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.
They decriminalized without a real plan to help people.
They had the plan, they just neither funded nor implemented it.
Exactly. The elected officials of Oregon failed and now they are covering for their failure by undoing the will of the voters instead of enacting the will of the voters.
I don’t even get how they have the authority to do this. Measure 110 was enacted as an amendment to the Oregon constitution, so it seems like it would require another amendment to rescind that and recriminalize possession.
Don’t forget the fact that many of the idiots who live near Idaho actively boycott legislative sessions because being reasonable makes them sad.
100x this. They copied other plans but skipped the extensive, expensive rehabilitation part. We should have ponied up the money and done it right.
I think having no plan is still better than throwing people in jail for this lol
Possession of heroin and methamphetamine should absolutely be legal in my opinion, but the legalization will only work with a universal healthcare system also in place. It’s not even about people who get addicted after taking them recreationally. Drug addiction, especially opioid addiction, is often about treating chronic pain, not getting pleasure out of it. People either got addicted to them from their doctors getting them hooked on them in the first place and they can no longer afford to get them by prescription or they resorted to them out of desperation because they couldn’t afford to see a doctor about the chronic pain in the first place.
And then there are the people who resort to these substances because they have no other way to escape, even temporarily, from the horrible conditions that come from being poor in America.
Sure, there are wealthy drug addicts too, but they aren’t going to be the ones being put in jail over this.
The wealthy ones still get good quality cocaine without having to worry that they’re getting an accidental speedball. That’s even hard as a middle class casual user.
“Good quality” is actually another reason to legalize all drugs. To stop them from being tainted.
You don’t have to convince me. I was a very casual (once a year or so) user but absolutely will not touch the shit going around right now. I’ve seen several accidental speedballs and I would almost swear there’s a variety of coke going around here that’s just cheap meth cut with lidocaine judging by the way people are acting on it.
Just 4 years ago it was pretty easy to find quality illicit drugs at reasonable prices. Now it’s all some variety of cheap opioid or cheap meth.
I’m fine because I don’t need it to function or escape. I have alcohol for that. I actually feel really terrible for the people who are using these unregulated things to self medicate because it’s a fucking grab bag out there.
I’m glad hard drugs doesn’t include mushrooms.
Where do you see that?
Actually, your comment made me dig into this a bit more. It looks like psilocybin is only legal for therapy. Essentially, you need a license.
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2024R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB4002
https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors475A.html
Just make sure you’re carrying a large amount and you should be good.
Oregon doesn’t like people who half-ass things.
Unless you’re half-assing drug policy, then it’s great
Drug decriminalization is a great way to bring people back from the fringes of society. But it only really works if you invest in their rehabilitation. previously we were attacking them for trying to escape their poor life circumstances through whatever means available to them. Stopping that is great, but is only half the equation. It’s like we have a victim of a random shooting, and all we’ve done is stop external bleeding. The hard part, the rehabilitative part, means putting in the effort to stop internal bleeding, pull out the bullet, and prescribe antibiotics. I was just reading on another Lemmy comment section about how much retired Military people have come to rely on the basic income provided to them through the armed forces. They were talking about how much it helped them, and how it should be given to everyone. I’m in agreement.
When Sweden solved homelessness, they did it by giving people what they needed to survive. An apartment, healthcare, help.
If you want to help people, you can’t have one without the other
The Atlantic had a good article on this a couple weeks ago (no paywall). It sure feels like a move in the wrong direction, but the authors note Oregon’s overdose deaths grew way faster than the rest of the country after decriminalization. Their take is that Oregon already had pretty good laws place, and that a little bit of a legal threat can help to encourage addicts to seek treatment (and that the treatment system needs to be better funded).
Private prison needs workers? Why else would you send someone to jail for a gram of coke and 6 fucking months. Its not that they will get better in jail, at least not in the us.
Removed by mod
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!
The part I don’t get is why they were willing to decriminalize it but they weren’t willing to regulate it and allow it in dispensaries.
THAT is where the money is. America is built on cash crops. People will happily pay taxes out the ass for tobacco, alcohol, weed, acid, cocaine, and shrooms. I also personally think coffee should be added to that list. For the record, I’m not a fan of cocaine or coffee, but some people swing that way, and id rather them swing there than meth.
Honestly, it feels hypocritical, but I agree that opioids and meth cross the line. I have heard maybe 3 anecdotes of people that can maintain a functioning addiction on heroin and zero for people who can contain themselves with meth.
Allow the weed, acid, and shrooms (and MAYBE cocaine) in the dispensaries, take the tax money, GIVE IT BACK as housing assistance and universal basic income. Give security, opportunity, and therapy to opioid and meth users. Watch them become productive calm non-violent stoners.
The part I don’t get is why they were willing to decriminalize it but they weren’t willing to regulate it and allow it in dispensaries.
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.
Fair enough.
Personally, I have only ever had consistently hostile interactions with meth-heads.
I do my best to err on the side of the adult choice to have the freedom of a vice. For me its tobacco, weed, and beer, and I am so fucking sick and tired of prohibitionists (generally people who are or were on probation and now want to act like they have the moral high-ground on the subject) trying to take that right away, or at least punish me for opting for it.
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.
Neoliberalism is 2000’s Republican Party under Bush. It isn’t “liberal” like most people think of it. It’s rigid adherence to the idea that the “free market” will solve all our problems, in particular social ones, and grant us all the greatest amount of freedom.
Decriminalizing drugs and calling for the state to handle the health and social side is not neoliberalism. That’s democratic socialism if anything. Though I’m sure some would dispute it, which is fine. But it’s certainly not neoliberal, which is distinctly conservative and the ideology of the American Republican Party pre-Trump.
My point was that decriminalizing drugs and just…letting things sort themselves out, with maybe a few precariously-funded, arms-length organizations left to handle the fallout is very much a neoliberal approach to drug policy.
The bill wasn’t designed around free market solutions to the problem of drug addiction/mental health. It was specifically not that. We also can’t ignore that covid hit right when this went into effect.
Bad implementation =/= pushing a neoliberal policy.
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.
Unrelated, I recently tried out Fedia, and I couldn’t understand why my Fedia account was consistently being downvoted into oblivion but my Kbin account is consistently upvoted and rarely ever downvoted. I see dude’s comment as up 2 down 0 on Kbin.
I think Kbin doesnt register lemmy voting. God I love Kbin.
I heard they never implemented the corresponding treatment centers because of Covid or something. In any case, this isn’t something that’s going to be fixed without a boatload of money…it’s too bad the Sacklers are so poor, otherwise I would say they should pay for it, on account of how they did this to our communities.
Why are all of you cheering this on like its a good decision??? What the fuck is wrong with all of you??
Throwing junkies in prison is not any better than just letting them to their vices. Prison solves nothing and just makes people worse.
Either ACAB or they aren’t and yes they fucking are.
Literally not one comment in this thread is cheering this on.
