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No, it is disingenuous and anti-intellectual to pretend that the phrase law and order assumes the conclusion. The conclusion that law and order is different than decriminalization is a given, and it is an exercise in trying to promote confusion and misunderstanding of reality for political purposes to make this an issue.
The kind of gotcha split hairing that submits nothing that is out there to win everything that is bad for discussion and for societal norms. Not for the motte which doesn't matter in a special way, but for society which matters and is lead astray by any prominence of such approaches. You are trying to shut down discussion here since if we can't distinguish between decriminalization or law and order policies, we can't actually discuss the issue. Furthermore, we are also diverted to discussing what we shouldn't be wasting our time on.
Not everything is negotiable. If your approach is a decriminalization approach, you should own it.
There are sufficient differences between different approaches to earn them different qualitative descriptions. There is really a libertine, decriminalization approach on drugs that supporters value and a law and order approach that is valued by its supporters. Different supporters believe in different narratives, one of which is correct and the other incorrect.
And we should NOT be wasting time making this clear, but spending the time examining the trade offs and wisely choosing based on having wise priorities as a society.
Plus, it is especially unwise to raise this distinction in response to a post that argues that decriminalization drug policies lead to societal decay and drug abuse and law and order policies promote better functioning society. It is like you were hyper focused on winning a point.
But my comment was about non decriminalization policies. I wasn't commenting about decriminalization resulting in more imprisonment. I was claiming that drug decriminalization lead to destructive societally drug abuse, while drug criminalization policies don't end up having to imprison that many people.
Although, if drug decriminalization policies raise behaviors that are criminal but come along with policies of general decriminalization, including certain areas in a city lacking police enforcement and becoming den of junkies, that is also a problem. Effectively, you raised crime but aren't enforcing it.
You aren't really addressing the substance of the issue.
Of course if you don't have laws, you obviously don't have law and order but the opposite and someone defining this as law and order is promoting inaccurate labels and diverting understanding to a lower level. Plus distracting people through having them to discuss with their inaccurate description from the substance of what is happening. Actually, by not having laws you are obviously going to have huge problems with all sorts of crimes, and people in the state of nature societies are full of rape, murder, etc, etc.
The ideal of state of nature being idealic is just a falsehood that crumbles when meeting with reality and actually examining hunter gatherer societies. Civilization, and societal norms don't constrain people from an idealized state, but most of them tend to lead to societies that lack the kind of abuses found in hunter gatherer ones. So, I wouldn't even describe as philosophy but as a wrong concept the idea of an ideal state of nature that is undermined by civilization. I wouldn't describe the very idea of less strict law, if relating to a particular law as anti intellectual as it can be valid of course.
But you absolutely after a point too low and you got libertine norms and decriminalization, and after a point enforcement you got law and order and maybe after a point of strict laws you might even have totalitarian societies. There might be a subjectivity to any of these standards but they do exist and deserve a label so we actually understand the world. Only by disagreeing with an example should one disagree with the label, as general deconstruction is anti-intellectual.
In a similar note, understanding that perfection doesn't exist anywhere, I would distinguish a free society, from an unfree one based on degrees, with the free one having to pass a sufficient standard to qualify. And as always there are trade offs. I am willing to admit that some things I am willing to support might come at a cost of certain freedoms. For example, if I supported lockdowns on the basis of thinking the result to be worth it, I would be asking for a sacrifice of certain freedom, based on seeking a certain benefit.
I would be engaging in partisanship and sophistry if I didn't admit it. Which is part of our problem, people want to have their cake and eat it too. Still, certain trade offs are better in terms of other trade offs since the sacrifice is smaller versus benefit, and even in freedom there is also both a sacrifice but also a benefit. What fits in the proverb of an ounce of prevention, a pound of cure, where the sacrifice is less than the necessitating later sacrifice, including what people are going to have to do to treat themselves and we expect and know they will do to deal with. As the alternative of not caring about even treatment will be even worse. An idealized claim of libertine freedom doesn't deal with that pragmatically.
