Oregon law rolling back drug decriminalization set to take effect

Oregonian here. Living through Oregon’s experiment with decriminalization was tough. The law was flawed and ultimately failed, but did succeed in demonstrating why legalization, along with regulation, and taxation are the only real winning way to solve these problems. Look at our Cannabis programs. Massively successful and pumping millions into our public programs. Sure, Decriminalization reduces arrests but it leaves dangerous, unregulated substances in the market. Where legalizing and regulating recreational drugs ensures safer, controlled products, reducing health risks. Without the tax revenue from a legal market, there’s no funding for vital public health initiatives, like addiction treatment, or education programs. Oregon’s approach missed this by a long shot, leading to huge gaps in our support systems and funding. Also, regulation promotes real social justice by allowing those who get hit hardest by the total failure that is the "war on drugs” to benefit from better legal opportunities. This backstep is horrible for sure, but decriminalization wasn’t enough and without a plan to move further forward it's the only last-ditch effort to fix the problems the weak policy has caused. The better way forward would be restructuring the decriminalization to include some form of legalization along with regulation and most importantly taxation, but I won't hold my breath waiting for common sense to have a place in US state or federal politics.

> Supporters of decriminalization say treatment is more effective than jail in helping people overcome addiction and that the decades-long approach of arresting people for possessing and using drugs hasn’t worked.

It clearly hasn't worked. And clearly all the reasons they decriminalized in the first place are still valid. But I guess we're going back to criminalizing it anyway. Hey, maybe human nature has changed in the last few years, and it'll work this time.

Why not enforce criminalization but invest in better "Nordic style" prisons, which put rehabilitation and treatment at the forefront. Increase safety for the inmates in the prison so they can rebuild themselves instead of societal retribution. IMO prisons are grossly underfunded.

This is utterly, utterly horrifying.

Every time you start innovating, problems will happen. But you can’t quit.

What they did was legendary and right. They just need to tweak the formula a little bit, not go back to the broken, heartless criminalization.

We don’t have the right to tell people if they can’t do drugs. It’s a crime without a victim.

I’ve never done drugs, but I would give my life to see this horrible behavior of “righteous” imprisoning people without just cause.

Good job Portland for trying. Figure out the mistakes made, and try again, but this time better!

These people...

You don't have to decriminalize drugs. You just have to make it illegal to shamelessly and publicly use drugs. The experiment didn't fail because the premise was flawed, it failed because the implementation was kneecapped. Drugs were legal for thousands of years. But they can't admit they screwed up, so let's just pretend throwing people in prison for consuming substances is the way to go.

Does decriminalization work in a context like that of a US state where there's no control over borders?

One thing I’m not seeing here is what effects the decriminalization had that caused them to reverse course.

I think this is unfortunate failure but at least they tried something. I hope they comeback with a multifaceted solution in whatever iteration comes next.

Oregon: ok we’ve killed enough degenerates, time for more prisoners.

Normally one might consider the political spectrum to go from the liberal stance of "It's all society's fault that you are how you are" to the conservative stance "It's all your fault you are how you are", with the practical situation being somewhere in between on a case by case basis.

However, things like drug decriminalization bring out further extremes, with extreme liberals espousing you should be able to do anything you want (even if you become a hazard to your community) and extreme conservatives feeling you should do what you want and the weak should die and the strong should live.

Only centrists and perhaps realpolitik people see all highly profitable addictive drugs that destroy the lives of the users as not some kind of accident on an individual basis and instead a super successful subscription business model with negative externalities that they would rather not suffer the side effects of as a community. Alas this view seems to not get so much airtime, and just ends up being a matter of fact as things play out.

To all the it's been illegal for over 100 years and it hasn't got any better school of thought people, so has murder. Were we expecting the nature of people to evolve in 100 years?

Seriously wondering from the perspective of choices of how to do things. Do we want to try to get the best result for the most people? How many false positives or false negatives do we want?

Meanwhile Seattle where hard drugs are still illegal has become an absolute 4th world shithole near the center, with passed out drug addicts strewn around Benaroya Hall. I literally saw a police officer watch a guy shoot up heroin and do nothing. Is this “progressive”? Is this good for the public? Where do we draw the line, if anywhere?

Running out of slave labor in prison industry?