Portlander chiming in here. I think it's almost universally accepted now that decriminalization was a stupid idea - and I myself voted for it at the time. I absolutely would still vote for anything that improved the availability of treatment for addiction, regardless of cost. But I think what we've learned is that every carrot needs a stick. And where there's excess supply, demand will catch up. All of which means, go after supply and possession again until this is under control.
"Legalization" is absolutely worse. Millions of dead sooner and with more collateral damage.
You don't have to legalize the drug, simply giving it to existing junkies for free by prescription for a while would allow you to break the cartels. Also, actually do break the cartels like Ecuador is doing, with life sentences or death.
The problem with the methods we've used is that we've used them piecemeal and inconsistently.
Once the pushers are gone you force the junkies into rehab. Then when there's no epidemic you could actually legalize to prevent a black market from returning.
> "Legalization" is absolutely worse. Millions of dead sooner and with more collateral damage.
Portugal tried. In 2001, they decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use and started treating drug possession as a medical issue instead of a criminal issue. Ever since, Portugals rate of drug addiction and drug death is below the EU average. The policy is considered a success. It reduced harm for the addicted and at the same time, reduced the social costs of drug addiction. The rate of HIV, Hepatitis infection and other side effects of drug addiction dropped significantly.
Now, they didn’t just legalize drugs, but put the money they saved on the enforcement side into rehab, clean needle and other flanking programs, essentially “giving” it to the addicts. This may seem unpalatable to many, but the outcome is a win for everyone.
Portugal didn't decriminalize anything. They still pick you up against your will and detain you for years while not giving you drugs and forcing you to work. The only semblance of decriminalization is that if you cooperate and don't try to escape they don't give you a criminal record.
They use the criminal justice system and the underlying crime of public use and unsafe intoxication to force you into rehab, which is the very definition of criminalized.
It's decriminalized. That's literally the word. It's still illegal to possess controlled substances, but not a crime right away.
There's a published list [1] of illegal substances and what quantities constitute as "personal use" (like 25g of weed or 5g of hash - translated in "individual doses"). More than that you can be trialed for drug dealing, which is a fair trade-off.
Yes it's still illegal to possess any of these substances, but what happens is that if you're below the "criminal" threshold, you get a doctor/shrink appointment and usually pay a small fine (around 25 euros). Nothing gets written to your criminal record. Repeated offenders might have more several penalties like community service.
Recently there's been a surge in homelessness and harder drug consumption, analog to the rest of Europe, due to a huge housing crisis, very stagnant salaries and overall poor quality of life here (in Portugal).
That's not how it's used in North America and thus it's not the impression our pundits are trying to give when they use it to reference you.
Here, decriminalized is uncontrolled. You can buy your fentanyl in front of a cop and do it in public. Cops can't arrest you for it. There is a maximum amount but it's huge! Pot is still limited though, and you can be arrested for having more than an ounce but you can't be arrested for carrying enough fentanyl to kill an entire building of people.
This has been done so that there's no way to force people into rehab, so they're a continual source of income for the taxpayer funded "charities" that provide for them.
As a part-time resident of two major drug cities I've been looking for that article. I just have to read between the lines and contrast it with the results we get from the same words.
It should be obvious when reading a story about Portugal that they couldn't get the junkie to stay in rehab voluntarily, so obviously they don't mean "no potential of a criminal charge at all".
Whereas in Vancouver they specifically changed the rules so you can buy and do drugs in front of the police, pass out and almost die - get revived and smoke more drugs, and have no charges, no special detainment, nothing.
My source is my eyes. I drove through the local drug camp recently and saw a dealer dealing within a stone's throw from police in their car, and junkies passed out just steps from him. There's a ton of evidence, but you could search for it if you really wanted and you didn't.
What I haven't found is a single short and simple article that explains for ... people like you, that what Vancouver/Seattle/Portland/SF and Portugal mean by decriminalization is not the same.
What issue do you have that makes you incapable of searching for references and yet still able to whine about that incapability online? And what are you actually looking for a reference for? That there are drug encampments? That some cities have literally made it legal to buy and sell Fentanyl?
You have been told something exists, that's 95% of the way there. Now go to a search engine and type 'vancouver drug decriminalization' and 'Portugal drug treatment' and read about the issue.
You're trying so very hard to use me to justify your ignorance and to be insulting in the process.
I googled the phrase 'Portugal drug treatment' and found out what I was suspecting from the start - which is, everything I saw previously was correct and they indeed decriminalized all drugs up to certain weight and still jail dealers. This goes against the claims that you previously made that they did not have a decriminalization, and the next one about criminal record also doesn't make any sense in this context - what would the criminal record be, a gram of weed?
Okay, now that you did some work and have questions I can help.
> what would the criminal record be
Public intoxication, possession, etc.
> everything I saw previously was correct and they indeed decriminalized all drugs
They haven't decriminalized public usage. You can have your small amount of drugs if you do it in private and are discrete.
> This goes against the claims that you previously made that they did not have a decriminalization
It's a system of not giving you a criminal record by using the mere threat of the criminal justice system for force you to voluntarily enter rehab. So you have to do what they say but then they don't label you a criminal and they sort of pretend you went into treatment on your own.
