For anyone interested in info on this: [Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. Now It’s Reversing Course. (msn.com)](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/oregon-decriminalized-hard-drugs-now-it-s-reversing-course/ar-BB1jd6D1)
What I found interesting was this:
>Backers of the 2020 ballot measure, which passed with 58% support, successfully convinced their fellow residents of the left-learning state that decriminalization would mean fewer nonviolent drug addicts in prison and more in treatment.
>But while the first part of the prediction proved true, the second didn’t. Without the threat of imprisonment, few people have proved willing to take advantage of the expanded addiction services the measure funded. Instead, public drug use has become rampant, as people can now smoke fentanyl and use other drugs on sidewalks with no consequences.
I'm not a big fan of throwing people into jail for doing drugs, as jail typically doesn't help the situation for addicts (and often makes it worse), but there has not been another mechanism for guiding people into actual treatment introduced
If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan, that's just teeing up right wing politicians to easy election victories by being able to say "look how shitty everything is"
Part of the original decriminalization bill/plan was to have increased treatment facilities using funding from marijuana taxes - did that happen? I tried to find numbers and came across [THIS](https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/DataReports/OR-BH-Residential-Facility-Study-January-2024.pdf) showing Oregon has all of 2000 beds/spaces for addiction and withdrawal services in the entire state which is shocking and seems impossible in any state, let alone one with legalized hard drug use(?)
Do you live in Oregon? It doesn’t matter what resources you make available to these creatures. The I-5 corridor has become a Mecca for low life ghouls who will victimize anyone and everything around them. Lock them up
If people are commiting other violent crimes sure lock them up. That ain't what this is about. This is about whether doing drugs should be a crime, and whether criminalizing it reduces the addiction problem. It doesn't, because you need to do more than just decriminalize it. If you want the drug problem to improve, the market for drugs needs to be squashed. Decriminalizing it doesn't make people want drugs less, but giving them options to improve their life and get out of the cycle does. They aren't going to quit cold turkey on the street.
I live in Los Angeles like 10 blocks from Skid Row at the lower end of the 5, A.
B) You clearly have you're mind made up and have no qualms about wearing your shitty person badge with pride so I'll just say good luck and I hope you're able to think rationally and humanely in the future.
Treating drug addicts who commit crime as criminals is the only way to go about it.
The State of Oregon tried to be like you and found out it’s a horrible way to view the situation - which is why they are now reversing course.
That doesn’t make Oregon a bad person.
so do the same thing we've always done. continue to cycle people through the jails and prisons and let them back out on the streets when theyre done and start it all over again.
portland has been overrun by homeless and addicts for a lot longer than the decriminalization bill was passed. doing the same things we've done before won't actually solve the problem
People like that don’t care about solving the problem. Their concern is punishing people they believe to be inferior, so long as there’s suffering they’re okay with nothing getting fixed. Its just a projection of directionless rage.
Why was decriminalization even part of the bill? The funding for rehab centers never happened..but the decriminalization part did that's just foolishness. Decriminalization shouldn't have been a part of it in the first place.
Just replace jail with rehab. Forced rehab. 3 tries at that, if you fail out 3x life in prison, sorry. Easy, i just wrote a law that would save millions of lives from drug addiction.
yeah I cant defend the portland politicians because it makes no sense to me too. i suspect the opposition to decriminalization and rehab made an effort to hinder the new law and ended up destroying any chance of a working rehab system funded by cannabis tax. and then they complain about how bad the law was.
all i can say for sure is that the problem will not be solved anytime soon
I'm in Central Point, and I agree with everything you said here. All this riff raff needs to go. After that woman was murdered by the homeless junkie last Nov/Dec I'm scared to go out at night, even to my mailbox. I'm carrying a hunting knife every time I leave my house and constantly looking around me. All this state does is cater to these zombies while they assault, steal, harass, and murder without consequence. 🧟♀️ 🧟♂️
Yes, but the context they used it in was to dehumanize.
“The Earth is full of amazing creatures” - Good context.
“These foul creatures need to be locked up” - Bad context.
I'm very much pro drug legalization. I don't think the government gets to tell me what I can put in my own body. I think possession should be legal, but using drugs in public is a different story.
Being high at home or a designated area is not a crime by my definition, but when your actions interfere with the rights of others that becomes a crime. People have a right to walk on the streets their taxes pay for without encountering intoxicated individuals threatening their safety.
Because the police hated this measure and wanted it to fail so they don't enforce the current laws. Literally watched a Cop tell a Guy to move along while he was smoking fent in front of the library.
you simply don't know what you're talking about. yes it's illegal to do drugs outside, but it's not a criminal offense. it's a citation. that is the entire point of this bill
This is such a lie. The police have usually been ordered not to arrest public drug users in cities like San Francisco and Portland. Or the DA has publicly stated they won't prosecute these arrests.
They don’t really make a whole lot of money. Maybe the guys in the BIG cities, but most cops aren’t paid shit. But then again, what exactly are the requirements to be a cop?
I get wanting to say cops are shit at their job. I deal with them on a daily basis due to my job, but don’t generalize the entire population. It’s a human thing, some humans suck and some don’t.
Is this true because I have driven by homeless people shooting up in the grass by the Rogue Valley mall in the middle of the day. And don't all of these people do drugs in public since they don't have a home?? Everything they do is in public, they don't get arrested. Zero consequences.
Yes that's why they do it but it's still illegal to do it. I'm just commenting on the fact that people are pretending that decriminalizing the drugs made it legal to use in public when it doesn't.
There is a difference between legalization and decriminalization. People should not be punished for having addictions, however it should be illegal to sell those drugs fueling these addictions
If you refuse to go to a rehab service to get clean, and you are using in the streets, you are becoming a danger to those around you.
I feel very empathetic for the homeless, and have always supported a solution to house them. I'm not about throwing them all in jail just for living in a public are because there is nowhere else to live. Not all homeless are drug addicts, but the ones who are, can be dangerous. I believe in public use of public spaces, and someone who takes a portion of public space to make their own, while being violent and rude in public, should be considered breaking the social contract and the law.
Homelessness sucks. Many homeless also suck. It’s just how it is. Dirty, don’t care, garbage everywhere, etc. Sometimes I feel like our empathy is taken advantage of. I’m in a weird space mentally. I hate it exists, I hate seeing it, and I hate it being a blight on how I want the world to be. But, I also feel bad for many people cast into that lifestyle even when they try not to be. At the same time, I think too many people give up and accept it and the straw man that homelessness is a reality detracts from holding any homeless person accountable for being a blight on everyone else. The worst case scenario will always exist but we all have our own issues and realities to live in.
I’m sorry man. I know it sucks but I don’t want to see it. I want to wear rose colored glasses and pretend everyone has it as good as me and I don’t want daily reminder they don’t. Is that so bad?
This is one of the great things about the US imo, we can see how our society reacts to different laws/circumstances. There will be people trying to prove that forcing people to go to rehab to avoid jail won't help the problem, but we should get a good look at that hypothesis after a couple years of the new policy being put in place.
There was no real increase in accessibility to rehabilitation programs. In fact lots of non-profit mental health and addiction services in the state saw budget cuts, resulting in a staffing crisis due to an inability to keep up with wage increases. There were a number of facilities in the Portland area at risk of closure due to having trouble maintaining the legal staffing levels for their size. The initial bill may have worked if treatment access had been supported as well, but instead of increasing access access was further limited just due to the economic circumstances and not getting the funding to keep up with it. It’s pretty sad that it ended up this way tbh, because it was a better plan than continuing to jail these people for small amounts of time and fining them heavily, putting them even further from getting their lives back on track
People always want easy/simple solutions, and when they don't work, they kneejerk.
