Just over three years since Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 110, elected officials want to repeal key elements, blaming the law for open drug use and soaring overdoses. But it’s their own hands-off approach that isn’t working, advocates say.
I don’t understand how decriminalizing hard drugs is supposed to help. Handing out a fine with a hotline number is laughable. Most addicts aren’t going to seek out help on their own. Didn’t Maine have a law that forced certain users to go through rehab/therapy? They established a bunch of clinics that constantly reached out to their patients and made sure they were getting treatment. But I’m pretty sure it didn’t start with decriminalization.
it’s because treating the problem of drugs like a personal moral failing offers nothing but punishment, without addressing the root cause of people with addiction. Instead of putting people in prison for drugs, (in which they still have access to drugs) we would rather help them address the underlying cause of hardship that causes them to want to “check out” so badly. People in poverty, with untreated illness, little to no support system, without access to a safe place to live, are going to want to check out via drug use. Us punishing them isn’t going to do anything but give them another reason to shoot up.
work programs, housing programs, food programs, and healthcare is what they truly need to stop. Not us spending the same amount of money it would take to help them, but on the prison industrial complex.
Yeah, I agree putting people in prison won’t solve addiction but that’s why I mentioned what I somewhat remember Maine doing. It’s about having a path towards rehabilitation (not in prison). Essentially you temporarily book offenders, then they get a court mandated ruling to go to these clinics to get better while they have consistent checkups. This way they get to stay out of prison while receiving treatment. I guess what I’m saying is you need the law to allow temporary detainment and to enable court rulings of certain treatments that otherwise many offenders would not receive otherwise. The problem I see isn’t with these situations it’s that oftentimes legislators are too lazy to implement laws that work to implement steps after being detained/fined. It’s lazy to put people in jail and also to simply decriminalize substances. Because when substances are decriminalized you have no legal leg to stand on when you need to force treatment and to your point being sent to prison doesn’t help either.
This sounds nice, but addicts don’t just stop being addicts. Losing a home may have resulted in someone getting addicted to heroin, but giving them a home won’t stop the addiction. Prison isn’t the place to treat addiction either though.
Related to my other post, what I’m trying to say is that these programs are all important and I agree that these parts are often overlooked in legislation. My argument though is that these programs by themselves also won’t fix these issues. You sometimes need to court mandate these people to use these services. Maybe after being detained for illegal use they are sent to a rehab center for a certain amount of time, then they are released from rehab but need to checkin at a clinic at certain intervals to ensure they’re on their meds and so on. There needs to be a legal system in place to ensure these people get the care they need because many don’t bother or can’t get the care on their own.
It helps because if they know they aren’t going to be imprisoned for it, they’re more likely to seek help in situations that involve drugs. Getting people to quit drugs requires trust and social outreach. Decriminalization is about making sure that drug users aren’t further stigmatized and abused, and thus more able to accept support.
I don’t think that this should be a legalization issue. To your point, prison is not the solution. I think its about what you do after a user is detained temporarily. Instead of prison people need to be sent to rehab centers.
You need a legal backing to get these people help. Decriminalization means there’s no legal backing to provide services to these people, oftentimes they don’t want help. Like the article mentioned, no one ever bothers calling the helpline. Why would they? They either don’t want to or cant. With a court order they can be taken care of, usually through tax payer money. Initially this may cost a decent amount of money but could fix the problem over time.
The problem there is a court order is enforced under threat of punishment. One is going to be less likely to seek help if they’re subject to physical or sexual abuse if the mere mention of it could land them in legal trouble. Similarly, folks are less likely to seek help in overdose situations under threat of legal consequences.
Okay, so I have been misinterpreting decriminalization. I looked up some statistics and found this website that was helpful. In a nutshell I agree with decriminalization, however it seems like Oregon may not have implemented the law in a meaningful way, in my opinion. It’s not a comprehensive approach to getting people help and stops at offering a drug screening (which seems like a non-solution) or a fine. May people never get a screening and many never pay the fine, so nothing actually happens. So on other words, Oregon politicians passed a meaningless bill. Portugal seems to have done a better job with this and it’s a shame politicians can’t look to places that work to emulate their laws.
There are plenty of addicts that seek out help without legal compulsion. I work in a treatment center in Portland and we have way more people seeking help than we can accommodate. Housing is the biggest problem, often people wouldn’t need a residential treatment bed if they had adequate housing.
I can get behind that. But also from the article it says that these people often don’t seek out help either. To your point, housing is another part of the problem that these lawmakers failed to address.
Let me try to make this easy for you to understand. Let’s assume the drug user is only doing a harm to themself and not society (as is the case with most drugs) and let’s leave other crimes (such as theft) out of the equation just to focus on drug use itself. Functionally, with no harm done to society, there’s no reason for the drug user to be punished with a crime (hence, decriminalized).