In the words of the guy who invented and runs their system:
"There are a lot of myths around the Portuguese model that, for instance, we just liberalize you do whatever you want, nobody cares ... It's important to say that using drugs in Portugal is still prohibited under the law ... If somebody in Portugal starts injecting heroin in public [...] he would be arrested and conducted to the police station. The substances would be apprehended. If they have more than the amount that is calculated on the basis of personal use he undergoes criminal procedures as before. If he has less than that amount he would be intimated to present himself to the commission. It's not a court, it's not a formal institution, but he will be confronted to discuss his drug use with professionals. It's mandatory, with a little bit of muscle you have them in front of you. We can try to understand what is happening with this person. For each hundren people that is conducted through those commissions, ten of them are problematic users."
-- João Goulão - National drug coordinator for Portugal - https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/16412220666858455...
This next part is where you have to read between the lines a bit. They don't come right out and say that they can't arrest junkies for junking in public - you have to understand that they wouldn't pass a bylaw to make it happen if they didn't need to which means that in the rest of the cities they would not arrest and move them proactively.
"Police forces across British Columbia are finalizing training on new drug laws that will limit or entirely cease their interactions with people who use drugs as the province becomes the first in Canada to decriminalize simple possession."
"While many police departments have in recent years moved away from arresting and recommending charges for possession alone, officers will now also stop confiscating illegal drugs"
"at least one city is preparing to introduce a new bylaw that would re-engage police if people use in certain public spaces."
From which we learn that 1) they won't be able to arrest at all for drug possession, 2) they won't even be able to confiscate dangerous drugs, 3) they won't even arrest people for public use (unless cities pass a bylaw overriding the province.)
In Portugal they will arrest, and will confiscate, and will use legal powers (if you push them to it) to detain you. In Vancouver they can not arrest, can not confiscate, and will not engage the criminal justice system at all.
Portugal is saving lives by using the courts, Vancouver is getting worse with every loosening. Seattle and SF are roughly the same as Vancouver.
Only sometimes, like when someone ODed or tried to sell right in public. And of course that didn't do much if any good overall because Vancouver didn't do anything else that Portugal does - like limiting the almost endless supply of cheap fentanyl. Even when they seized drugs it was a mere matter of minutes and a few dollars to get more.
Vancouver/BC didn't have decent recovery programs, and not enough capacity even in the bad programs, and critically - no legal capacity to force someone into them even if they did. People can be detained for up to 72hrs and "dried out" but that merely lets some of the detox pass, it's not at all related to kicking the drug and recovering from addiction. Even when they want to be clean the city usually houses them in a drug hotel where peer pressure drags them back in.
Arrest and seizure are valid tactics, Portugal proves it, despite Vancouver failing to apply them properly as part of a holistic program.
Did they? It seems the problems started when they started cracking down and people had to resort to street heroin, and later fentanyl to get pain relief. If there were an easy, legal way to get oxycontin, I bet the majority of the problems of people dying from fake oxycontin laced with fentanyl would go away overnight.
Purdue had a financial interest in selling more Oxycontin. They knowingly pushed doctors to prescribe the medication in a manner that encouraged addiction. They knowingly misled patients and doctors as to how addictive the medication was.
Cutting the supply off without any alternatives absolutely caused harm. However, that only serves as evidence that safe and legal means of procurement are better than illegal ones.
If there had been a network of state dispensaries to provide safe regulated doses and support, over-prescription could have been stopped without leaving the victims to fend for themselves.
There's a segment of junkies who don't want drug treatment, just to get high at all costs. I spend almost daily talking to people that are professionals in this area (not a junky myself, just related to medical providers) and it's an everyday occurrence that people will come in, completely trick the medical providers for a daily or whatever short-term fix they're allowed with minimal privileges, and then use it to supplant their black market addiction. You can let them pursue their dream at black market prices while they bust into cars and inject god knows what of random purity. I'd much rather they just be able to buy it for $0.10 at walmart and beg for a dime outside the gas station, and know exactly what they're getting.
I'm not disagreeing about access to treatment, but just to be clear I don't see much intersectionality there with stopping the black market. For so many of them it becomes "sweet I can buy my black market shit, plus get whatever the addiction center place offers me on top of that."
So then they're able to stockpile and hoard it and then what? they get this stash and then are able to exist in a land of plenty when previously there was famine. it's like money. if you don't have any, things are really rough. but if you have enough that you're swimming in it? well then you're able to step aside from earthly concerns like making rent, and can choose to invest it in causes you choose. For a junkie who's drug life is feast or famine, having default access to what they need and feeling safe allows them to move on with their lives and get past their addiction and into jobs and return to regular life and be contributing members of society.
No, because the drugs are only given out in the context of dying in the street. There's absolutely no provision for people who are addicted through accident, for instance, to achieve some safe supply while tapering off to avoid the street.