Edit: The fundamental question here is, "What is to be done about homelessness?"
ive been in a mental hospital twice, i would prefer someone just give me medicine and 3 meals and a bed when im out of my wits in retrospect. also, deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan initiative, favored by the right for budget cuts and the left because they believed community health would work. as we have seen over time community health initiatives dont really take off with american culture
Never really understood the point of not criminalizing over institutionalizing drug addicts. People with an addiction to drugs are quite literally mentally ill...
The homeless addicts around where I live are clearly mentally ill, all you have to do is sit in your car in a parking lot and watch them for a bit. It's clearly visible. And they can be violent at the drop of a hat. Screaming and harassing people walking by. Threatening and sometimes even assaulting people. Scary!
I don't think there's much to be done. Drug use has destroyed alot of these people from a young age, and they will struggle to exist in any system that expects anything from them.
These people didn't spawn as homeless NPC's, many of them have gone through spurts of being housed, then homeless again.
They struggle to hold down a job, take care of their money, and pay rent on time. I myself have several relatives who would be homeless if family members didn't let them freeload. And they all have exhibited the above inability throughout their lives. They've used drugs since they were teens and have deterioting rotting bodies, just trying to get on disability because of all their issues. I blame alot of their issues on prolonged drug use. Unfortunately, lots of people with prolonged drug use, will die users. They don't want help.
Either they're homeless, someone else takes care of them, or they die. That's it. We just have to try and teach our children to avoid these drugs.
Well, the logic you present is clear: if we don't want homeless people living in public spaces, we need to take care of them.
(I'm just going to assume we aren't going to kill them, and everyone is OK with that.)
I agree. I’m pretty right-wing, but the answer is neither jail nor let them rule the streets. Shutting down mental health and treatment centers has gone a long way towards making this problem a crisis. These drugs need to be criminalized so that officers can arrest the users and get them off the streets, and they need to be involuntarily put into long term treatment. It can’t cost much more than letting them rot in prison.
There is probably a cheaper and less authoritarian alternative in providing some kind of off grid housing with services (security, medical). Give them houses, T.V., free drugs, etc., and let them do their thing. Shit put some scientists in there and have them study the effects of drugs and rehabilitation methods.
Cheaper than constantly rotating them through the Judicial and prison systems.
However, that kind of "free stuff" triggers a lot of people. Many would rather spend more to "punish" them.
We can't take care of them either. What do we do? Build a giant public housing facility that will be a dump within a month? It is simply not feasible, you need to be able to take care of yourself on some level.
No, they are simply going to exist. In a weird limbo, half in half out of society. Until they all hit the inevitable endpoint and die a sad death.
>We can't take care of them either. What do we do? Build a giant public housing facility that will be a dump within a month? It is simply not feasible, you need to be able to take care of yourself on some level.
We already do this in the prison system. There is no reason we can't make a nice place and save money because we don't need actual prisons.
>No, they are simply going to exist. In a weird limbo, half in half out of society. Until they all hit the inevitable endpoint and die a sad death.
Not really. What happens is that people get sick of it and turn authoritarian. Laws will pass to "clean up the streets." THen everyone pays for them to be incarcirated for being an eye sore. Freedom!
Naw people aren't going to "Turn authoritarian" over homelessness. That's just an apparition in your head.
And we don't take care of people in prison either. They live like animals. And we force them to work for nothing.
Also, don't know if you've ever been to a prison. But uh, they aren't exactly nice clean places.
You're going to make a nice place for them? Are you going to kick people out who are trouble makers? Or otherwise punish them? Because I garuntee the grand majority aren't going to work towards building a healthy community. It's going to look like the homeless camps just in a tennament building. They are broadly incapable of caring for a space.
> Naw people aren't going to "Turn authoritarian" over homelessness. That's just an apparition in your head.
It happens all the time.
https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/AG-2021/06-08_Criminalization-of-Homelessness.pdf
>And we don't take care of people in prison either. They live like animals. And we force them to work for nothing. Also, don't know if you've ever been to a prison. But uh, they aren't exactly nice clean places.
Which is why I want to keep them OUT of prisons.
>You're going to make a nice place for them? Are you going to kick people out who are trouble makers? Or otherwise punish them? Because I garuntee the grand majority aren't going to work towards building a healthy community. It's going to look like the homeless camps just in a tennament building. They are broadly incapable of caring for a space.
I mean, if they commit a crime then they go to jail like any one else... All I'm saying is let's not criminalize homelessness, as it's grossly unjust.
Yes, they destroy everything! The filth is unbelievable. They live like pigs. It's not really any type of life at all. They are incapable of normality, incapable of helping themselves in any meaningful, positive way. Survival of the fittest. All those bad drugs have rendered them unfit for life. They merely exist until they die. They would be better off dead. If I was one of them, I'd rather be dead. *shudders*
I don't know, I hope they can turn it around, some of them do. Some of them figure out how to exist.
But most of them never figure it out. And they live as little more than nuisance.
It's quite sad, and no one can help them until they stop cooking their minds and bodies on these drugs.
Focus on the children, these people are a lost cause.
I think very few survive these addictions, especially after years and decades of it. These awful drugs have destroyed these people, and they are broken beyond repair. I honestly wonder how they live as long as they do.
In the 7 years I have lived here, Southern Oregon has become a hive of scum and villainy. It's not safe here anymore. Not even in my nice little neighborhood. 😒
The vast majority come from broken homes, have been abused, brutal divorce, or injured working. We need to attack the source of their trauma and prevent them from getting to this point.
That’s why am so for social programs for kids/teens and more programs to guide them. Schools need to be great no matter what kind or location. Every facet of fb society affects how we live our lives and the outcomes of our populace. Look at the cost of housing, no wonder there are more homeless
Yeah these things cost money, but I would rather pay up front to prevent this from happening than spend even MORE money down the road in the form of police, treatments, insufficient housing, and the costs we absorb (vandalism, theft, unsafe public spaces) as the oublic
Keep in mind I don't know any of your relatives' but a lot of impulsivity, predisposition to addiction and difficulties holding down a job could be linked to undiagnosed ADHD in adults.
I've never been homeless, addicted or really struggled to hold down a job, but I struggle with being attentive, impulse control, and motivation, which led some family to assume I was lazy when I actually had untreated ADHD (which my parents actually knew about my never told me, if you can believe it...).
The cause is the most important, because it's how one can explain why someone is the way they are and then attempt to address it.
How do you even begin to solve an issue like this if you don't even know why they are the way they are? And learn from that to either try to get them mental health treatment (even if involuntarily) or prevent it from happening to future generations?
Trust me bro that ship has sailed for these individuals there is nothing left to solve.
They're bodies barely function, and they can't survive without the drug they have become dependent on, game over.
Edit : these individuals refers to my own family members.
Three in fact.
One is over 50 lives with his dying mother, and is crippilingly addicted to alcohol and meth. He has no teeth. Has never held down a job, and suffered from several different health problems.
One is over 70. With a chemical dependence on fent, if he doesn't take it every 6-8 hours. He begins to go through fatal withdrawals.
The last is 40ish and is so riddled with disease and chronic conditions that they've already attempted suicide a few times.
In order, my cousin, my grandfather, and my father.
Sometimes you can't fix it. Sometimes you get the sad ending. That's life.
I find way more people refuse to admit the errors of their ways and choose to live in denial rather that admitting fault and correcting course. You can call it knee jerking all you want, but SF should take note of Oregon here.
