Under the new law, possession of small amounts of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine will be as a misdemeanor and punishable by up to six months in jail.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed a bill Monday restoring criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of hard drugs, reversing a first-in-the-nation law that advocates had hoped would help quell a deepening addiction and overdose crisis.
Under the new law, the possession of small amounts of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine will be classified as a misdemeanor and punishable by up to six months in jail.
Drug treatment will be offered as an alternative to criminal penalties.
Not it’s not. The problem is that Oregon only did half of the work and never invested in public health solutions to handle drug addiction (as the article points out). This is not about being progressive or conservative, it’s about half-assing policies.
If someone tried to build a house without a roof the problem is not that houses are too progressive but that the guy building the house is an idiot.
Yeah, this. It’s the story the world over when neoliberalism tries to be progressive, because neoliberalism is quite happy to be progressive when it doesn’t cost anything.
Lax drug enforcement laws were great! You could spend less on police and incarceration, and it’s fine since the fallout from drug related crimes only affects poor people anyway.
Once it started to affect rich people, though, then the calculus starts, and there’s no way to effectively monetize treatment, mental health care and public housing, so enforcement it is!
The part I don’t get is why they were willing to decriminalize it but they weren’t willing to regulate it and allow it in dispensaries.
THAT is where the money is. America is built on cash crops. People will happily pay taxes out the ass for tobacco, alcohol, weed, acid, cocaine, and shrooms. I also personally think coffee should be added to that list. For the record, I’m not a fan of cocaine or coffee, but some people swing that way, and id rather them swing there than meth.
Honestly, it feels hypocritical, but I agree that opioids and meth cross the line. I have heard maybe 3 anecdotes of people that can maintain a functioning addiction on heroin and zero for people who can contain themselves with meth.
Allow the weed, acid, and shrooms (and MAYBE cocaine) in the dispensaries, take the tax money, GIVE IT BACK as housing assistance and universal basic income. Give security, opportunity, and therapy to opioid and meth users. Watch them become productive calm non-violent stoners.
Because they’re not just idiots, they’re puritanical idiots.
Tons of people have opiate/opioid addictions and function without you ever knowing; same as amphetamine. People in government and high business positions. It’s not just cracked out people who are on heroic doses, you can absolutely be a functioning addict.
The difference between something like hydrocodone and heroin, or adderall and meth, is much smaller than you think, on a milligram for milligram basis.
Fair enough.
Personally, I have only ever had consistently hostile interactions with meth-heads.
I do my best to err on the side of the adult choice to have the freedom of a vice. For me its tobacco, weed, and beer, and I am so fucking sick and tired of prohibitionists (generally people who are or were on probation and now want to act like they have the moral high-ground on the subject) trying to take that right away, or at least punish me for opting for it.
You can’t just dispense hard drugs. It’s federally illegal, and while the feds have adopted a look away policy for marijuana, there’s no guarantee they will for others. There’s also the whole lack of banking access for any money that could be made.
Neoliberalism is 2000’s Republican Party under Bush. It isn’t “liberal” like most people think of it. It’s rigid adherence to the idea that the “free market” will solve all our problems, in particular social ones, and grant us all the greatest amount of freedom.
Decriminalizing drugs and calling for the state to handle the health and social side is not neoliberalism. That’s democratic socialism if anything. Though I’m sure some would dispute it, which is fine. But it’s certainly not neoliberal, which is distinctly conservative and the ideology of the American Republican Party pre-Trump.
My point was that decriminalizing drugs and just…letting things sort themselves out, with maybe a few precariously-funded, arms-length organizations left to handle the fallout is very much a neoliberal approach to drug policy.
The bill wasn’t designed around free market solutions to the problem of drug addiction/mental health. It was specifically not that. We also can’t ignore that covid hit right when this went into effect.
Bad implementation =/= pushing a neoliberal policy.
They copied the drug half of the Portugal model but not the medicine/support half
Most of the progressive states in the US, as well as all of Canada, is currently making the half-Portugal mistake: doing the cheap part, but refusing to do the expensive piece because, well, it’s expensive and they’re progressive only when it doesn’t cost them anything.
The worst part is that the blowback from doing a half-Portugal is going to set actual, helpful health policy back by decades.
Right, society wasn’t progressive enough to follow through on the drug treatment part. Now they are back to criminal punishment and still lacking enough drug treatment so it is worse than it was with it decriminalized for society even if it ‘solves’ drug use in public areas.
The quote is accurate.
I love that you’re being downvoted for being correct. Drug laws have 0 effect on drug use and legal outcomes are not something a junkie considers pretty much fucking ever.
ACAB. Fuck the state.
Unrelated, I recently tried out Fedia, and I couldn’t understand why my Fedia account was consistently being downvoted into oblivion but my Kbin account is consistently upvoted and rarely ever downvoted. I see dude’s comment as up 2 down 0 on Kbin.
I think Kbin doesnt register lemmy voting. God I love Kbin.
Might be the result of defederations as well.