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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28140 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I had originally posted this in the Friday fun thread but it turns out that it was killing the vibe in there. Not sure what I was thinking. Anyway...

Note: I will completely qualify Portugal Europe and Portland Oregon in this article because they're easy to mix up.

Is liberalism peaking in Oregon?

In 2020, the state of Oregon passed a referendum, ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs(!) with a vote of 58% in favor.

Voters in Oregon (such as myself) believed this was the path to enlightened drug policy, being informed by the revered Portugal Europe model. Tacked onto the referendum was a bit of social justice theory as well: the police would be required to document in detail the race of anyone they stopped from now on for any reason. To ensure the police weren't disproportionately harassing the 2.3% of the population that's black.

As an occasional drug enjoyer, I do find it a relief to wander the streets of Portland Oregon squirting ketamine up my nostrils like I'm a visionary tech CEO without fear of police. But in broad strokes it appears to be a disaster.

Indeed, the ensuing data was an almost perfect A/B test, the kind you'd run with no shame over which kind of font improved e-commerce site checkout conversions.

By 2023, Oregon's drug overdose rate was well outpacing the rest of the country, so much so that the police officers regularly Narcan with them and revive people splayed out in public parks. Sometimes the same person from week to week. It's true this coincides with the fentanyl epidemic, which could confound the data and have bumped up overdoses everywhere but that wouldn't explain alone why deaths have especially increased in Oregon. The timing fits M110.

https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2024/02/21/fentanyl-overdose-rate-oregon-spikes

Oregon's fatal fentanyl overdose rate spiked from 2019 to 2023, showing the highest rate of increase among U.S. states, according to The Oregonian's crunching of new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At some point someone decided to compare notes with Portugal Europe's system. Some stark differences!

https://gooddrugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PortugalvOregon1.pdf

Briefly, Portugal Europe uses a carrot and stick model with a lot of negative incentive, whereas Oregon just kinda writes a $100 ticket and suggests calling a hotline for your raging drug problem maybe.

In the first 15 months after Measure 110 took effect, state auditors found, only 119 people called the state’s 24-hour hotline. That meant the cost of operating the hotline amounted to roughly $7,000 per call. The total number of callers as of early December of last year had only amounted to 943.

The absence of stick appears to not be very effective in encouraging users to seek treatment.

Are the kids having fun at least? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/health/portland-oregon-drugs.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/fHxWk)

“Portland [Oregon] is a homeless drug addict’s slice of paradise,” said Noah Nethers, who was living with his girlfriend in a bright orange tent on the sidewalk against a fence of a church, where they shoot and smoke both fentanyl and meth.

That's the brightest part of the article. The rest is pretty depressing and sad and sickening and worrisome.

After a few years of this, the Oregon legislature yesterday finished voting to re-criminalize drugs.

The NYT again https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/oregon-drug-decriminalization-rollback-measure-110.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/3zksH)

Several prominent Democrats have expressed support for a rollback, including Mike Schmidt, a progressive prosecutor in the Portland area. After the decriminalization initiative passed in 2020, Mr. Schmidt implemented its provisions early, saying it was time to move past “failed practices” to “focus our limited law enforcement resources to target high-level, commercial drug offenses.”

But he has reassessed his position, he said in an interview this week. The proliferation of fentanyl requires a new approach that treats addiction as a health issue while holding people accountable, he said. The open drug use downtown and near parks and schools has made people feel unsafe, Mr. Schmidt said.

“We have been hearing from constituents for a while that this has been really detrimental to our community and to our streets,” he said. Mr. Schmidt said the new bill still prioritizes treatment and uses jail as a last resort. That, he said, could ultimately become the model Oregon offers to states around the country.

The governor has indicated that she would sign.

Critics are out in force, arguing that the legislature overrode the will of voters (remember it was passed by referendum) and that the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts. This poster believes the low uptake and missing negative incentives prove that drug harm reduction is not primarily about access to treatment, but about incentive not to use. I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help, but fentanyl complicates the situation substantially. People need to hit bottom before they seek help (or so goes the popular saying) but fentanyl is so potent and unpredictable that they're dying of an unexpected OD before they find themselves at bottom, ready to seek change.

Frankly, I'm surprised Oregon repealed this so quickly. Has liberalism peaked in Oregon?

As someone who voted for the referendum back in 2020, I'm a little sad that some of the overdose deaths are on my hands. Kind of. Like 1 millionth of the overdose deaths perhaps. It's good to run experiments though, right? This was a pretty good experiment. We at least have an upper bound on how liberal a drug policy we should pursue.

I believe this shows Oregon is not quite as ideologically liberal as previously led to believe. Or, at least, not anymore.

Portland is not quite progressive enough. Why not go all the way like Canada and have MAID for drug addicts? Now that's a compassionate way to handle social issues.

As someone who voted for the referendum back in 2020, I'm a little sad that some of the overdose deaths are on my hands. Kind of.

Don't worry, there is still time for even more deaths for your buck.

  • -23

Why not go all the way like Canada and have MAID for drug addicts?

This feels mostly boo-outgroup. Setting aside both the moral arguments and factual issues of how Canada uses MAID, it's obvious that most of the drug addicts already have access to effective lethal injections if they wanted to use them, so the ones who are alive are probably ones who don't want help dying.

it's obvious that most of the drug addicts already have access to effective lethal injections if they wanted to use them, so the ones who are alive are probably ones who don't want help dying.

Yet fentanyl is a notoriously lethal drug. It appears hard to argue that somebody voluntarily taking fentanyl or products routinely laced with fentanyl is not somewhere, seeking death.

Perhaps I just have a tendency to find slopes slippery, but a community that chooses to turn a blind eye to this type of practice seems to be practicing some form of soft MAID. If supporters of 'soft-MAID' are uncomfortable with calling it MAID, why is that? Is there something wrong with helping people end their suffering?

Fentanyl is only lethal because illegal manufacturers and distributors can't control the dose well enough. In terms of therapeutic index, it's safer than other opiates -- that is, the ratio of a lethal dose to an effective dose is high. The problem is that the absolute amounts of both are low.

Sure, but, what do with this information? Have the state manufacture pure fentanyl and dose junkies up in safe use sites?

I stick with the libertarian answer: legalize drugs, enforce only purity restrictions. But as @iprayiam3 notes above, this requires not socializing the costs of addiction either. At most socialist they would be paid for with taxes on the drugs. Otherwise the addict's addiction is his problem and any problems he causes he's liable (civilly and or criminally).

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