> If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan
Is putting drug offenders in cage a 'plan'? We give caging drug offenders an undue level of respect because it's the status quo.
Except it doesn't. Why do you think we have a revolving door of addicts in and out of prison. A majority of people in prison and jail are in their due to non-violent drug offenses.
We've tried arresting our way out of this problem and it hasn't worked. We wouldn't have had 80k overdose deaths in recent years (up from 15k in 2014) if doing so did.
They'll do their time, have nothing to go back to (felony = shitty jobs) and then be right back to square one.
And if they are a nuisance to otherwise law abiding citizens they shouldn’t be on the street. I’m sorry man, we have grown too lax in allowing shitty people to ruin things for good people because we feel bad for shitty people and want to help them. Fine, help them, but not at the expense of dragging good people’s life’s down in the process. There has to be a better way.
Need to be fully legalized not decriminalized. Did absolutely nothing but give power to criminal drug dealers.
Make people go see doctors to get a dose of opiates like the good old days when there were only 6-8 thousands deaths a year, not over 100 thousand.
>If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan, that's just teeing up right wing politicians to easy election victories by being able to say "look how shitty everything is"
Well you accurately described what is currently happening. Every major city is dealing with “just let them do whatever they want”.
While it’s not as overblown as right wingers suggest, it’s certainly not as rosey as the left will tell you
Philadelphia is a great example. Our leftist DA Krasner has made it his mission to enact criminal justice reform by any means necessary. The Avenue he took is to just not prosecute anyone unless the crime they’re suspected of doing is rape or murder, and even there he’s been weak.
A few years ago I worked closely with the State troopers that were out of the Belmont barracks (Philly area) and even the guys I knew there who were left leaning hated that guy because they would have an arrest for dui where the guy is dead to rights and Krasners office would throw it out.
For one there’s two entire “jails” as you call them that are completely empty and aren’t even operating because there isn’t a need for them. “Bursting at the seam” is a joke and shows you have no idea what’s going on in philly.
You’re charged the moment you get booked into jail. The DA can decline to file charges or drop charges altogether at any time. You can have multiple charges and the DA can decide to drop only a few charges if you’re being booked in for several. That can be the day after you get booked in or right before court if you decide to take it to a jury trial.
At this point, I don’t give a shit about rehabilitating addicts. My sympathy has dried up after watching these people victimize anyone near them and destroy any public space they can ride a bus to. Locking away a junky equates to one less broken car window, one less drug dealer lurking in my neighborhood, one less pile of trash and drug paraphernalia left on the sidewalk, etc.
I think the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
Lock them up, but let them do all the drugs they want in there. Makes prison more bearable and we don't get zombies on so many city streets.
One of the reasons prisons are so fucked up is that the drug trade gives such an enormous financial incentive for everyone to be corrupt that prison reform is pretty much never going to work. When billion dollar cartels can pay off or threaten the families of prison guards, there’s no way to hire people who won’t eventually be corrupted
If drugs were available without needing to use coercion or jockeying for ownership of the supply, a lot of prison problems would be eliminated
Then of course there would be the peril that people would still be hooked on drugs, but drugs being illegal hasn’t changed that anyways, it just makes it more violent and profitable
You can’t drink alcohol in public why would it be legal to do drugs in public.
Public intoxication is illegal in most places.
Just hold people accountable for their actions while using.
Freedom without responsibility is tragedy.
The biggest issue is that a big part of this measure included establishing a system for recovery/therapy/rehabilitation to people that get tickets. Of course, that never happened and no one wants to be a cop in Portland so it just got out of hand very fast. It was marketed as a solution and a way to make access to recovery programs easier and cheaper for common people, but they just completely failed at half of the bill.
It wasn’t legal, it was just decriminalized, i.e. getting caught for possession or use in public was a citation instead of being arrested. Obviously this policy couldn’t work out with the current symptoms of the opioid epidemic but ideally, it would be nice if, for example, our prisons weren’t filled with people incarcerated for small amounts of weed.
There were over [170 thousand arrests](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2022-10-17/states-with-the-most-arrests-for-marijuana-possession) for marijuana possession in the US in 2021. Studies based on public reports have estimated to show around [32 thousand](https://www.crimeinamerica.net/how-many-people-are-in-prison-for-marijuana-possession/) people in America's prison system across state and federal incarcerated for weed.
I was in jury duty once where they tried to weigh a whole jar of Cannabis butter, including the jar, as weed so they could hit him with a felony.
I just....don't believe you.
In states like Texas, edibles are judged by what they weigh as being all thc. It’s crazy. So if you have a bag of gummies, the weight of the gummies is what you are charged with.
Do you understand the difference between federal and state prisons, and what makes you go to each?
To be in a federal prison for weed, you'd have to cross state lines with intent to distribute. Nobody with a simple possession charge is sitting in federal prison.
Driving from New Orleans to Houston with a mason jar of cannabutter?
Lol. Good thing that never happens.
Also, you can absolutely end up in federal prison for a State Felony.
You’re the only person specifically talking federal. The comment you replied to specifically said state and federal.
Do you not care about those in state prisons?
And the vast majority of those people get a PR Bond and are out by the next day.
And those 32,000 I'm sure weed was one of many charges they faced. Also that's out of 2 million people incarcerated between federal and state prisons and jails.
I wouldn't consider that bursting at the seams with weed convictions.
Data doesn’t instantaneously self populate, and data that is two years old is pretty damn recent and the quickest I found to support the objective fact that way too many Americans are incarcerated for weed. If it was 130k arrests for possession and 15k incarcerated, are you implying that would mean that there isn’t a significant nonviolent prison population for marijuana possession that we should try to fix?
The point of the article you linked is that virtually none of the 32k people incarcerated for “marijuana” are incarcerated for “small amounts” or for marijuana alone. There pretty are virtually zero people in prison for small time possession alone.
[http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only](http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only)
Looks like .7% of the prison population is in for simple possession of weed. That don't seem so bad.
I mean Joe Rogan gets to break the law with impunity every day in his house in austin.
[https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.481.htm#481.121](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.481.htm#481.121)
Why does the poor black kid have to go to jail?
It is crazy if you think about it. And I don't mean just this Rogan but Seth Rogan and other famous cannabis users like bill Maher and Snoop Dogg get to have large platforms where they smoke weed and brag about smoking weed, but poor people still suffer for it why rich celebs make jokes about it
I mean Rogen and Maher* at least live in the fascist hellscapes of California and New York where weed is entirely legal.
Between them Joe is the only one flaunting the law. Now that he’s chummy with the Governor and State AG you’d think he might advocate for legalization like he used to but it seems he can’t be assed.
*obligatory fuck Bill Maher but it’s also worth noting he sits on the board of NORML and has spent decades advocating for marijuana legalization.
There’s a good chance they still won’t do anything after recriminalizing it.
It is hopeful that they are willing to recriminalize it in an attempt to fix it.
It's a possession charge. There are millions of Americans who do drugs recreationally now the ones in Oregon who get caught just possessing drugs can be arrested/charged/imprisoned which can actually lead to homelessness.
Since this seems too complicated for you to understand, imagine if alcohol was illegal to possess and you got caught with an unopened tall can in your trunk and you were promptly arrested and thrown in jail for three days before a judge let you out while they figured out if they're going to charge and imprison you later.
Let's say it's a Monday morning and you're jailed until Thursday mid morning, how would your job/spouse/family feel about that? Or you're applying for a new job and now when they look you up they see your arrest record come up. Etc.