On to rehabilitation! First, who cares? There are some drugs that users will probably do best to be rehabilitated from, substances that can do a lot of harm to the body (e.g., alcohol, cigarettes, krokidyle) or which can be highly addictive where, out of concern for the well-being of the user we would want to try to nudge them towards rehabilitation. Forcing users into rehabilitation shouldn’t happen, as that’s a form of punishment (that isn’t really needed since no crime has been commited) and it’s only likely to waste the state’s money and not do much good for the user.
The problem here is that drug users aren’t going to feel safe interacting with the police or any people the police told them to call. These are people who have been using drugs which were uptil recently illegal, and these people are likely aware that police are under no obligation to tell you the truth. Not a lot of these folks have or can afford legal counsel.
Lots of folks want decriminalization because we don’t see drug use as a criminal act. Criminals are people who commit crime and a crime is something we deem as harmful to other members in society. Decriminalization of drugs could be a gateway to rehab, but most importantly it’s an updating of outdated laws. Full legalization is most appropriate but we’re a ways away from that and decriminalization is the first step (e.g., look how cannabis laws were enacted).
No need to be passive aggressive. I think a lot of people care. If you’ve read my other post you’d notice I said I agree with decriminalization but believe Oregon didn’t implement the law in a meaningful way. I don’t know if you’ve lived in an area where there are homeless encampments before but drug use is often a big issue there. LA, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, all places I’ve lived in have this issue. So yes, for you this may be a non issue for you but for communities that live with this problem it is a legitimate issue. What do you mean when youre advocating for full legalization? We might not even be talking about the same thing. I don’t care about weed, all for legalization for that. Under no circumstances should drugs like heroin or meth be legalized. Are you saying you don’t care about people who are at the highest risk for drug abuse and need the most help? That’s ideally the place where rehabilitation will help the most.
Is it the homeless encampments or the drug use that are the main problem for you? Or is it only a problem when they are combined?
Maybe depending on where you live, homeless encampments can be broken up (not making any statements now on whether that is right) without needing to attach drug charges into the situation.
Its foremost the drug issue that’s a problem for me. It hurts people and communities. I bring up homelessness because from what I’ve seen and what studies show, its a concentrated center of abuse. Its where people have the most need for intervention. It’s personal to me because I’ve it ruins communities.
I don’t know if you’ve lived in an area where there are homeless encampments before but drug use is often a big issue there. LA, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, all places I’ve lived in have this issue.
I have. I’ve also given money and things to the homeless, I’ve also stepped over homeless people sleeping in the entranceway of an apartment.
But you’re talking about homelessness, I’m talking about drug use. They are not the same issue, and one doesn’t lead to the other. Homelessness is usually a temporary condition and a lot of these people are just trying to survive. We see this issue in bigger cities because believe it or not some of these homeless people have jobs and can’t really commute very far.
So yes, for you this may be a non issue for you but for communities that live with this problem it is a legitimate issue.
Homelessness, not drug use. Unless you’re not talking about homelessness but instead talking about crime. Again with homelessness and crime, one does not lead to the other. Violating city ordinances isn’t a crime, though it is punishable in other ways.
What do you mean when youre advocating for full legalization?
Full legalization of all drugs. If it’s a drug, it would be legalized. This doesn’t lead to increased drug use - it usually leads to decreased drug use because drugs aren’t taboo and they aren’t hard to get. Full legalization also means that regulated drug manufacturers can begin making and selling these drugs, decreasing the adulterants found in street drugs. This also puts a huge pressure on the drug cartels because now there’s no real need for them if people get their heroin from GSK.
We might not even be talking about the same thing.
Clearly, we are not. I’m trying to remove your biases to get to the meat of your concerns, here. You’re all over the place talking about homelessness and crime and drugs. They aren’t causal relationships.
I don’t care about weed, all for legalization for that. Under no circumstances should drugs like heroin or meth be legalized.
Bro, meth is already legal in a sense, you just need a prescription from a doctor. The same might be true of heroin but I am not sure of that. Meth users are probably folks with ADHD who need access to better meds (Adderall, Ritalin) which are CNS like meth.
The risky part of heroin is that it’s not legal, so street manufacturers need to make the drug and can sometimes alter the potency that a user is used to, causing the user to inject their usual amount but accedently receive an overdose. That, and the concern about sharing dirty needs and getting bateria and viruses directly into the bloodstream. We don’t see this problem with diabetics who inject insulin, because insulin is legal and regulated.
Even making research chemicals legal would be helpful becuase it would allow researchers to study the drugs without fear of prosecution.
