It’s the first law in US that decriminalizes small amounts of drugs

This is interesting.

Firstly, I love that states inherently have the power to set their own laws. This allowed Oregon to be a great large scale experiment for drug policy.

I saw some interesting quotes:

But estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show, among the states reporting data, Oregon had the highest increase in synthetic opioid overdose fatalities when comparing 2019 and the 12-month period ending June 30, a 13-fold surge from 84 deaths to more than 1,100.

Despite public perception, the law has made some progress by directing $265 million dollars of cannabis tax revenue toward standing up the state’s new addiction treatment infrastructure.

I guess since only cannabis is sold, it’s the only taxable substance in the mix.

Some lawmakers have suggested focusing on criminalizing public drug use rather than possession. Alex Kreit, assistant professor of law at Northern Kentucky University and director of its Center on Addiction Law and Policy, said such an approach could help curb visible drug use on city streets but wouldn’t address what’s largely seen as the root cause: homelessness.

Homelessness leads to drug use? Or drug use leads to homelessness? Couldn’t it be either?

In the first year after the law took effect in February 2021, only 1% of people who received citations for possession sought help via the hotline, state auditors found.

Critics of the law say this doesn’t create an incentive to seek treatment.

Thoughts:

  • Maybe just start with cannabis and see how that goes? Or do we really need to progress collectively to heroine, meth, cocaine, MDMA?

  • Is the major public health crisis the use of more illicit drugs, or overdoses? Is possible that recreational use of cocaine/MDMA/others wouldn’t be as big of a crisis as meth and fentanyl?

  • Should heroine be legal for use?

  • Should MDMA be legal for use?

  • Should cocaine be legal for use?

( I am not advocating for or against use of these substances with this post. Posted for discussion/interest. Questions are posed for discussion. )

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    48·
    9 months ago

    It is very difficult to get people to quit opioids long term when they’re in real physical pain and are stuck with a for-profit medical system that they can’t afford. Getting them addiction treatment will not get rid of the pain. Eventually, they’ll go back to using. What choice do they have?

    I am a chronic pain sufferer whose nerve disorder is mostly controlled through medication so I absolutely understand how horrible it is to feel pain every day and I know what it feels like to have something that makes it all go away. In my case, I’m taking neurological drugs, not opioids, but if opioids had worked (and I did try them) and I was in financial dire straits, I might be in the same place as they are.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
      6·
      9 months ago

      Emotional pain is real too, and even Tylenol can help with it.

      Which is my way of saying, we have to fix social conditions so that we all live in a more equitable word in order to really address the opioid crisis.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
          3·
          9 months ago

          Hopefully Indiana will allows cannabis cultivation sometime soon. They and KY could just switch from tobacco and make a killing with hemp/ marijuana.

        • treefrog@lemm.ee
          2·
          9 months ago

          I mean that too.

          But also the conditions causing pain to begin with. Like, people being forced into taking jobs they wouldn’t otherwise to survive and ignoring pain signals from the body to do so. Or simply finding comfort in pain medications because they’ve been shit on their whole lives for being the wrong color or having the wrong sexual orientation or identity.

          Some of which was the cause of my own chronic pain.

          I wasn’t debating your point. But adding to it.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                1·
                9 months ago

                Haha, thank you. I have like Lemmy face blindness so I rarely know who anyone is, but I’m sure you are also worthy of love.

                The nice thing about (most) people on Lemmy is that we can disagree- or even just think we disagree when we don’t- and still get along afterward.

                • treefrog@lemm.ee
                  2·
                  9 months ago

                  For sure. We had a nice conversation when I migrated over from reddit during that whole mass migration and mod stuff over there.

                  I’m a frog, you’re a squid. Jog your memory?

    • RedFox@infosec.pubOP
      4·
      9 months ago

      That’s a real concern for sure.

      I’ve got c5/6 stuff, already doing cortisone, worried about the future and pain management.

      Loads of people trying to balance PM without becoming addicts. Now that we’ve finally seen the systemic pharmaceutical industry issues.