And the government has decided that drug users are on palliative care, that they're never expected to improve, so they can be given drugs that are likely to end or destroy their life without any concern for recovery. That sounds 'caring' but in areas without this assumption they actually do rescue many people from this death, making the 'caring' cities into uncaring hellholes for the addicted - where they go to die on the streets of a preventable death.
There is no fear of 'famine' because the people who are being given drugs are being given drugs for the rest of their life. There's no fear of running out because even if the government stopped the supply the street drugs are only a few dollars.
What these excess drugs do is 1) increase the amount of drugs the person is taking and/or 2) get sold outside of the drug cities, both of which increase the scope of the problem.
Also, druggies don't need money because they can just take whatever they want from stores and at most will be forced to give the item back. They're given food and shelter and drugs and can steal any luxury under $1000. (Not that they'd be punished above that, but the stores aren't required to sit and accept it - they can apply reasonable force to recover their goods.)
Diverted drugs become black market drugs. I'm sure the Mexicans are getting ultra pure fentanyl or being trained to make the pure shit from precursors. Somehow most of it ends up being stomped on by the time it reaches the consumer. That is to say just because it was pure when the junky got it, doesn't mean it was accurately represented to the end user or altered along the way. Black market diversion from treatment facilities seems non-ideal.
The problem is the stomping isn't uniform. Whatever's being used as an adulterant, the end product has chunks of adulterant, and chunks of fentanyl, and this is what ends up killing people, because they end up with a life ending sliver of fentanyl from the heterogeneous mixture of drugs.
Killing a few people with your supply is an actual sales tactic called 'Hot Shotting' (a term for a lethal dose). When dealers cut and package for delivery they'll make a few extra strong and give them to well-known junkies who will then overdose and potentially die, in the process proving who's selling strong drugs. "That must be good stuff, Kevin died from it and they barely revived Sue."
Not only are street drugs inherently unsafe, the dealers view their customers as so expendable they're willing to kill them for advertising.
To fix this we've got to switch to government supply, but only when we simultaneously wipe out the illegal supply and suppliers, so that we don't simply compound the problem. Our interventions are like antibiotics. They lose their power over time when misused. They're best employed heavily in a cocktail and used fully.
There's also nothing illegal about a 7 year old jumping into a rushing river or buying unregulated "research" chemicals on the internet. Same thing, isn't it?
The way 7 year olds are kept out of rushing rivers, or consuming black market dope, is they have a parent, guardian, foster caretaker, someone looking after them. It's illegal to neglect a child. Sending a 7 year old to buy you cigarettes arguably isn't neglect, letting them smoke cigarettes or research chemicals probably is.
If someone wants to snort up a pile of rat poison, or fentanyl who am I to stop them. Let them buy Pfizer mega-OD-fentanyl-express they saw advertised on the Citybus for $0.10, and let the cartels get crushed by legal competition who have everything to lose by doing drive-bys in residential neighborhoods.
Yes. We need complete legalization and regulation. People who want opioids need to be able to get a known product, and people who don't want opioids need to know that their product doesn't contain any.
People who want opiates are people who can't wait to die.
[edit] I like your username btw... I actually said that to someone tonight... a man, a plan, a canal; Panama. The couple stared at me until I said "palindrome" and then I'm pretty sure they thought I was crazy.
Possession here without intent to sell is now decriminalized for all drugs, and larger amounts are considered misdemeanors. I do think "legalization" would be better - where the supply was safe and regulated. There's also the simple fact that being one of the few places in a country full of addicts to advance decriminalization has made us a destination for people who want to die on the street with a pipe and a needle, so we've had a massive influx from the rest of the country that we are not equipped to handle. But layered over that is the cartel system that runs the human trafficking and the mass theft that perpetuates a lot of the human misery here now.
Easier access to drugs sounds humane but it's exactly the opposite.
Then it's unfortunate to hear you regret voting for decriminalization and think it'd be better to go back to punishing people harshly for drug use and distribution. I think decriminalization is the first step, only because it's hard to push for safe supply in addition to decriminalization, but we should all be pushing for safe supply now as well, and the proceeds of that going to funding rehab programs, as well as other overall QoL improvements for people.
Legalization + safe supply might not reduce the occurrence of people using (or at least not right away), but it will provide better overall outcomes for society. If we address the systemic issues which cause so much suffering (which is why we're seeing so much addiction), and also provide treatment options, people will be more inclined to seek out those options.
My point of view is that locking people up for drug use:
* Hasn't reduced drug use
* Makes them more likely to continue their drug use
* Often leads to the use of harder drugs
* Is expensive
* Provides funding to cartels
* Causes violence
Decriminalising, or legalising drug use removes one of the main motivators of gang formation/violence while allowing the state to focus on helping addicts recover and contribute to society. The money spent on enforcement can now be spent on treatment, reducing the need for further funding rather than increasing it.
That is an option yes. It could reduce the likelihood that addicts end up in a cycle of incarceration and more extreme drug use. However, without a legal supply, I don't believe it would have any effect towards curtailing gang violence or their funding.
Personally, I believe the legal supply should be delivered by the state. With a focus on providing monitored, unadulterated doses of the safest alternative and a program aimed at weaning the user off in a sustainable manner.