Are you saying you don’t care about people who are at the highest risk for drug abuse and need the most help?
I’m saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of that. I DO care about people who are at the highest risk for drug abuse, and I want them to get the most help.
Now, go enter a 3 week program because I don’t agree with the way you’re living your life. You have to do it, it’s for your own health! Bacon causes cancer, and studies have shown that sugar also not be good for you! If you eat sugar or bacon you are at the highest risk of bad health effects and you need the most help! Please, I implore you!
Not interested in going, because you know what’s best for you? Yeah, that’s how drug users think as well. We’re all human. One person’s “addiction” is another person’s simple pleasure.
That’s ideally the place where rehabilitation will help the most.
That’s just like, your opinion, man. The people who need rehabilitation most and who can benefit from it the most (and where the money is most efficiently spent) are the people WHO KNOW they need help and who WANT the help. Offering a card to someone is all we can do, really. We can only improve upon it by also not charging the person, not stigmatizing the drug use and not putting the person in a position where they feel like they will be punished for seeking help (i.e., being given a fine and a card by a cop who they can’t trust).
Feel free to look at the statistics for drug use and homelessness here.
Again you’re correlating something that doesn’t have a causal relationship. Please stay on topic. Also, you should look into the concept of “harm reduction”.
No passive agressiveness here, but you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve had this argument so many times with people and there’s a lots of misinformation out there about drug use and drug users. Rehab is a program sold by companies at the end of the day. The 12 step program is a Christian program that requires you to accept God, for instance. Rehab can do more harm than good in a lot of cases, too.
I bring up homelessness because its relatable to what ive seen personally and can see where rehabilitation can do the most good. To me, they arent too far from each other. It sucks seeing communities struggling with suffering, needles all over the place and what amounts to people looking like zombies in the street. It’s sad and ruins communities. In the link I attached there is a correlation between homelessness and drug use. Without proper treatment and intervention many will OD and their issues will go unresolved. I don’t understand what you mean by casual relationship. There clearly is a correlation from what I’ve read. Do you have any data to prove otherwise?
I bring up homelessness because its relatable to what ive seen personally and can see where rehabilitation can do the most good. To me, they arent too far from each other.
These are your personal biases I’m talking about. If we’re going to take your own personal experience as a scientific study, it’s likely to have issues with selection bias and low sample size. You didn’t meet all the homeless people in these cities, and you were probably limited to seeing only only the homeless people in the areas where you live and / or work.
It sucks seeing communities struggling with suffering, needles all over the place and what amounts to people looking like zombies in the street. It’s sad and ruins communities. In the link I attached there is a correlation between homelessness and drug use. Without proper treatment and intervention many will OD and their issues will go unresolved. I don’t understand what you mean by casual relationship.
Causal, not casual. It refers to causation instead of correlation.
When we look at two sets of data (e.g., homeless population over time and drug use over time) we can lay them over one another on a graph and if the lines somewhat match up, we can say they have a correlation with one another. The problem here is that simply having a correlation does not imply that one of those things caused the other thing to happen, that is, they do not nessecarily have a causal relationship to one another. I can take any two seemingly unrelated things and find they have a causal relationship (e.g., (off top of my head as an example, not saying these actually correlate): number of penguins and the number of mcdonalds in europe over time. To say that “we have more mcdonalds in europe because there are more penguins in the world” wouldn’t make much sense, but then you look on the graph and say “well, there is a correlation” yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything. I assume you are aruging this in good-faith but I’ll just say that bad-faith actors can take any two closely related things and also find correlations, and this trick works on people who don’t understand causation != correlation.
There clearly is a correlation from what I’ve read. Do you have any data to prove otherwise?
There might be, but it doesn’t matter. Unless you can find a causal relationship between the two, we can’t say that one causes the other. At best we can say the numbers correlated with one another. There are many reasons for this - what else correlates? GDP? Unemployment? Mass layoffs? etc… One of those things might be causal, but we won’t know just by looking at how they correlate.
As a reminder, the onus is on you to prove your claims. Correlation isn’t proof, for reasons I mentioned, and I can’t have to prove a negative just to make your lack of proof invalid. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed.
I guess the crux of the issue is I just simply don’t think full legalization of all drugs is a good idea. Hard drugs are bad for the community at large you can take a look at these studies
What are hard drugs vs soft drugs?
Are soft drugs legal and ones that do no harm? Drugs like alcohol which can kill you if you stop cold-turkey? Drugs like cigarettes which are proven to cause lung cancer?
What makes a drug “hard”? When we’re talking about heroin, what is it about pure heroin that makes it “hard”? What about pure cocaine, which they used to put in sodapop? Are pure psychedelics which have no harm on the body “hard” drugs?