  • Dkarma@lemmy.world
    34·
    9 months ago

    The big takeaway from all this is that if you do programs like this you have to fully fund the treatment and pathway to sobriety. Economically you’ve got to give these people a chance to rebound back on their feet. I suspect the support funding was less than needed and that’s why this is collapsing

    • citrusface@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      9 months ago

      So - I’ve wondered, as I’m sure others have as I probably read this somewhere and it stuck with me - why don’t we just legalize all drugs.

      That’s it - all of its legal. We don’t care anymore. No more stigma, do what you want.

      Now - we take aaaallllllllllll the money we use to fight a war on drugs we never win, allllllll the money we use to arrest people and fund our police state, alllll the money we use to keep people in prison…

      And we put it into rehabilitation and mental health and education and housing the unhoused.

      I mean is that so insane?

      • treefrog@lemm.ee
        19·
        9 months ago

        Legalize and regulate.

        In other words, people shouldn’t have to buy sketchy shit on the streets.

      • admiralteal@kbin.social
        9·
        9 months ago

        You can set up a justice system that is designed to reduce harm and to make the victims whole.

        But doing so seems to be pretty incompatible with seeing up a penal system designed to harshly punish offenders. Because harsh punishments do not seem to be effective at preventing bad actions that create victims.

        Especially in the US, we’ve made the choice to have a penal system instead of a justice system. And so our system does not exact justice, it just passes down punishments.

        I’m for drug decriminalization and all the various kinds of harm mitigation strategies to make drugs safer to use. But I also will admit without hesitation that modern synthetic opioids and amphetamines are black holes that consume a person’s entire being. If we want widespread drug decriminalization we need to do a lot of other side work to stop people from being spaghettified. We need housing and healthcare and an expectation of a baseline dignified life for everyone because if your life is going to be without dignity either way you may as well be injecting heroin while doing it.

    • sploosh@lemmy.world
      9·
      9 months ago

      The fully funded path out is what Oregonians were promised, but our elected officials entirely dropped the ball on making it happen.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
        5·
        9 months ago

        Yeah OP mentions the $265 million in funding but that hasn’t been used to fund anything. I haven’t seen a single new treatment center open up.

    • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
      81·
      9 months ago

      Also be aware that anywhere with easy travel the place with the least restrictive laws will most likely attract the people who want to do the thing that illegal everywhere else. So it will require more support than just the existing population.

      But really the expectation that drug users who have historically been treated like shit by the government will use a new government hotline is ridiculous.

    • RedFox@infosec.pubOP
      12·
      9 months ago

      Your take away was people couldn’t get treatment?

      It said there was little treatment participation.

      Perhaps this could be related to the logistics of getting there perhaps.

  • ULS@lemmy.ml
    19·
    9 months ago

    Did homelessness increase as well as rent and cost of living during the time frames they are using?

  • treefrog@lemm.ee
    4·
    9 months ago

    Inequality, injustice, lack of liberty since inliberty ins’t a word. i.e. property rights interfering with our other rights

    That’s the actual root cause. Homelessness is another symptom, they’re not digging deep enough.

  • 🔰Hurling⚜️Durling🔱@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    Decriminalization does not mean it should be readily available. Decriminalization will never work if we don’t follow it up with meaningful investment in rehabilitation therapy for folks that abuse it.

    Some substances should still be controlled as they are too dangerous (ie. Fentanil)

  • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
    2·
    9 months ago

    A lot of good local articles on the topic, including radio pieces following cops in bad parts of town. A major failing of the program is that it was difficult to seek help even if you wanted to, with sometimes 1 hr phone wait times to set a time to wait an hour to talk to someone. The intent - to funnel users into treatment - wasn’t met.

    A better method (in my opinion) would be a “treatment or jail” system, which would put people in a 6-week contained treatment system pre built with capacity to handle the load… Oregon may be liberal, but that would never fly, and the republicans would rather walk out and shut down the state house than allow it.

    But we tried. Back ti letting everything fall apart until the state collapses.

    • RedFox@infosec.pubOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      I don’t understand why a treatment or jail program wouldn’t be desirable.

      Cost? Wasn’t it potentially offset by cannabis taxes?

      Capacity? Didn’t addicts already get locked up? Or maybe now there’s no capacity because the low level addicts have not been locked up and adjustments were made?