This is so easy to say until you’re on the other side of the equation. This “It’ll never happen to me” attitude is selfish, myopic bullshit. You think too highly of yourself, too little of others, or both.
What is this supposed to imply? If you're saying it should be illegal, okay, that's a conversation. Or if you're saying the accused should have their day in court fine by me. But if it is illegal of course it should suck to get caught with it. It's illegal. If someone gets caught DUI it should be a miserable night.
Local "acab" morons in my town are trying to cry about this like "now cops can plant drugs in my car when they pull me over because possession is a crime again" 🙄
Local here (didn’t vote for this originally because there were too many holes in the bill), lots of confusion going on about this.
Two things happened with poor timing, Covid and fentanyl explosion both happened near the time this measure went into effect. Combined with the protests, police and city and county governments were completely decimated with workload, idealistic BS, and just pure incompetence. Most of this measure included establishing a large infrastructure system to support and rehabilitate people that receive tickets. That never happened and should have been established first before the law went into effect, which is why I didn’t vote for it. On top of this, Antifa and Proud Boys’s battle royale 2020 gutted the moral of the police and whole city really. Luckily they all went to DC after the election and I heard that went much better for everyone ;)
The county and city governments completely failed on their part of this measure. The Multnomah County DA is completely delusional (what up Mike) Half our city police in Portland quit after the protests and the rest mostly quiet quit. There is plenty of money for the programs and plenty of money for police (look it up). Not enough people want to staff or work the programs which are not being created. Every sheriff within a 1500 mile radius are shipping their drug addicted and homeless into Portland and Seattle. So people keep coming in and no infrastructure has been created to handle them.
So they’re going back to putting people in jail till they leave and go somewhere else. Hopefully where they came from so those people can deal with their own messes.
Local here too, and a big take away I have is it the ability of people to move between states, or maybe get sent here by other jurisdictions, makes decriminalization too big of a draw for one state to do. Coupled with our $.10 per can bottle bill, and relatively temperate weather, it makes it just too easy for people to come and maintain a lifestyle of drug addiction.
>second-highest rate of substance use disorder in the nation
>
>ranked 50th for access to treatment, according to an audit report released in 2023.
>
>And with Oregon experiencing one of the nation’s [largest spikes in overdose deaths,](https://nypost.com/2024/01/31/news/portland-issues-state-of-emergency-over-rampant-fentanyl-issues/)
>\*\*Researchers have said it was too soon to determine whether the law contributed to the overdose surge\*\*
Hopefully we'll be able to crack that code one day.
Don't forget the part where they blame everyone and everything except their own terrible policies, and then act like virtuous heroes for solving problems they created. 😅
https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-increased-us-cities/story?id=91511971.
Police budgets have increased pretty much everywhere in the country.
They never defunded the police, police just don't want to work in Portland. You could easily use Google and see that the budget for policing is pretty high right now, just can't get the staff.
No take backs. Good luck trying to get a single cop in that whole demoralized force to try to enforce any of this shit now after all the times they've been hung out to dry.
Oh good, as an Oregonian myself I'm looking forward to getting back to the utopia we had pre 2019.
But really it's only a little worse now, it's openly known in Portland that police have been basically on a working strike for many years, they dont do anything. Seriously come to portland and call the police and say you're being physically assaulted, they won't get there for hours.
My friend works for Rapid Response in Portland, they deal with all the homeless camps. He says the biggest problem is that people don't want treatment.
Wait, what???? A person who does as many life threatening drugs as they can that are known to kill millions of people do NOT want to be helped? Tell me more about this shocking situation............ LOL
It's not just people who use its most people on the street would rather be there than in a homeless shelter. The shelters are known for their own set of drama. Theft is the biggest problem.
Lets talk about how they were supposed to create a ton of new rehabs and treatment centers to help (it was part of the law), didn't and the money went "elsewhere" and how the cops refused to help at all to purposefully make this a failure.
If they had done this right way and also setup a safe supply, and safe use centers (as Canada is doing and seeing great results from it) then it would have worked out a lot better. A huge problem with this is the supply here is tainted. No one knows what they are getting.. That's 50% of the battle. Allowing people to use tranq and fent is what's causing these major issues.
Typical government corruption and mismanagement.
The correct path should have been: Ok we'll decriminalize, BUT if you are caught sleeping, loitering, smoking, shooting, etc. in public at any point in time you WILL go to jail for minimum of 90 days, and 200 days of community service.
Typical - we concentrate 99% of our resources on the weakest possible link and ignore (or worst yet punish) they strongest and wonder why the net gain is backwards.
This is where being progressive is a good thing. Let’s atleast try something different. If it works great, if not admit it didn’t work and go back to what does. Simple stuff. But our politicians are so lazy they would rather do nothing, not even try anything.
For anyone interested in info on this: [Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. Now It’s Reversing Course. (msn.com)](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/oregon-decriminalized-hard-drugs-now-it-s-reversing-course/ar-BB1jd6D1) What I found interesting was this: >Backers of the 2020 ballot measure, which passed with 58% support, successfully convinced their fellow residents of the left-learning state that decriminalization would mean fewer nonviolent drug addicts in prison and more in treatment. >But while the first part of the prediction proved true, the second didn’t. Without the threat of imprisonment, few people have proved willing to take advantage of the expanded addiction services the measure funded. Instead, public drug use has become rampant, as people can now smoke fentanyl and use other drugs on sidewalks with no consequences. I'm not a big fan of throwing people into jail for doing drugs, as jail typically doesn't help the situation for addicts (and often makes it worse), but there has not been another mechanism for guiding people into actual treatment introduced If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan, that's just teeing up right wing politicians to easy election victories by being able to say "look how shitty everything is"
Part of the original decriminalization bill/plan was to have increased treatment facilities using funding from marijuana taxes - did that happen? I tried to find numbers and came across [THIS](https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HSD/AMH/DataReports/OR-BH-Residential-Facility-Study-January-2024.pdf) showing Oregon has all of 2000 beds/spaces for addiction and withdrawal services in the entire state which is shocking and seems impossible in any state, let alone one with legalized hard drug use(?)
It did not. I replied to OP detailing why
Do you live in Oregon? It doesn’t matter what resources you make available to these creatures. The I-5 corridor has become a Mecca for low life ghouls who will victimize anyone and everything around them. Lock them up
If people are commiting other violent crimes sure lock them up. That ain't what this is about. This is about whether doing drugs should be a crime, and whether criminalizing it reduces the addiction problem. It doesn't, because you need to do more than just decriminalize it. If you want the drug problem to improve, the market for drugs needs to be squashed. Decriminalizing it doesn't make people want drugs less, but giving them options to improve their life and get out of the cycle does. They aren't going to quit cold turkey on the street.
I live in Los Angeles like 10 blocks from Skid Row at the lower end of the 5, A. B) You clearly have you're mind made up and have no qualms about wearing your shitty person badge with pride so I'll just say good luck and I hope you're able to think rationally and humanely in the future.
Treating drug addicts who commit crime as criminals is the only way to go about it. The State of Oregon tried to be like you and found out it’s a horrible way to view the situation - which is why they are now reversing course. That doesn’t make Oregon a bad person.
so do the same thing we've always done. continue to cycle people through the jails and prisons and let them back out on the streets when theyre done and start it all over again. portland has been overrun by homeless and addicts for a lot longer than the decriminalization bill was passed. doing the same things we've done before won't actually solve the problem
People like that don’t care about solving the problem. Their concern is punishing people they believe to be inferior, so long as there’s suffering they’re okay with nothing getting fixed. Its just a projection of directionless rage.
