| > Cases are no longer clogging the courts I live in Oregon and that's not true: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-23/oregon-pu... > we have people using in my neighborhood park and on public transit. I stopped taking the train after a ride where we had to evacuate because someone was smoking fentanyl (apparently even the second-hand smoke can affect a person). This happens regardless of the legality. The big question is whether they can be encouraged to take their usage to safe sites, which is why the whole encampments thing that people don't want was key to a plan involving decriminalization. That's to say, the big picture matters in harm reduction, not the individual steps. We have a large system of incentives that drives the industrial prison complex that have all been in place a long time. You won't see material improvements with one law passed. > You seem to support it, how would you address the externalities? The first step is getting our police count up; we had 300 cops for the entire city and were only answering active violent calls. They've hired 300 more. The next step is getting the people who are ready to get off the streets off by opening up the transitional sites that the city and county are fighting over. After all that, we need to invest in non-12 step recovery centers for anyone battling chemical addiction. What you're left with after that is manageable. I say all of this as someone who has lost a lot of friends to the opioid crisis and has watched Portland's meth problem first hand. I watched heavy-handed policies fail time and time again, deity-focused 12 step programs try to shame people into recovery and fail, and watched as forces of power used those failures to fuel a drug war and prison complex that rivaled no other country on Earth. This isn't just about doing things differently; it's about stopping the hard-nose crap that got us here with no end in sight and actually addressing the problem. The journey will be painful as the journey to here has been painful but it'll be worth it. |
Argh, that makes it even worse!
> I say all of this as someone who has lost a lot of friends to the opioid crisis and has watched Portland's meth problem first hand.
Sorry to hear that. I’ve been fortunate not to have friends or family caught up in it, but we lost a neighbor last year.
I hope you’re right that things will get better.
In the meantime, it feels disingenuous to act like the impact so far has been positive for everyone, or like legalizing and hard-nose crap are the only options. I think it undermines trust and pits different parts of Portland against each other. It’s easy to get a laugh or an eye roll from my neighbors on the north side of town when I pass along some of the ”obvious” solutions my friends and colleagues from the west side have shared with me. Please consider our perspective: even if we double the police force and start addressing crime more promptly, our neighborhood is still worse off because we have more crime. Other parts of the city don’t seem to appreciate that.