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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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.
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