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.
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.