I’ll tell you what makes a drug “hard”: it being illegal. Once again with correlation vs causation, these drugs are illegal because they are made illegal by congress not because they are more harmful to the user. Great example of this is cannabis being scheduled as a “hard” drug in there with heroin (the “classic” “hard” drug, from what hear non-drug users saying all the time). These drugs can cause massive harm because they are not pure and because garry down the street making who knows what in his bathtub doesn’t have a legal requirement to try to not kill you. The government doesn’t know garry makes these drugs, and can’t inspect how he makes them to ensure he’s making them pure.
When weed became legal, many laws were focused on making sure that the consumers were getting pure weed, from cannabis plants, harvested and packaged in child-safe containers, with information tracking from seed to sale so that the supply chain can be inspected. This alone has done a lot to make pot healthier than whatever moldy product might be sold at whatever street corner on the underground market. The same goes for all other drugs.
If you have some links to studies I’ll gladly take a look at them that say otherwise.
I’m not going to read that study because it’s offtopic and I can gleam as much as I need to from the url alone. Most americans feel … implies a survey and ok let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and say 100% of americans feel that homelessness causes drug use and drug use causes homelessness and everything. Great! 100% of americans polled can still be wrong on any given topic. I don’t think living next to a homeless person makes you an expert on homelessness in the same way as seeing a needle (or needles) on the street makes you an expert on drug use or econonmic policy.
Is it hard to accept that most americans don’t want to be homeless but are forced to when they are pushed out of their home due to rising rents and lack of money to buy a home? That it’s a temporary enough condition sometimes that they just need a place until they can get back on their feet? That you live as a second class citizen as a homeless person because you can’t get access to things like a bank account due to not having a home address, so you get robbed, or you get raided by police in the night with your belongings left behind or trashed? That after days, weeks, months and years of trying to get back on your feet, maybe due to not being able to afford the medication that you need because you can’t afford COBRA because you lost your job caused you to try to self-medicate with meth just to try to deal with disability that you can’t even begin to ask the government for help for because you don’t have a mailing address.
And then some guy walks in and starts talking about how big of a problem the homeless are. My guy, the homeless aren’t the problem. The homeless are a symptom of a problem.
I think you’re misconstruing what I’m trying to say, however I think at this point the conversation isn’t getting anywhere.
If you don’t want to take a look at any of the links ive given or provide decent studies to prove your point then I don’t think there’s a conversation to be had here. You clearly have your own biases that you don’t want to address. Agree to disagree.
I think you’re misconstruing what I’m trying to say, however I think at this point the conversation isn’t getting anywhere.
I’m not not misconstruing what you’re trying to say and I don’t appreciate the insuation that I am acting in bad-faith (by misconstruing something). If the conversation at this point isn’t getting anywhere, that’s a question you’ve got to first ask yourself, and secondly ask me if there’s anything I can clarify.
Now, can we get back to the topic of decriminalizing / legalizing drugs? I don’t know why you keep talking about homelessness, unless you have nothing to say regarding the decriminalization of drugs. Again, you will need to prove that there’s a causal relationship between the two - something you won’t be able to do, because one doesn’t exist.
If you don’t want to take a look at any of the links ive given or provide decent studies to prove your point then I don’t think there’s a conversation to be had here. You clearly have your own biases that you don’t want to address. Agree to disagree.
The links you have provided are off-topic and while they may back up your own thoughts, that’s fine because your thoughts on this topic are wrong. Facts don’t care about your feelings, and right now, you got no facts to prove your case.
Your first link is a biased resource from a drug rehabilitation facility. They are going to be pro-rehabilitation. This is akin to sending me a brochure and saying that it contains facts. If these are true facts, you wouldn’t need to resort to a link from americanaddictioncenters.org. Just like how you would be right to not view a link that I sent from a drug company about drug facts, or a study funded primarily by drug companies. It’s not that I’m not open to new ideas or challenging my ideas, I truly am and it’s very easy to change my mind on any given topic. But you must come correct with a decent resource.
Your second link was from a reputable source but it was based on a survey on the opinions of people who’s only experience is living within proximity to homelessness. Can you see how that’s a problem just by itself? I mean, I’m assuming that propublican isn’t burying the lede here and would instead come right out and say “x causes y” if they knew it. But that’s not the scope of this study (as we can tell from the title alone). Who cares what these people think when it comes to the subject of if we should decriminalize drugs? They weren’t asked that, they were asked about their feelings about living next to users who were irresponsible with their parapenalia. It’s off topic to this discussion at best and intentional bad-faith arguing on your part at worst. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, though. I assume you are acting in good faith.
