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Notes -
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
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)
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)
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.
If one compares drug decriminalization, or general decriminalization policies with countries that follow law and order, the later not only have less drug abuse but also don't have to imprison that many people. The influence of such policy of drug criminalization for most of the world with such policies is for people successfully be dissuaded from abusing harmful drugs.
Drug abuse is a societal scourge and it is another example how libertine policies and attitutes lead to greater suffering but also greater imposition on people's freedom than the sacrifice required from making good trade offs and abstaining from harmful behavior. For the loss of what is good by becoming addicted to drugs is quite greater.
At the end of the day the libertine's have a cope that their policy leads to worse consequences but people get good and hard what they choose. But we shouldn't accept this cope way off thinking. The worse outcomes and society sucking more under such policies is good reason to not respect this course.
Same could also be said with obesity, or even the long term problems of lack of children.
We live in an age where there is a crisis of lack of smaller self sacrifices, for ultimate a greater negative end. In line with the proverb "An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure".
Now, you can't force people to have children, or not get fat, in the same way you can enforce criminalization of drugs, although there are things you could do, but the moralists on these issues are correct. Contrarily the people who have been spreading apathy and downplaying have had a corrosive effect on society.
Beyond just policy, there is also a morality involved with society that does end up relating to what happens and pressures people and also affects the law. So we can judge and contrast the libertine morality with more conservative one on drugs and other issues.
The ridicule of the people trying to dissuade people from bad behaviors and such campaigns, especially on drugs have been one of the most unjust reactions and self destructive ones for society. That kind of judgementalism against wise moralism is disastrous. We need the right kind of moralism. A good society is one where there is moral pressure in the right directions. While a completely non judgemental society is impossible.
Now that we see decline in various important issues, we should appreciate more the conservatives of the past who maintained certain good mores and actually fought to preserve them. Of course you need the right balance of enforcement, or conservatism, but modern conservatives have mostly not been too much on the excessive conservative side in the recent past on such issues. Seeing the effect of liberals taking control I do appreciate actual conservatives more, while in the past I had more mixed feelings about them. People should go back and see what each faction was pushing and claiming, examine how things played out and praise those who got them right, and criticize those who got them wrong.
Oh and the point is good trade offs and knowing what you are doing instead of relying on wishful thinking. Drug restriction policies have had a good track record in modernity. So the idea is for a general ethic of societal discipline for long term good on important areas. Still, no reason to enforce restrictions in a manner that the excessive restriction is more damaging to society than the gain. Or at least to persist where it would be unwise. See covid lockdowns which have been the more excessive uncharted waters type of policy, although serious enough diseases could justify such impositions.
How do you explain the entire history of the failed War on Drugs, which seems to contradicts this?
The war on drugs policies in most countries that have been followed have resulted in low prison populations and lack of drug abuse.
In the case of the USA, from what I have read much of the drug related prison population was there related to more serious crimes and they got them related to the drugs. Or drug dealers who sell poison to people. USA is a more violent country with more violent crime and so a larger share of imprisonment actually does have a protective element.
We have seen indeed an increase of crime as decriminalization and reduction of prison population has become the goal.
A small percentage of the population commit the most violent crime, so rather than encouraging more people to join them by decriminalization policies (which will not lead to more people imprisoned as crime increases since we got decriminalization), I would side with the majority preyed upon by violent criminals and against the criminals.
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