Burying 110
Assuming that Governor Kohoutek has not lost her mind, Measure 110, the hideous law that decriminalized hard street drugs in Oregon, will be repealed very soon. I assume our lovely governor is trying to set up the bill signing in such a way as to minimize embarrassment for the Democratic Party. Maybe she'll wait until 4:59 p.m. on Good Friday.
Anyway, in the meantime that tighty-righty lawyer-blogger guy in Bend, Jeff Eager, sums up the history of Measure 110 pretty aptly here. He's a smart cookie, and his take is worth a read.
Never forget who sold this bad idea to the voters, and who fought to keep it in effect even as it destroyed Portland and enabled the overdose deaths of so many people. The pushers and defenders of 110 don't deserve your respect, or your support, ever again.
The names of the people that support and defend 110 often get covered up when the media reports on the issue.
ReplyDeleteThere was an old saying about the difficulty of debating with people that buy ink by the barrel.
The ultimate problem with legalizing (ie, approving of) certain drugs in this society is that the users of said drugs will never be full and productive participants in the most important parts of the capitalistic economic system: they will always be resource sucklers rather than resource producers.
ReplyDeleteExactly
DeleteHere is a very good overview and opinion from a guy who lives close to Seattle, which has similar issues:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bitchute.com/video/r_mN58G5768/
Until we take serious the ONLY WAY to help addicts is getting them separated from supply and retraining their brain, all else will continue our current nightmare for both the addicts and us. Repealing 10 is a good start in the right direction, but all the enablers and trough feeders will need to be taken out too to really get somewhere.
ReplyDeleteObviously decriminalizing drugs before radically more robust treatment options (including compulsory options) was insane and stupid. But as we lunge to pitch that bathwater out, time to notice that there's a baby or two in there -- namely that in this war, as in so many other parts of our politics, the critique each side has of the other is the most accurate.
ReplyDeleteThe war on drugs IS a vicious failure, with an enormous racist component, and no amount of botched harm reduction rollout changes that fact. If locking people up reduced drug use, we'd have been pretty much out of drug users by Reagan's second term.
That said, harm reduction that doesn't account for and strenuously counter the harm done to society as a whole is a sad failure of its own.
We have made a kind of peace with alcohol and tobacco, two lethal drugs, and alcohol has every bit the negative social costs and lethality for non-users as fentanyl and other opioids. Rushing to re-embrace the carceral response is a stupid, stupid response to a complex problem.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/health/alcohol-deaths-cdc.html
Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge to Nearly 500 a Day, C.D.C. Says
Spikes of fatalities linked to drinking that began with the Covid pandemic were not an anomaly. An estimated 178,000 people died in 2021 from similar causes.
Christina JewettJan Hoffman
By Christina Jewett and Jan Hoffman
Feb. 29, 2024
The Latest News
Alcohol-related deaths surged in the United States by nearly 30 percent in recent years, with roughly 500 Americans dying each day in 2021, according to a new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study chronicled a sustained spike in drinking during the Covid pandemic that continued to rise after the shock of the lockdowns of 2020. The incidence of alcohol-related deaths was higher in men, but among women the death rate shot up at a quicker pace.
“I think the results of this research are really alarming,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, who is a professor of public health at Tufts University School of Medicine and was not involved in the study. “It shows that there’s been a truly substantial increase in alcohol-related deaths over the last six years.”
ImageTwo glasses of a dark beer rest on a wooden table, with a hand grasping the handle of one of them.
Credit...Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The study found that deaths linked to alcohol in the United States increased in five years by 40,000. The toll is stark: About 178,000 people died in 2021 from excessive drinking, compared with 138,000 in 2016. During that period, the deaths rose by 27 percent among men and 35 percent among women.
Dr. Siegel attributed the surge possibly to people’s high stress levels during the pandemic alongside increased home-delivery services offered by the beverage industry. “Anytime you make something easier to acquire, you see an increase in use in response,” he said.
Problem is that we will have 36 different systems at the county level defining what deflection™ is and little money given to community corrections to supervise and shepherd defendants who fail deflection™ and are now in diversion® with few meaningful treatment resources. Defendants who fail deflection™ will now have their old-ish cases submitted by police agencies for prosecution (remember, there has to be a new infrastructure within each police agency built for tracking successful and failed deflections™), courts will then then be forced to issue multiple warrants when defendants have no fixed address fail to appear over and over because hardcore addicts don't usually update their outlook calendar for arraignment, and they will never be held once they are picked up anyway. Yes, this is better than 110 but it still has many flaws, the primary one being that there are an endless amount of new, and some meaningless steps where systems will fail due to lack of resources, reliance on failed ideologies, lack of leadership or just plain incompetence (I'm looking at you Multnomah County). I really hope I'm wrong and I'll happily eat my words, but look for the articles to start in about a year showing ineffective results, blaming the criminal justice system and the pols shrugging their shoulders and pointing fingers. You will really see which counties have their act together in about a year, but unless Multnomah is one of them the blight will remain.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that there is going to be chaos. But if we stop importing addicts from all over the country, and get them off the darn streets, that would be progress.
DeleteEverybody wants there to be "treatment," but the reality is that in most cases treatment doesn't really "work," or not for long. The only honest answer for any community is to try to run the dealers and users out of town.
Fortunately the bill includes a legislative fix for a Supreme Court ruling that seriously impacted the ability to charge dealers.
DeletePlease remind me. I seem to have forgotten. Why don’t we go after the suppliers of the drug dealers. I know that MS 13 is a scary bunch. But, they seem to have a lock on the local supply chain and curtailing they’re activity might help the livability of our community
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the Chinese connection. They have taken over Vancouver BC and most of the stuff comes down here from there. I used to love to travel up there and hang in funky old town, but whoa that is asking for serious harm now. They even have hard drug vending machines now.
DeleteThis repeal will only usher forward the next epic, devastating blunder by the same bottom of the barrel people (with names) who never take any responsibility for anything. Their wholesale incompetence is exceeded only their deceit. Resistance is truly futile. Look at Portland & Mult Co. governance. The state is essentially just as bad. The most alarming aspect is the worsening trajectory while pretenses of recovery persist.
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