It’s also telling if you can only just send the same 2 links back at me, after I’ve told you that they are off-topic. There is so much more data out there. I’m at work right now so I’m not spending a lot of time to respond. I’m not not sending you links to support my argument because they don’t exist. If that’s what you truly want, give me some time and I’ll give you a reading list.
This all comes down to you and your motivations. Want to understand more about how to actually help these people while avoiding paying high taxes on a program which doesn’t work? Let’s keep talking. If on the other hand you only want to try to disprove what I’m saying, well… let’s keep talking but you need to give me some better sources - ones which are at least relevant to what we are discussing.
I don’t understand how decriminalizing hard drugs is supposed to help. Handing out a fine with a hotline number is laughable. Most addicts aren’t going to seek out help on their own. Didn’t Maine have a law that forced certain users to go through rehab/therapy? They established a bunch of clinics that constantly reached out to their patients and made sure they were getting treatment. But I’m pretty sure it didn’t start with decriminalization.
it’s because treating the problem of drugs like a personal moral failing offers nothing but punishment, without addressing the root cause of people with addiction. Instead of putting people in prison for drugs, (in which they still have access to drugs) we would rather help them address the underlying cause of hardship that causes them to want to “check out” so badly. People in poverty, with untreated illness, little to no support system, without access to a safe place to live, are going to want to check out via drug use. Us punishing them isn’t going to do anything but give them another reason to shoot up.
work programs, housing programs, food programs, and healthcare is what they truly need to stop. Not us spending the same amount of money it would take to help them, but on the prison industrial complex.
Yeah, I agree putting people in prison won’t solve addiction but that’s why I mentioned what I somewhat remember Maine doing. It’s about having a path towards rehabilitation (not in prison). Essentially you temporarily book offenders, then they get a court mandated ruling to go to these clinics to get better while they have consistent checkups. This way they get to stay out of prison while receiving treatment. I guess what I’m saying is you need the law to allow temporary detainment and to enable court rulings of certain treatments that otherwise many offenders would not receive otherwise. The problem I see isn’t with these situations it’s that oftentimes legislators are too lazy to implement laws that work to implement steps after being detained/fined. It’s lazy to put people in jail and also to simply decriminalize substances. Because when substances are decriminalized you have no legal leg to stand on when you need to force treatment and to your point being sent to prison doesn’t help either.
This sounds nice, but addicts don’t just stop being addicts. Losing a home may have resulted in someone getting addicted to heroin, but giving them a home won’t stop the addiction. Prison isn’t the place to treat addiction either though.
You have to address the addiction first though.
healthcare includes therapy, mental health, and addiction treatment.
Related to my other post, what I’m trying to say is that these programs are all important and I agree that these parts are often overlooked in legislation. My argument though is that these programs by themselves also won’t fix these issues. You sometimes need to court mandate these people to use these services. Maybe after being detained for illegal use they are sent to a rehab center for a certain amount of time, then they are released from rehab but need to checkin at a clinic at certain intervals to ensure they’re on their meds and so on. There needs to be a legal system in place to ensure these people get the care they need because many don’t bother or can’t get the care on their own.
It helps because if they know they aren’t going to be imprisoned for it, they’re more likely to seek help in situations that involve drugs. Getting people to quit drugs requires trust and social outreach. Decriminalization is about making sure that drug users aren’t further stigmatized and abused, and thus more able to accept support.
I don’t think that this should be a legalization issue. To your point, prison is not the solution. I think its about what you do after a user is detained temporarily. Instead of prison people need to be sent to rehab centers.
You need a legal backing to get these people help. Decriminalization means there’s no legal backing to provide services to these people, oftentimes they don’t want help. Like the article mentioned, no one ever bothers calling the helpline. Why would they? They either don’t want to or cant. With a court order they can be taken care of, usually through tax payer money. Initially this may cost a decent amount of money but could fix the problem over time.
The problem there is a court order is enforced under threat of punishment. One is going to be less likely to seek help if they’re subject to physical or sexual abuse if the mere mention of it could land them in legal trouble. Similarly, folks are less likely to seek help in overdose situations under threat of legal consequences.
Okay, so I have been misinterpreting decriminalization. I looked up some statistics and found this website that was helpful. In a nutshell I agree with decriminalization, however it seems like Oregon may not have implemented the law in a meaningful way, in my opinion. It’s not a comprehensive approach to getting people help and stops at offering a drug screening (which seems like a non-solution) or a fine. May people never get a screening and many never pay the fine, so nothing actually happens. So on other words, Oregon politicians passed a meaningless bill. Portugal seems to have done a better job with this and it’s a shame politicians can’t look to places that work to emulate their laws.
https://www.publichealthdegrees.org/resources/drugs-decriminalization-and-public-health/
There are plenty of addicts that seek out help without legal compulsion. I work in a treatment center in Portland and we have way more people seeking help than we can accommodate. Housing is the biggest problem, often people wouldn’t need a residential treatment bed if they had adequate housing.