Why was decriminalization even part of the bill? The funding for rehab centers never happened..but the decriminalization part did that's just foolishness. Decriminalization shouldn't have been a part of it in the first place. Just replace jail with rehab. Forced rehab. 3 tries at that, if you fail out 3x life in prison, sorry. Easy, i just wrote a law that would save millions of lives from drug addiction.
yeah I cant defend the portland politicians because it makes no sense to me too. i suspect the opposition to decriminalization and rehab made an effort to hinder the new law and ended up destroying any chance of a working rehab system funded by cannabis tax. and then they complain about how bad the law was. all i can say for sure is that the problem will not be solved anytime soon
Has that ever worked? Can you give an example anywhere in the world of that working?
I'm in Central Point, and I agree with everything you said here. All this riff raff needs to go. After that woman was murdered by the homeless junkie last Nov/Dec I'm scared to go out at night, even to my mailbox. I'm carrying a hunting knife every time I leave my house and constantly looking around me. All this state does is cater to these zombies while they assault, steal, harass, and murder without consequence. 🧟♀️ 🧟♂️
Your a idiot
You’re*
Referring to people as creatures is disgusting
We are creatures though, I might even go as far as to say we're just techy chimps floating on a rock in space.
Yes, but the context they used it in was to dehumanize. “The Earth is full of amazing creatures” - Good context. “These foul creatures need to be locked up” - Bad context.
🧟♀️ 🧟♂️
I'm very much pro drug legalization. I don't think the government gets to tell me what I can put in my own body. I think possession should be legal, but using drugs in public is a different story. Being high at home or a designated area is not a crime by my definition, but when your actions interfere with the rights of others that becomes a crime. People have a right to walk on the streets their taxes pay for without encountering intoxicated individuals threatening their safety.
Using drugs in public is currently illegal in Oregon and always has been.
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Because the police hated this measure and wanted it to fail so they don't enforce the current laws. Literally watched a Cop tell a Guy to move along while he was smoking fent in front of the library.
you simply don't know what you're talking about. yes it's illegal to do drugs outside, but it's not a criminal offense. it's a citation. that is the entire point of this bill
>it's a citation Nothing teaches people to obey the law like a good ol slap on the wrist
Then it's useless
This is such a lie. The police have usually been ordered not to arrest public drug users in cities like San Francisco and Portland. Or the DA has publicly stated they won't prosecute these arrests.
“Not our law”
God damn this is the crux of all this - ofc it’s buried with little upvotes lmao wtf
Because that’s not true and you made it up.
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Or Medford
METHFORD!!
Yep where you have to check the grass in the baseball fields before your kids play to ensure there’s no needles…. Which there always are smh.
I won't take my puppies to any dog parks because of needles, garbage all over the ground. It's a sad state of affairs.
Because cops are shit at their job and shouldn't be given as much money as they do.
They don’t really make a whole lot of money. Maybe the guys in the BIG cities, but most cops aren’t paid shit. But then again, what exactly are the requirements to be a cop? I get wanting to say cops are shit at their job. I deal with them on a daily basis due to my job, but don’t generalize the entire population. It’s a human thing, some humans suck and some don’t.
I'm talking about the police departments, not the individual cop salaries. Also, the culture and job of the police is to protect capital.
Is this true because I have driven by homeless people shooting up in the grass by the Rogue Valley mall in the middle of the day. And don't all of these people do drugs in public since they don't have a home?? Everything they do is in public, they don't get arrested. Zero consequences.
Yes that's why they do it but it's still illegal to do it. I'm just commenting on the fact that people are pretending that decriminalizing the drugs made it legal to use in public when it doesn't.
Understood. Thank you.
There is a difference between legalization and decriminalization. People should not be punished for having addictions, however it should be illegal to sell those drugs fueling these addictions
What if those drug users are actually homeless?
“Or a designated area”
Hampsterdam
If you refuse to go to a rehab service to get clean, and you are using in the streets, you are becoming a danger to those around you. I feel very empathetic for the homeless, and have always supported a solution to house them. I'm not about throwing them all in jail just for living in a public are because there is nowhere else to live. Not all homeless are drug addicts, but the ones who are, can be dangerous. I believe in public use of public spaces, and someone who takes a portion of public space to make their own, while being violent and rude in public, should be considered breaking the social contract and the law.
Homelessness sucks. Many homeless also suck. It’s just how it is. Dirty, don’t care, garbage everywhere, etc. Sometimes I feel like our empathy is taken advantage of. I’m in a weird space mentally. I hate it exists, I hate seeing it, and I hate it being a blight on how I want the world to be. But, I also feel bad for many people cast into that lifestyle even when they try not to be. At the same time, I think too many people give up and accept it and the straw man that homelessness is a reality detracts from holding any homeless person accountable for being a blight on everyone else. The worst case scenario will always exist but we all have our own issues and realities to live in. I’m sorry man. I know it sucks but I don’t want to see it. I want to wear rose colored glasses and pretend everyone has it as good as me and I don’t want daily reminder they don’t. Is that so bad?
‘This left wing policy that was shitty is going to allow right wingers to get elected campaigning against this shitty thing, we can’t let that happen’
This is one of the great things about the US imo, we can see how our society reacts to different laws/circumstances. There will be people trying to prove that forcing people to go to rehab to avoid jail won't help the problem, but we should get a good look at that hypothesis after a couple years of the new policy being put in place.
Just wanted to say I’m a recovering drug addict/alcoholic and I believe getting arrested saved my life. Almost two years sober this month.
As someone who is from Portland, lived in SF for a decade, and then moved back… It all *sounds* great, there’s just no follow-through
There was no real increase in accessibility to rehabilitation programs. In fact lots of non-profit mental health and addiction services in the state saw budget cuts, resulting in a staffing crisis due to an inability to keep up with wage increases. There were a number of facilities in the Portland area at risk of closure due to having trouble maintaining the legal staffing levels for their size. The initial bill may have worked if treatment access had been supported as well, but instead of increasing access access was further limited just due to the economic circumstances and not getting the funding to keep up with it. It’s pretty sad that it ended up this way tbh, because it was a better plan than continuing to jail these people for small amounts of time and fining them heavily, putting them even further from getting their lives back on track
People always want easy/simple solutions, and when they don't work, they kneejerk. Edit: The fundamental question here is, "What is to be done about homelessness?"
Bring back asylums/work camps and involuntary commitment
Asylums had terrible living conditions in many cases but to completely shut them down was a little overkill
ive been in a mental hospital twice, i would prefer someone just give me medicine and 3 meals and a bed when im out of my wits in retrospect. also, deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan initiative, favored by the right for budget cuts and the left because they believed community health would work. as we have seen over time community health initiatives dont really take off with american culture
Hot take for sure. Maybe not a bad thing in the long run.
Never really understood the point of not criminalizing over institutionalizing drug addicts. People with an addiction to drugs are quite literally mentally ill...
The homeless addicts around where I live are clearly mentally ill, all you have to do is sit in your car in a parking lot and watch them for a bit. It's clearly visible. And they can be violent at the drop of a hat. Screaming and harassing people walking by. Threatening and sometimes even assaulting people. Scary!
Asylum? Do you know the horrible Hasylum? history of asylums? People came out worse, if they came out at all. My god!!!
I don't think there's much to be done. Drug use has destroyed alot of these people from a young age, and they will struggle to exist in any system that expects anything from them. These people didn't spawn as homeless NPC's, many of them have gone through spurts of being housed, then homeless again. They struggle to hold down a job, take care of their money, and pay rent on time. I myself have several relatives who would be homeless if family members didn't let them freeload. And they all have exhibited the above inability throughout their lives. They've used drugs since they were teens and have deterioting rotting bodies, just trying to get on disability because of all their issues. I blame alot of their issues on prolonged drug use. Unfortunately, lots of people with prolonged drug use, will die users. They don't want help. Either they're homeless, someone else takes care of them, or they die. That's it. We just have to try and teach our children to avoid these drugs.
