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★ Oregonians Rethink Legalizing Hard Drugs

Change appears likely. A coalition of city officials, police chiefs <br>and district attorneys recently called <br>on the state legislature to recriminalize hard drugs. A measure to do <br>so is in th..


By Donald Jeffries

Article shared from :https://americanfreepress.net/
Libertarians and many others
have long advocated that all
drugs should be decriminalized, and marijuana at least be
legalized. America’s record number of
prisoners includes a substantial number of nonviolent drug offenders. As
Ron Paul and many others have pointed out, America has totally and convincingly lost the “drug war.”
However, the results in Oregon, the
first state to decriminalize all drugs,
have been less than satisfying, to put
it mildly. The thought was to help addicts, as has long been the case with
celebrities or others with substantial
financial resources, instead of imprisoning them.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the experiences of one police officer in Oregon, Jose Alvarez. In
response to the new law, Alvarez
stopped arresting people for possession and instead started handing out
tickets that contained the number for
a rehab helpline. But a substantial majority of the homeless drug users living on city streets who are hooked on
substances like fentanyl or methamphetamine simply wadded the tickets
up and threw them on the ground.
“Those tickets frankly seemed like
a waste of time,” stated Alvarez, who
just stopped issuing them within a few
months. The decriminalization initiative passed as Measure 110 in 2020,
but almost three years later, many Oregonians have turned against it.
Homeless drug addicts now feel
comfortable lying on sidewalks using
fentanyl and other drugs openly in
cities like Eugene and Portland. It’s not
only business and local leaders
alarmed at the returns from a proposal
they’d hoped would lead to a relaxation of drug laws across the country,
but many disillusioned liberal voters
as well. They must be disappointed
that few of those addicted to drugs
have taken advantage of the new
state-funded rehabilitation programs.
Quoting from the WSJ story:
Change appears likely. A coalition of city officials, police chiefs
and district attorneys recently called
on the state legislature to recriminalize hard drugs. A measure to do
so is in the works for next year’s ballot. A recent poll found the majority of Oregonians support the idea.
The essential problem is that any incentive for addicts to seek free treatment is offset by the fact that the
threat of prison no longer exists. According to the report, “Some 6,000
tickets have been issued for drug
possession since decriminalization
went into effect in 2021, but just 92
people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to
services, according to the nonprofit
that operates the helpline.”
Failure to call carries only a $100
fine, and even that is rarely enforced.
As Stanford professor Keith
Humphreys noted, “It was not a crazy
thing to try at all, but I think they misunderstood addiction. They really
had the assumption that if you decriminalize, people would come rushing in saying, ‘Please, give me treatment,’ but addiction is not like cancer
where people crawl through broken
glass to get treatment.”
Fatal drug overdoses in Oregon
have risen some 23% since passage of
the decriminalization initiative.
Measure 110 still has its supporters,
however. They point to how some
4,000 fewer people were arrested in
Oregon, keeping those possessing
drugs out of an already overburdened
criminal justice system. Those struggling with drugs are being urged to
talk to former drug users.
“When people access services voluntarily, that’s really powerful and effective,” Tera Hurst, executive director of the Health Justice Recovery Alliance, pointed out.
Chris Wig, executive director of
Emergence Addiction and Behavioral
Therapies in Eugene, countered this
a bit by noting that although more people are getting peer support through
programs funded by the measure,
fewer are actually getting treatment.
“There are people who were getting
treatment before who are not getting
it now,” he said. “It’s people who
were involved in the criminal justice
system.”
This is a complex issue. Classical
liberals and libertarians used to decry
so-called “victimless crimes,” which included drug possession. Law enforcement has entrapped untold numbers of otherwise law-abiding marijuana smokers through the use of undercover narcotic agents. It is difficult
to justify branding all these people
criminals and locking them away behind bars.
However, it is obvious that many
will take advantage of decriminalization and help construct the ugly picture we see in Oregon and in cities like
San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Homeless addicts living in tents, defecating in the streets, with the authorities reluctant to do anything to
address the situation. Drug overdose
calls nearly doubled over the last
year in Oregon.
Many assumed that legalizing drugs
would have the same effect that ending Prohibition did at the beginning of
the Great Depression. Making alcohol
illegal only made it more dangerous
and opened the doors to organized
crime. It was felt that decriminalization would lead to less dangerous
drugs, and less influential gangs. This
complicated problem is far from settled.

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