I can get behind that. But also from the article it says that these people often don’t seek out help either. To your point, housing is another part of the problem that these lawmakers failed to address.
Let me try to make this easy for you to understand. Let’s assume the drug user is only doing a harm to themself and not society (as is the case with most drugs) and let’s leave other crimes (such as theft) out of the equation just to focus on drug use itself. Functionally, with no harm done to society, there’s no reason for the drug user to be punished with a crime (hence, decriminalized).
On to rehabilitation! First, who cares? There are some drugs that users will probably do best to be rehabilitated from, substances that can do a lot of harm to the body (e.g., alcohol, cigarettes, krokidyle) or which can be highly addictive where, out of concern for the well-being of the user we would want to try to nudge them towards rehabilitation. Forcing users into rehabilitation shouldn’t happen, as that’s a form of punishment (that isn’t really needed since no crime has been commited) and it’s only likely to waste the state’s money and not do much good for the user.
The problem here is that drug users aren’t going to feel safe interacting with the police or any people the police told them to call. These are people who have been using drugs which were uptil recently illegal, and these people are likely aware that police are under no obligation to tell you the truth. Not a lot of these folks have or can afford legal counsel.
Lots of folks want decriminalization because we don’t see drug use as a criminal act. Criminals are people who commit crime and a crime is something we deem as harmful to other members in society. Decriminalization of drugs could be a gateway to rehab, but most importantly it’s an updating of outdated laws. Full legalization is most appropriate but we’re a ways away from that and decriminalization is the first step (e.g., look how cannabis laws were enacted).
No need to be passive aggressive. I think a lot of people care. If you’ve read my other post you’d notice I said I agree with decriminalization but believe Oregon didn’t implement the law in a meaningful way. I don’t know if you’ve lived in an area where there are homeless encampments before but drug use is often a big issue there. LA, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, all places I’ve lived in have this issue. So yes, for you this may be a non issue for you but for communities that live with this problem it is a legitimate issue. What do you mean when youre advocating for full legalization? We might not even be talking about the same thing. I don’t care about weed, all for legalization for that. Under no circumstances should drugs like heroin or meth be legalized. Are you saying you don’t care about people who are at the highest risk for drug abuse and need the most help? That’s ideally the place where rehabilitation will help the most.
Feel free to look at the statistics for drug use and homelessness here. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
Is it the homeless encampments or the drug use that are the main problem for you? Or is it only a problem when they are combined?
Maybe depending on where you live, homeless encampments can be broken up (not making any statements now on whether that is right) without needing to attach drug charges into the situation.
Its foremost the drug issue that’s a problem for me. It hurts people and communities. I bring up homelessness because from what I’ve seen and what studies show, its a concentrated center of abuse. Its where people have the most need for intervention. It’s personal to me because I’ve it ruins communities.
I have. I’ve also given money and things to the homeless, I’ve also stepped over homeless people sleeping in the entranceway of an apartment.
But you’re talking about homelessness, I’m talking about drug use. They are not the same issue, and one doesn’t lead to the other. Homelessness is usually a temporary condition and a lot of these people are just trying to survive. We see this issue in bigger cities because believe it or not some of these homeless people have jobs and can’t really commute very far.
Homelessness, not drug use. Unless you’re not talking about homelessness but instead talking about crime. Again with homelessness and crime, one does not lead to the other. Violating city ordinances isn’t a crime, though it is punishable in other ways.
Full legalization of all drugs. If it’s a drug, it would be legalized. This doesn’t lead to increased drug use - it usually leads to decreased drug use because drugs aren’t taboo and they aren’t hard to get. Full legalization also means that regulated drug manufacturers can begin making and selling these drugs, decreasing the adulterants found in street drugs. This also puts a huge pressure on the drug cartels because now there’s no real need for them if people get their heroin from GSK.
Clearly, we are not. I’m trying to remove your biases to get to the meat of your concerns, here. You’re all over the place talking about homelessness and crime and drugs. They aren’t causal relationships.
Bro, meth is already legal in a sense, you just need a prescription from a doctor. The same might be true of heroin but I am not sure of that. Meth users are probably folks with ADHD who need access to better meds (Adderall, Ritalin) which are CNS like meth.
The risky part of heroin is that it’s not legal, so street manufacturers need to make the drug and can sometimes alter the potency that a user is used to, causing the user to inject their usual amount but accedently receive an overdose. That, and the concern about sharing dirty needs and getting bateria and viruses directly into the bloodstream. We don’t see this problem with diabetics who inject insulin, because insulin is legal and regulated.