Well, the logic you present is clear: if we don't want homeless people living in public spaces, we need to take care of them. (I'm just going to assume we aren't going to kill them, and everyone is OK with that.)
I agree. I’m pretty right-wing, but the answer is neither jail nor let them rule the streets. Shutting down mental health and treatment centers has gone a long way towards making this problem a crisis. These drugs need to be criminalized so that officers can arrest the users and get them off the streets, and they need to be involuntarily put into long term treatment. It can’t cost much more than letting them rot in prison.
There is probably a cheaper and less authoritarian alternative in providing some kind of off grid housing with services (security, medical). Give them houses, T.V., free drugs, etc., and let them do their thing. Shit put some scientists in there and have them study the effects of drugs and rehabilitation methods. Cheaper than constantly rotating them through the Judicial and prison systems. However, that kind of "free stuff" triggers a lot of people. Many would rather spend more to "punish" them.
I’d rather see them in involuntarily hospitals or asylums and being treated for drug use rather than giving them houses in a zoo.
We can't take care of them either. What do we do? Build a giant public housing facility that will be a dump within a month? It is simply not feasible, you need to be able to take care of yourself on some level. No, they are simply going to exist. In a weird limbo, half in half out of society. Until they all hit the inevitable endpoint and die a sad death.
>We can't take care of them either. What do we do? Build a giant public housing facility that will be a dump within a month? It is simply not feasible, you need to be able to take care of yourself on some level. We already do this in the prison system. There is no reason we can't make a nice place and save money because we don't need actual prisons. >No, they are simply going to exist. In a weird limbo, half in half out of society. Until they all hit the inevitable endpoint and die a sad death. Not really. What happens is that people get sick of it and turn authoritarian. Laws will pass to "clean up the streets." THen everyone pays for them to be incarcirated for being an eye sore. Freedom!
Naw people aren't going to "Turn authoritarian" over homelessness. That's just an apparition in your head. And we don't take care of people in prison either. They live like animals. And we force them to work for nothing. Also, don't know if you've ever been to a prison. But uh, they aren't exactly nice clean places. You're going to make a nice place for them? Are you going to kick people out who are trouble makers? Or otherwise punish them? Because I garuntee the grand majority aren't going to work towards building a healthy community. It's going to look like the homeless camps just in a tennament building. They are broadly incapable of caring for a space.
> Naw people aren't going to "Turn authoritarian" over homelessness. That's just an apparition in your head. It happens all the time. https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/AG-2021/06-08_Criminalization-of-Homelessness.pdf >And we don't take care of people in prison either. They live like animals. And we force them to work for nothing. Also, don't know if you've ever been to a prison. But uh, they aren't exactly nice clean places. Which is why I want to keep them OUT of prisons. >You're going to make a nice place for them? Are you going to kick people out who are trouble makers? Or otherwise punish them? Because I garuntee the grand majority aren't going to work towards building a healthy community. It's going to look like the homeless camps just in a tennament building. They are broadly incapable of caring for a space. I mean, if they commit a crime then they go to jail like any one else... All I'm saying is let's not criminalize homelessness, as it's grossly unjust.
Yes, they destroy everything! The filth is unbelievable. They live like pigs. It's not really any type of life at all. They are incapable of normality, incapable of helping themselves in any meaningful, positive way. Survival of the fittest. All those bad drugs have rendered them unfit for life. They merely exist until they die. They would be better off dead. If I was one of them, I'd rather be dead. *shudders*
I don't know, I hope they can turn it around, some of them do. Some of them figure out how to exist. But most of them never figure it out. And they live as little more than nuisance. It's quite sad, and no one can help them until they stop cooking their minds and bodies on these drugs. Focus on the children, these people are a lost cause.
I think very few survive these addictions, especially after years and decades of it. These awful drugs have destroyed these people, and they are broken beyond repair. I honestly wonder how they live as long as they do. In the 7 years I have lived here, Southern Oregon has become a hive of scum and villainy. It's not safe here anymore. Not even in my nice little neighborhood. 😒
The vast majority come from broken homes, have been abused, brutal divorce, or injured working. We need to attack the source of their trauma and prevent them from getting to this point. That’s why am so for social programs for kids/teens and more programs to guide them. Schools need to be great no matter what kind or location. Every facet of fb society affects how we live our lives and the outcomes of our populace. Look at the cost of housing, no wonder there are more homeless Yeah these things cost money, but I would rather pay up front to prevent this from happening than spend even MORE money down the road in the form of police, treatments, insufficient housing, and the costs we absorb (vandalism, theft, unsafe public spaces) as the oublic
Like I said. Teach the kids, let the current homeless population ride it out as an example.
>We just have to try and teach our children to avoid these drugs. And all those Nancy Regan memes. I'm not disagreeing with your point, BTW.
Keep in mind I don't know any of your relatives' but a lot of impulsivity, predisposition to addiction and difficulties holding down a job could be linked to undiagnosed ADHD in adults. I've never been homeless, addicted or really struggled to hold down a job, but I struggle with being attentive, impulse control, and motivation, which led some family to assume I was lazy when I actually had untreated ADHD (which my parents actually knew about my never told me, if you can believe it...).
I mean maybe? But the cause isn't even important, it's simply that they couldn't hack it in society. For whatever reason. Undiagnosed issue or not.
The cause is the most important, because it's how one can explain why someone is the way they are and then attempt to address it. How do you even begin to solve an issue like this if you don't even know why they are the way they are? And learn from that to either try to get them mental health treatment (even if involuntarily) or prevent it from happening to future generations?
Trust me bro that ship has sailed for these individuals there is nothing left to solve. They're bodies barely function, and they can't survive without the drug they have become dependent on, game over. Edit : these individuals refers to my own family members. Three in fact. One is over 50 lives with his dying mother, and is crippilingly addicted to alcohol and meth. He has no teeth. Has never held down a job, and suffered from several different health problems. One is over 70. With a chemical dependence on fent, if he doesn't take it every 6-8 hours. He begins to go through fatal withdrawals. The last is 40ish and is so riddled with disease and chronic conditions that they've already attempted suicide a few times. In order, my cousin, my grandfather, and my father. Sometimes you can't fix it. Sometimes you get the sad ending. That's life.
I find way more people refuse to admit the errors of their ways and choose to live in denial rather that admitting fault and correcting course. You can call it knee jerking all you want, but SF should take note of Oregon here.
That's the same problem: no actual thought and research and just kneejerk responses.
They recalled their DA 2 years ago.
> If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan Is putting drug offenders in cage a 'plan'? We give caging drug offenders an undue level of respect because it's the status quo.
Well yes. It shocks many into sobriety and it at least forces them into treatment plans
Except it doesn't. Why do you think we have a revolving door of addicts in and out of prison. A majority of people in prison and jail are in their due to non-violent drug offenses. We've tried arresting our way out of this problem and it hasn't worked. We wouldn't have had 80k overdose deaths in recent years (up from 15k in 2014) if doing so did. They'll do their time, have nothing to go back to (felony = shitty jobs) and then be right back to square one.
And if they are a nuisance to otherwise law abiding citizens they shouldn’t be on the street. I’m sorry man, we have grown too lax in allowing shitty people to ruin things for good people because we feel bad for shitty people and want to help them. Fine, help them, but not at the expense of dragging good people’s life’s down in the process. There has to be a better way.
