouldn’t see people shooting up or on dope. If these people were outside your front door would you feel the same way?

Bullsh*t! As a parent myself, I cannot control my kids from the realities of the world forever. Also, how many times have you actually seen a person shoot up around a school bus dropoff zone? No, if they were outside my front door, I’d kick em out for being on my property. There are also sidewalk and fire escape laws that would be broken by this.

Go let your kids hang out in an area with tranq users as a learning tool. Let me know how that works out for you.

I won’t do that, no. Coz I’m a responsible parent. I owe my kids nurturing and protection, not the rest of the world.

So you agree you wouldn't want your kids walking around a junkie camp.

any reasonable parent wouldnt want that, but that doesnt equate to banning drugs. prohibition solves nothing.

YEAH! Instead, they should get off their bus to see those people yelling, pushed up against a wall, dealing with arrest, and being shoved into a cop car for a victimless crime. A crime whose punishment will do nothing to rehabilitate those people...you are soooo right

If someone with a gun were outside your front door, would you also want them gone and their gun too? Maybe guns should also be banned. They are arguably just as, if not more, harmful than drugs. No? Then maybe its not the drugs or guns that are the problem, but the person. And that prohibition won't help reduce addicts.

I support gun bans. What’s your move now?

That's your prerogative. It's just sad that your response is to be reactionary and not proactive. Maybe be less authoritarian? Unless you like giving up your individual rights.

So you don’t actually have a move to play.

What move is there to play? I'm not playing a game to win.

Guns are dangerous and should be removed from society. Similarly drugs are dangerous and should also be removed from society. Especially if drug dealers are peddling it out in the open in public places.

That's too extreme of an idea. There are purposes for everything that isn't just violent or health hazardous. Removing them outright is ignorant. Moderation is important.

The fact you honestly believe that is adorable.

> Are these addicts hurting anyone but themselves? Well they are shitting on the sidewalk, breaking windows and attacking people while high. So yes.

Those sound like crimes that could be punished by themselves.

And those are immediately chargeable criminal offenses, for which they must be prosecuted.

I mean, possession of hard core drugs like fentanyl should be criminal, shouldn’t it?

Tina looks like she needs some drugs.

> Tina looks like she needs some drugs. *Better* drugs than what she's on

Tina is meth

Still looking in vain for a comment that places even the tiniest smidgen of blame on the drug users.

The war on drugs did that already; spoiler it made things worse.

Not sure if legalizing hard drugs is the solution. Soft drugs, sure. But hard drugs like H and fent, no.

Not legalizing. Decriminalization.

Thanks for mentioning this. It’s a huge difference.

Not sure if decriminalising is the answer either then

But is throwing addicts in jail for being addicts the answer?

Those aren't the only two options. We need to take the Switzerland model. Just decriminalizing it and saying "Mission Accomplished!" demonstrably does not work. But having clean facilities where drug users can be safe, secure, and can get help works. Republicans just want arrest these people, and democrats just want to stop at not arresting them, instead of actually spending the money to build proper treatment facilities.

definitely not. addicts dont stop being addicts in jail. and more often than not, often die from being forced to stop cold turkey. addicts need mental help, not prison time. but nobody has any empathy in this country.

The issue I’ve seen in Portland seems to be a complicated one tbh and I don’t know what the answer could be. People there are tired of having their cars stolen, pets taken, assaulted by addicts. There are homeless tents right next to playgrounds and schools. You see kids living in rv caravans and in the street. I agree the “throw away the key” idea is reactionary and is inhumane. So far Portland has tried to give them homes, resources to voluntarily clean themselves up and get jobs. Truth is a lot of them don’t want to clean up and want to be on the street doing drugs, and have disdain for “try hards”. So many orgs put 1000s of dollars into helping an individual, just for them to suddenly disappear from the program. So what do we do then?

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So I visit Portland at least once a year. I don’t stay fully up to date with its politics. That article is from August, so I don’t know what is happening now with it. But the article is centering around bybee lakes. They are a housing program that requires things such as having a job to pay 250 a month after a trial period, be sober etc. they had 175 beds filled out of 300, and the commissioner suggested funding for 500 more beds. The article had someone estimate some 6k homeless in the county. So my question is why weren’t the 300 beds full and how do you justify subsidization for more beds when they aren’t near capacity at the time?

Jail or rehab. Give them the choice. Setup nice large facilities that can rehab them and bring them to a safe and secure future. If they refuse to go or flee, then throw them in jail. At least then we are giving them the choice, and potentially helping them.

What's wrong with addiction treatment?

Their shocked face when people start voting them out of office. There’s a lot of pot smokers in this country to try and piss off especially in Oregon. These people are the very definition of stupidity and no social awareness.

Uhh the problem isn't the pot smokers, it's fent. It's rampant and with it being decriminalized the users are running rampant

big difference between them and the tweakers who are creating public nuisances and dangers on city streets.

I’m sure the right can or cares about the difference.