Even making research chemicals legal would be helpful becuase it would allow researchers to study the drugs without fear of prosecution.
I’m saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of that. I DO care about people who are at the highest risk for drug abuse, and I want them to get the most help.
Now, go enter a 3 week program because I don’t agree with the way you’re living your life. You have to do it, it’s for your own health! Bacon causes cancer, and studies have shown that sugar also not be good for you! If you eat sugar or bacon you are at the highest risk of bad health effects and you need the most help! Please, I implore you!
Not interested in going, because you know what’s best for you? Yeah, that’s how drug users think as well. We’re all human. One person’s “addiction” is another person’s simple pleasure.
That’s just like, your opinion, man. The people who need rehabilitation most and who can benefit from it the most (and where the money is most efficiently spent) are the people WHO KNOW they need help and who WANT the help. Offering a card to someone is all we can do, really. We can only improve upon it by also not charging the person, not stigmatizing the drug use and not putting the person in a position where they feel like they will be punished for seeking help (i.e., being given a fine and a card by a cop who they can’t trust).
Again you’re correlating something that doesn’t have a causal relationship. Please stay on topic. Also, you should look into the concept of “harm reduction”.
No passive agressiveness here, but you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve had this argument so many times with people and there’s a lots of misinformation out there about drug use and drug users. Rehab is a program sold by companies at the end of the day. The 12 step program is a Christian program that requires you to accept God, for instance. Rehab can do more harm than good in a lot of cases, too.
I bring up homelessness because its relatable to what ive seen personally and can see where rehabilitation can do the most good. To me, they arent too far from each other. It sucks seeing communities struggling with suffering, needles all over the place and what amounts to people looking like zombies in the street. It’s sad and ruins communities. In the link I attached there is a correlation between homelessness and drug use. Without proper treatment and intervention many will OD and their issues will go unresolved. I don’t understand what you mean by casual relationship. There clearly is a correlation from what I’ve read. Do you have any data to prove otherwise?
I guess the crux of the issue is I just simply don’t think full legalization of all drugs is a good idea. Hard drugs are bad for the community at large you can take a look at these studies https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/05/30/as-fatal-overdoses-rise-many-americans-see-drug-addiction-as-a-major-problem-in-their-community/ If you have some links to studies I’ll gladly take a look at them that say otherwise.
I like the idea of harm reduction but I think that’s one step of the larger approach of dealing with drug addiction.
These are your personal biases I’m talking about. If we’re going to take your own personal experience as a scientific study, it’s likely to have issues with selection bias and low sample size. You didn’t meet all the homeless people in these cities, and you were probably limited to seeing only only the homeless people in the areas where you live and / or work.
Causal, not casual. It refers to causation instead of correlation.
When we look at two sets of data (e.g., homeless population over time and drug use over time) we can lay them over one another on a graph and if the lines somewhat match up, we can say they have a correlation with one another. The problem here is that simply having a correlation does not imply that one of those things caused the other thing to happen, that is, they do not nessecarily have a causal relationship to one another. I can take any two seemingly unrelated things and find they have a causal relationship (e.g., (off top of my head as an example, not saying these actually correlate): number of penguins and the number of mcdonalds in europe over time. To say that “we have more mcdonalds in europe because there are more penguins in the world” wouldn’t make much sense, but then you look on the graph and say “well, there is a correlation” yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything. I assume you are aruging this in good-faith but I’ll just say that bad-faith actors can take any two closely related things and also find correlations, and this trick works on people who don’t understand causation != correlation.
10 real examples: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questions/10-correlations-that-are-not-causations.htm
There might be, but it doesn’t matter. Unless you can find a causal relationship between the two, we can’t say that one causes the other. At best we can say the numbers correlated with one another. There are many reasons for this - what else correlates? GDP? Unemployment? Mass layoffs? etc… One of those things might be causal, but we won’t know just by looking at how they correlate.
As a reminder, the onus is on you to prove your claims. Correlation isn’t proof, for reasons I mentioned, and I can’t have to prove a negative just to make your lack of proof invalid. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed.
What are hard drugs vs soft drugs?
Are soft drugs legal and ones that do no harm? Drugs like alcohol which can kill you if you stop cold-turkey? Drugs like cigarettes which are proven to cause lung cancer?
What makes a drug “hard”? When we’re talking about heroin, what is it about pure heroin that makes it “hard”? What about pure cocaine, which they used to put in sodapop? Are pure psychedelics which have no harm on the body “hard” drugs?