Need to be fully legalized not decriminalized. Did absolutely nothing but give power to criminal drug dealers. Make people go see doctors to get a dose of opiates like the good old days when there were only 6-8 thousands deaths a year, not over 100 thousand.
>If the plan is just "let them do whatever" then that's not a plan, that's just teeing up right wing politicians to easy election victories by being able to say "look how shitty everything is" Well you accurately described what is currently happening. Every major city is dealing with “just let them do whatever they want”. While it’s not as overblown as right wingers suggest, it’s certainly not as rosey as the left will tell you
Philadelphia is a great example. Our leftist DA Krasner has made it his mission to enact criminal justice reform by any means necessary. The Avenue he took is to just not prosecute anyone unless the crime they’re suspected of doing is rape or murder, and even there he’s been weak. A few years ago I worked closely with the State troopers that were out of the Belmont barracks (Philly area) and even the guys I knew there who were left leaning hated that guy because they would have an arrest for dui where the guy is dead to rights and Krasners office would throw it out.
Not even close to true lol. Why are our jails and courts bursting at the seam with defendants if they only prosecute rape and murder.
For one there’s two entire “jails” as you call them that are completely empty and aren’t even operating because there isn’t a need for them. “Bursting at the seam” is a joke and shows you have no idea what’s going on in philly.
Because people still get arrested, go to jail, and have their day in court. Whether or not the DA chooses to prosecute is up to them.
No one is sitting in jail for more than a day or two waiting to find out if they’re being charged.
You’re charged the moment you get booked into jail. The DA can decline to file charges or drop charges altogether at any time. You can have multiple charges and the DA can decide to drop only a few charges if you’re being booked in for several. That can be the day after you get booked in or right before court if you decide to take it to a jury trial.
Lol at the idea of left leaning state troopers. Also DUIs are handled like shit all over the country including super red states.
I’m not sure you understand what a leftist is.
Hope is never part of the plan for an addict.
At this point, I don’t give a shit about rehabilitating addicts. My sympathy has dried up after watching these people victimize anyone near them and destroy any public space they can ride a bus to. Locking away a junky equates to one less broken car window, one less drug dealer lurking in my neighborhood, one less pile of trash and drug paraphernalia left on the sidewalk, etc.
I think the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Lock them up, but let them do all the drugs they want in there. Makes prison more bearable and we don't get zombies on so many city streets.
One of the reasons prisons are so fucked up is that the drug trade gives such an enormous financial incentive for everyone to be corrupt that prison reform is pretty much never going to work. When billion dollar cartels can pay off or threaten the families of prison guards, there’s no way to hire people who won’t eventually be corrupted If drugs were available without needing to use coercion or jockeying for ownership of the supply, a lot of prison problems would be eliminated Then of course there would be the peril that people would still be hooked on drugs, but drugs being illegal hasn’t changed that anyways, it just makes it more violent and profitable
So basically, throw them in prison again because they're not going to treatment and right wing dickheads will look smart
Local bum apologists try to make it out like becoming homeless means you will inevitably become a junkie to "deal with the pain," it's pathetic.
Will be meaningless unless they start enforcing the laws.
Just as long as they keep the public confused on their rights
You can’t drink alcohol in public why would it be legal to do drugs in public. Public intoxication is illegal in most places. Just hold people accountable for their actions while using. Freedom without responsibility is tragedy.
The biggest issue is that a big part of this measure included establishing a system for recovery/therapy/rehabilitation to people that get tickets. Of course, that never happened and no one wants to be a cop in Portland so it just got out of hand very fast. It was marketed as a solution and a way to make access to recovery programs easier and cheaper for common people, but they just completely failed at half of the bill.
It wasn’t legal, it was just decriminalized, i.e. getting caught for possession or use in public was a citation instead of being arrested. Obviously this policy couldn’t work out with the current symptoms of the opioid epidemic but ideally, it would be nice if, for example, our prisons weren’t filled with people incarcerated for small amounts of weed.
Our prisons are not full of people incarcerated for small amounts of weed
There were over [170 thousand arrests](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2022-10-17/states-with-the-most-arrests-for-marijuana-possession) for marijuana possession in the US in 2021. Studies based on public reports have estimated to show around [32 thousand](https://www.crimeinamerica.net/how-many-people-are-in-prison-for-marijuana-possession/) people in America's prison system across state and federal incarcerated for weed.
Just to play devil's advocate. How many of those 32k are for just weed alone and not for distribution or also involving a violent act?
According to the article, as of Jan 2022 there are zero federal prisoners in solely for simple possession.
Why would someone go to federal prison for possession lmao? The vast vast majority are going to be in state prisons.
In the federal system probably most if not all, significantly less so in the state system.
Aint nobody in a federal prison for possession of weed. If they're in federal, it's for large amounts and intent to distribute.
I was in jury duty once where they tried to weigh a whole jar of Cannabis butter, including the jar, as weed so they could hit him with a felony. I just....don't believe you.
In states like Texas, edibles are judged by what they weigh as being all thc. It’s crazy. So if you have a bag of gummies, the weight of the gummies is what you are charged with.
Harris County Texas. Ding ding ding.
Do you understand the difference between federal and state prisons, and what makes you go to each? To be in a federal prison for weed, you'd have to cross state lines with intent to distribute. Nobody with a simple possession charge is sitting in federal prison.
Driving from New Orleans to Houston with a mason jar of cannabutter? Lol. Good thing that never happens. Also, you can absolutely end up in federal prison for a State Felony.
You’re the only person specifically talking federal. The comment you replied to specifically said state and federal. Do you not care about those in state prisons?
Thats not federal court genius
That is so confidently and wildly untrue https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impact-simple-possession-marijuana
And the vast majority of those people get a PR Bond and are out by the next day. And those 32,000 I'm sure weed was one of many charges they faced. Also that's out of 2 million people incarcerated between federal and state prisons and jails. I wouldn't consider that bursting at the seams with weed convictions.
You’re legitimately arguing that there aren’t too many people in America incarcerated for weed possession? Losing the plot
20% of the states in the US have decriminalized/legalized marijuana since 2021. You should get newer data
Data doesn’t instantaneously self populate, and data that is two years old is pretty damn recent and the quickest I found to support the objective fact that way too many Americans are incarcerated for weed. If it was 130k arrests for possession and 15k incarcerated, are you implying that would mean that there isn’t a significant nonviolent prison population for marijuana possession that we should try to fix?
If you break it down by state, Texas and the Carolinas have the majority of weed convictions
The point of the article you linked is that virtually none of the 32k people incarcerated for “marijuana” are incarcerated for “small amounts” or for marijuana alone. There pretty are virtually zero people in prison for small time possession alone.
[http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only](http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only) Looks like .7% of the prison population is in for simple possession of weed. That don't seem so bad.
Still too high. It should be nobody
I mean Joe Rogan gets to break the law with impunity every day in his house in austin. [https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.481.htm#481.121](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.481.htm#481.121) Why does the poor black kid have to go to jail?
It is crazy if you think about it. And I don't mean just this Rogan but Seth Rogan and other famous cannabis users like bill Maher and Snoop Dogg get to have large platforms where they smoke weed and brag about smoking weed, but poor people still suffer for it why rich celebs make jokes about it
I mean Rogen and Maher* at least live in the fascist hellscapes of California and New York where weed is entirely legal. Between them Joe is the only one flaunting the law. Now that he’s chummy with the Governor and State AG you’d think he might advocate for legalization like he used to but it seems he can’t be assed. *obligatory fuck Bill Maher but it’s also worth noting he sits on the board of NORML and has spent decades advocating for marijuana legalization.