So when it comes to not admitting anything, I would just marginalize this kind of sophists who try to deconstruct us from useful understanding often in partisan directions, so this kind of fruitless debate is rare and also the public norm and morality is to look down to it and focus on reality. With having an understanding and distinction between sophistry and actual valid points. Indeed a lot of our problems relate with people preferring convenient narratives over what is true. Including politically correct narratives which are meant to shut down further analysis.
I don’t believe I’m pretending anything, thank you very much.
Up until 2020 Portland had law but not enough order. After decriminalizing in that year, it had less law and less order. But this didn’t magically give it “greater imposition on people’s freedom.” I don’t think you can show that decriminalization made people less free. It made them more free to make bad choices.
Portugal is the usual example. People became more free, and made bad choices. But they remained a law-abiding, ordered society. Their situation has improved a lot since implementing the policy. Decriminalization is compatible with order.
How does your theory explain Portugal?
The idea that not only the freedom to consume drugs matters, but also the freedom from addiction, or from crime, is not something that can be so easily dismissed as "magically" giving an imposition. It is a real trade off where there is a net loss for freedom. Similiarly a hunter gatherer society might lack certain rules, but the freedom of its members is undermined by all the crime, especially the murders and the rapes.
Not taking that seriously is an intellectual blindspot which makes policy failures inevitable. Especially a blindspot that is dismissive from you when I already made the argument. So what I would conclude is that you would just prefer those genuine problems of freedom relating to bad choices that affect others but also might result in a loss of autonomy for the person it self, to not be taken seriously. But they should be put on the scale, even if you prefer they weren't.
Now, the Portugal case is a more complicated one, and a case of a decriminalization that is closer to the center than what happened in Portland Oregon. Which isn't to say I consider it centrist, but definetly closer than Oregon's.
I don't have the one sidedly positive view you have about Portugal's reforms. See bellow for a contrary view.
https://www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/images/resources/pdf/dart/The_Truth_on_Portugal_December_2018.pdf
Even the Wanshington post which rather partisan in the liberal direction is willing to promote some criticism
Portugal still forces drug addicts to follow treatments and selling drugs is illegal. Even its supporters claim that "Cops still work aggressively to break up major drug gangs and arrest people committing drug-related crimes like theft. They also disrupt open-air drug markets like the ones that have emerged in some U.S. cities."
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/25/how-portugal-eased-its-opioid-epidemic-while-u-s-drug-deaths-skyrocketed/
Cops also pressure drug users to follow programs.
The reality is that the decriminalization side who bring Portugal as a positive example, or claim to be trying to do something similar, tend to be quite partisan and lacking in intellectual humility that requires genuinely dealing with trade offs. Ultimately, they operate based on tunnel vision. The end result is the negative story of the problems I mentioned of rise of drug abuse, violent crimes, certain areas becoming full of junkies. If this side were seriously trying to deal things in a wiser manner from various angles, some of these issues would have been ameliorated.
See also this: https://unherd.com/newsroom/blue-states-are-learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-portugal/
On all sorts of issues we have seen this vulgar excessive policy and movement as more representative of what you are getting in response to the more conservative and restrictive in those directions past, rather than a right balance between getting rid of only some conservative restrictions but only in a considerate way. Or even compensating by some new restrictions like forcing drug users to get treatment. Changing things while retaining the benefits of the more conservative time is really hard. At worst is like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
Since this discussion is about Oregon, bringing up Portugal as a winning move is trying to find a loophole. When actually the vulgar policy is what decriminalization movement is more represented by today and pushes.
The pro decriminalization side in the USA promised in fact that they could push not only drug decriminalization but other policies of decriminalization, reduction of imprisonment without rising crime rates, and other problems. This failed to be the case. Contrarily those that wisely predicted the rising violence and social problems were proven correct.
This shows why it is so important that in practice we can and should distinguish between a law and order side and a decriminalization side whose approach does undermine law and order in outcomes.
The point of bringing up Portugal is that there must be more than one way to get to “order.” Going full Reagan is no guarantee, or America would look pretty different. Going full Portland obviously doesn’t work either. But there is a Portugal option where decriminalization with teeth improves the situation.
And it did improve—the Australia link makes a big deal out of going from 3.4% to 3.7% having used any drug. Never mind that those numbers went back down in the next five years. They’re doing the thing where picking the right endpoints lets them support whatever they want.
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