States that didn’t change their drug policies are also experiencing an opioid crisis.
Yeah, much has been written in the past week or two about how Oregon is misguided and it’s a knee jerk reaction. Similar to how a (relatively) small spike in violent crime recently has caused many states to introduce harsh penalties. Our crime rates are nothing like in the 80s anyway
Which is pretty impressive since the 80s were very much KNOWN for yuppies, who of course caused an explosion in white collar crime compared to before.
The availability heuristic at work. Media attention (including social media) draw attention to more extreme examples of crime, and people then perceive these events as being more likely because they are more readily accessible to the mind.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
By treating all drugs as an undifferentiated category, Oregon is set to deliver a major blow to advocates of psychedelic use who don’t want to see expensive clinics and tightly controlled environments be the only legal point of access.
While regulated and supervised models for using psychedelics are showing growing promise for treating mental illness, decriminalized use allows for a much wider spectrum of user motivations — many of which have occurred for millennia — no less deserving of legal protection, from recreational and spiritual to the simple pleasure of spicing up a museum visit with a small handful of mushrooms.
Beyond the death toll, critics — fairly or unfairly — connected decriminalization to the rising visibility of drug use and homelessness in Oregon towns and cities, including open-air fentanyl markets popping up in downtown Portland.
On the whole, psychedelics are far safer than many other legally accessible substances, and the list of therapeutic, spiritual, and creative benefits seems to grow each month, from alleviating depression and addiction to combating eating disorders and helping find meaning in life.
Instead of Class E violations, personal possession of controlled substances will be considered a “drug enforcement misdemeanor,” which carries a maximum of 180 days in jail, though with a series of intervening steps designed to “deflect” individuals toward treatment rather than incarceration.
By failing to fund programs that would have trained law enforcement (who were generally skeptical of decriminalization to begin with) on how to direct drug users toward rehabilitation or designing a ticketing system that emphasized treatment information, even advocates of Measure 110 were dismayed with the form it took through implementation.
The original article contains 2,163 words, the summary contains 271 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
110 was a massive failure that needs to be un-done, any issues with less problematic drugs can be handled on a one by one basis like we did with marijuana.
The measure was a good idea. The implementation was a failure. The plan included opening rehabs and encouraging/requiring addicts to get treatment if caught, but that part of the plan was never implemented.
So they never really committed to measure 110. They only tried half of it. So strange that a good idea would fail when only half of it was implemented.
Requiring treatment was never part of the plan.
The idea was you give people a $100 citation, and they get it waived by calling a toll free treatment number.
Out of 16,000 citations, less than 150 people called the number.
Not entered treatment mind you, they never even called the number.
KGW news reports that the treatment facilities were never built and that the citations for this program were never created. They also report that special citations to issue and instructions to contact any number were never given to police. So, there were no “new” citations issued, no new instructions given to the recipients of the standard (pre 110 style) citations and so there is no reason to expect anyone to call anything.
This was an implementation issue from the very beginning. They never even tried to issue the new citations. They used their same old citations without giving any instructions to call anyone. And they never built the specific facilities to support any of the potential new citation recipients. The only part of measure 110 that seems to have been implemented was not jailing people for drug possession.
It didn’t do the #1 thing that was promised and that was get more people into treatment.
So we got all the problems from massive increased drug use, and none of the benefits of getting more people into treatment.
I understand your frustration, but I don’t think making drugs more illegal again is going to decrease the problem, though. The whole country is getting problems from increased drug use. The Fentanyl and Xylezene epidemic is all over the country now.
I think a better solution would be to actually force drug users into treatment when caught, don’t give them the option. Giving them criminal charges isn’t a push to getting an addict clean, though. It just makes it harder for them to find a job, which will lead to more despair and drug use.