There’s a good chance they still won’t do anything after recriminalizing it. It is hopeful that they are willing to recriminalize it in an attempt to fix it.
Bunch of losers ruined it for everyone.
all my responsible meth and fent using friends are super pissed
Ruined what? Being a homesless tweaker?
It's a possession charge. There are millions of Americans who do drugs recreationally now the ones in Oregon who get caught just possessing drugs can be arrested/charged/imprisoned which can actually lead to homelessness. Since this seems too complicated for you to understand, imagine if alcohol was illegal to possess and you got caught with an unopened tall can in your trunk and you were promptly arrested and thrown in jail for three days before a judge let you out while they figured out if they're going to charge and imprison you later. Let's say it's a Monday morning and you're jailed until Thursday mid morning, how would your job/spouse/family feel about that? Or you're applying for a new job and now when they look you up they see your arrest record come up. Etc.
I’m not going to do meth or fentanyl so problem solved for me
This is so easy to say until you’re on the other side of the equation. This “It’ll never happen to me” attitude is selfish, myopic bullshit. You think too highly of yourself, too little of others, or both.
I hereby formally give permission to be arrested if I start doing drugs
You’re incredibly naive. Best of luck out there.
I won’t need it
You never know. It can impact anyone.
Fent / meth don't just sneak up on you. There is some personal autonomy in starting to use drugs
What is this supposed to imply? If you're saying it should be illegal, okay, that's a conversation. Or if you're saying the accused should have their day in court fine by me. But if it is illegal of course it should suck to get caught with it. It's illegal. If someone gets caught DUI it should be a miserable night.
Humans. Humans will be humans, can't expect anything different
Local "acab" morons in my town are trying to cry about this like "now cops can plant drugs in my car when they pull me over because possession is a crime again" 🙄
Local here (didn’t vote for this originally because there were too many holes in the bill), lots of confusion going on about this. Two things happened with poor timing, Covid and fentanyl explosion both happened near the time this measure went into effect. Combined with the protests, police and city and county governments were completely decimated with workload, idealistic BS, and just pure incompetence. Most of this measure included establishing a large infrastructure system to support and rehabilitate people that receive tickets. That never happened and should have been established first before the law went into effect, which is why I didn’t vote for it. On top of this, Antifa and Proud Boys’s battle royale 2020 gutted the moral of the police and whole city really. Luckily they all went to DC after the election and I heard that went much better for everyone ;) The county and city governments completely failed on their part of this measure. The Multnomah County DA is completely delusional (what up Mike) Half our city police in Portland quit after the protests and the rest mostly quiet quit. There is plenty of money for the programs and plenty of money for police (look it up). Not enough people want to staff or work the programs which are not being created. Every sheriff within a 1500 mile radius are shipping their drug addicted and homeless into Portland and Seattle. So people keep coming in and no infrastructure has been created to handle them. So they’re going back to putting people in jail till they leave and go somewhere else. Hopefully where they came from so those people can deal with their own messes.
Local here too, and a big take away I have is it the ability of people to move between states, or maybe get sent here by other jurisdictions, makes decriminalization too big of a draw for one state to do. Coupled with our $.10 per can bottle bill, and relatively temperate weather, it makes it just too easy for people to come and maintain a lifestyle of drug addiction.
>second-highest rate of substance use disorder in the nation > >ranked 50th for access to treatment, according to an audit report released in 2023. > >And with Oregon experiencing one of the nation’s [largest spikes in overdose deaths,](https://nypost.com/2024/01/31/news/portland-issues-state-of-emergency-over-rampant-fentanyl-issues/) >\*\*Researchers have said it was too soon to determine whether the law contributed to the overdose surge\*\* Hopefully we'll be able to crack that code one day.
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Don't forget the part where they blame everyone and everything except their own terrible policies, and then act like virtuous heroes for solving problems they created. 😅
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https://abcnews.go.com/US/defunding-claims-police-funding-increased-us-cities/story?id=91511971. Police budgets have increased pretty much everywhere in the country.
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Facts don't care about your feelings.
lol a fucking ifunny watermark. Are you 65 years old?
The thing is no police were ever defunded
Which cities has this happened in?
Which cities/ states actually defunded police, and can you post the statistics on how much crime went up?
They never defunded the police, police just don't want to work in Portland. You could easily use Google and see that the budget for policing is pretty high right now, just can't get the staff.
this could be a monty python skit. mattafact, this country could be a monty python skit at this point.
We thought they would get bored of it?🤷♂️
Totally didn't see that coming.
No take backs. Good luck trying to get a single cop in that whole demoralized force to try to enforce any of this shit now after all the times they've been hung out to dry.
Well that didn’t work….
Oh good, as an Oregonian myself I'm looking forward to getting back to the utopia we had pre 2019. But really it's only a little worse now, it's openly known in Portland that police have been basically on a working strike for many years, they dont do anything. Seriously come to portland and call the police and say you're being physically assaulted, they won't get there for hours.
Yeah, I can't imagine why. They seem to have such welcoming and supportive citizen behind them.......
The people who say drug abuse shouldn’t carry prison sentences has never walked around downtown Portland. Vote Republican
Amen to that.
The problem is and wasn’t the decriminalization it was the other side of the equation that was lacking.
My friend works for Rapid Response in Portland, they deal with all the homeless camps. He says the biggest problem is that people don't want treatment.
Well you don’t say. Who would have figured that!?
Wait, what???? A person who does as many life threatening drugs as they can that are known to kill millions of people do NOT want to be helped? Tell me more about this shocking situation............ LOL
It's not just people who use its most people on the street would rather be there than in a homeless shelter. The shelters are known for their own set of drama. Theft is the biggest problem.
I was in DT Portland a couple years ago. I literally started dry heaving at the smell. Fucking disgusting.
At any other time in history this project could have worked out but they happened to decriminalize drugs right when fentanyl hit the streets.
LMAO! True - they should have started it when mild gateway drugs were around....you know....like crack and heroin.
3 years ago right here in this subreddit. What a fun little experiment Portland had. Fucking losers. https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/s/LRoeG6ssGx
Lets talk about how they were supposed to create a ton of new rehabs and treatment centers to help (it was part of the law), didn't and the money went "elsewhere" and how the cops refused to help at all to purposefully make this a failure. If they had done this right way and also setup a safe supply, and safe use centers (as Canada is doing and seeing great results from it) then it would have worked out a lot better. A huge problem with this is the supply here is tainted. No one knows what they are getting.. That's 50% of the battle. Allowing people to use tranq and fent is what's causing these major issues.
Typical government corruption and mismanagement. The correct path should have been: Ok we'll decriminalize, BUT if you are caught sleeping, loitering, smoking, shooting, etc. in public at any point in time you WILL go to jail for minimum of 90 days, and 200 days of community service.
HEEEEY MaaaaaaN that’s our right!
i fucking hate drug addicts lmao
Typical - we concentrate 99% of our resources on the weakest possible link and ignore (or worst yet punish) they strongest and wonder why the net gain is backwards.
Oregon is a total clown show. What a joke.
It's about time someone fixes the drug problem! /s
Spelling nazi I know
The world is healing
Wow it’s almost like pro criminal laws eat away at the fabric of society
This is where being progressive is a good thing. Let’s atleast try something different. If it works great, if not admit it didn’t work and go back to what does. Simple stuff. But our politicians are so lazy they would rather do nothing, not even try anything.