I’ll tell you what makes a drug “hard”: it being illegal. Once again with correlation vs causation, these drugs are illegal because they are made illegal by congress not because they are more harmful to the user. Great example of this is cannabis being scheduled as a “hard” drug in there with heroin (the “classic” “hard” drug, from what hear non-drug users saying all the time). These drugs can cause massive harm because they are not pure and because garry down the street making who knows what in his bathtub doesn’t have a legal requirement to try to not kill you. The government doesn’t know garry makes these drugs, and can’t inspect how he makes them to ensure he’s making them pure.
When weed became legal, many laws were focused on making sure that the consumers were getting pure weed, from cannabis plants, harvested and packaged in child-safe containers, with information tracking from seed to sale so that the supply chain can be inspected. This alone has done a lot to make pot healthier than whatever moldy product might be sold at whatever street corner on the underground market. The same goes for all other drugs.
I’m not going to read that study because it’s offtopic and I can gleam as much as I need to from the url alone. Most americans feel … implies a survey and ok let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and say 100% of americans feel that homelessness causes drug use and drug use causes homelessness and everything. Great! 100% of americans polled can still be wrong on any given topic. I don’t think living next to a homeless person makes you an expert on homelessness in the same way as seeing a needle (or needles) on the street makes you an expert on drug use or econonmic policy.
Is it hard to accept that most americans don’t want to be homeless but are forced to when they are pushed out of their home due to rising rents and lack of money to buy a home? That it’s a temporary enough condition sometimes that they just need a place until they can get back on their feet? That you live as a second class citizen as a homeless person because you can’t get access to things like a bank account due to not having a home address, so you get robbed, or you get raided by police in the night with your belongings left behind or trashed? That after days, weeks, months and years of trying to get back on your feet, maybe due to not being able to afford the medication that you need because you can’t afford COBRA because you lost your job caused you to try to self-medicate with meth just to try to deal with disability that you can’t even begin to ask the government for help for because you don’t have a mailing address.
And then some guy walks in and starts talking about how big of a problem the homeless are. My guy, the homeless aren’t the problem. The homeless are a symptom of a problem.
I think you’re misconstruing what I’m trying to say, however I think at this point the conversation isn’t getting anywhere.
If you don’t want to take a look at any of the links ive given or provide decent studies to prove your point then I don’t think there’s a conversation to be had here. You clearly have your own biases that you don’t want to address. Agree to disagree.
Ps: Here’s my first link if you change your mind. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
I’m not not misconstruing what you’re trying to say and I don’t appreciate the insuation that I am acting in bad-faith (by misconstruing something). If the conversation at this point isn’t getting anywhere, that’s a question you’ve got to first ask yourself, and secondly ask me if there’s anything I can clarify.
Now, can we get back to the topic of decriminalizing / legalizing drugs? I don’t know why you keep talking about homelessness, unless you have nothing to say regarding the decriminalization of drugs. Again, you will need to prove that there’s a causal relationship between the two - something you won’t be able to do, because one doesn’t exist.
The links you have provided are off-topic and while they may back up your own thoughts, that’s fine because your thoughts on this topic are wrong. Facts don’t care about your feelings, and right now, you got no facts to prove your case.
Your first link is a biased resource from a drug rehabilitation facility. They are going to be pro-rehabilitation. This is akin to sending me a brochure and saying that it contains facts. If these are true facts, you wouldn’t need to resort to a link from americanaddictioncenters.org. Just like how you would be right to not view a link that I sent from a drug company about drug facts, or a study funded primarily by drug companies. It’s not that I’m not open to new ideas or challenging my ideas, I truly am and it’s very easy to change my mind on any given topic. But you must come correct with a decent resource.
Your second link was from a reputable source but it was based on a survey on the opinions of people who’s only experience is living within proximity to homelessness. Can you see how that’s a problem just by itself? I mean, I’m assuming that propublican isn’t burying the lede here and would instead come right out and say “x causes y” if they knew it. But that’s not the scope of this study (as we can tell from the title alone). Who cares what these people think when it comes to the subject of if we should decriminalize drugs? They weren’t asked that, they were asked about their feelings about living next to users who were irresponsible with their parapenalia. It’s off topic to this discussion at best and intentional bad-faith arguing on your part at worst. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, though. I assume you are acting in good faith.
It’s also telling if you can only just send the same 2 links back at me, after I’ve told you that they are off-topic. There is so much more data out there. I’m at work right now so I’m not spending a lot of time to respond. I’m not not sending you links to support my argument because they don’t exist. If that’s what you truly want, give me some time and I’ll give you a reading list.
This all comes down to you and your motivations. Want to understand more about how to actually help these people while avoiding paying high taxes on a program which doesn’t work? Let’s keep talking. If on the other hand you only want to try to disprove what I’m saying, well… let’s keep talking but you need to give me some better sources - ones which are at least relevant to what we are discussing.