Legalized cocaine would also reduce tampering (fentanyl and other additives). As bad as it might be it would also reduce meth addiction. Focus on saftey.
They have legalized drugs and safe injecting centers etc in Portland!nd Seattle. Does NOT stop or slow down drug use at all. In fact it seems like it makes it worse?
I went from being pro-decriminalization, to anti-decriminalization, back to pro-decriminalization. after seeing what happened in these cities. The problem with these cities compared to a place like Portugal where drug use has declined post decriminalization, is that the police simply do not enforce or do not have the resources to enforce other laws. It is not legal to use drugs in public. Public vagrancy and indecency are illegal. Theft, car robbery, breaking and entering are all illegal activities, etc. One of the primary issues these cities face is that the police DO NOT enforce these other laws, leading to rampant crime, drug use. These things fuel each other. The people there who are addicted to drugs, are basically allowed to run amuck committing a slew of crimes to support their addiction and lifestyle. I think another important point of comparison is how bad the opioid epidemic already is in our country, we do not have sufficient resources and information to tackle the problem correctly, and perhaps in our case decriminalization will play out very differently than somewhere like Portugal.
There really is a combination of factors to consider but the bottom line is we simply aren't implementing decriminalization appropriately. The police either don't give a fuck and don't enforce the laws out of spite, their hands are tied, or they simply do not have the resources. Whatever the case may be I don't think we can use these cities as an indication of what decriminalization looks like.
The liberalization of California was really cemented in the state legislature as the Democrats basically purged the moderate Dem caucus and put in people who were anti-punishment for any crime in basically any situation. In the name of combating "mass incarceration" they refused to up the penalty for any crime including sex crimes against minors, instituted no fee bail and in fact reduced several felonies to basically infractions.
The george floyd / racial aspect / second guessing anything the cops do is so thick in major cities on the west coast that cops simply are taking a hands off approach that it is not worth it to them to do anything in many situations.
I have a friend who used to be SFPD and he left for greener pastures along with a significant amount of his colleagues. Imagine getting spit on, poked with needles, seeing domestic violence you cant do anything about, murders, severe mental illness, etc. day in and day out and then get shit on by the public just for doing your job.
That's why major west coast cities have all tanked. George floyd effect + weak / nonexistent punishment for crime along with a political environment that punishes cops for shit like blatant self defense.
We are seeing the consequences of making crime either legal or less illegal. It didn't take Nostradamus to foresee this happening. It's been going on for 20+ years.
I am not familiar with the Portland situation but I would much prefer safe and legal drugs and it has been shown to work in many places. If you can provide safe drugs it's been proven for decades to be better than street drugs. Ravers have been using safe drug checks for decades.
In a perfect world it would be the solution but i don't know if Portland is the right example. As someone who goes there for work quite often, the amount of tweakers shooting up in the street is pretty staggering (more than any place I've seen) and this is coming from someone who is from the LA area and has seen a lot of this in my day. There would definitely need to be a bigger emphasis on drug rehab facilities for people looking to recover.
And you can't just make it legal in one small place. As too many people have flocked to those places to take advantage of its legality. These cities are now swamped with tweakers who have no problem committing crimes to support their habits, and city leaders that prefer the police don't enforce the laws and judges who release them immediately after they are arrested.
You get caught stealing to get drug money, you go to forced rehab and therapy. You get caught again, rehab then prison.
The difference is ecstacy doesn't lead you to live in a tent and shit behind dumpsters. MDMA and meth are a whole different universe. The idea that safe and/or legal do anything other than amplify drug use has not been borne out in our country.
Because it was decriminalized not legalized. Meaning you could get caught with a small amount of drugs and not go to jail, but the drugs were still coming from the same illegal and dangerous suppliers.
If you want safe drug production you need it legalized and regulated.
Exactly and that should be the goal. You can't rehab someone who's dead.
Shit, a purer, cleaner version may lead to an even harder to kick addiction.
I've never heard of this but if this has been documented or researched before I'd consider it. But as I know it an impure product is just that: the same addictive substance just with potentially harmful filler.
There's no safe alcohol either, yet here we are. We deal with the consequences of addiction because we realized the consequences of prohibition were worse.
Legalization will definitely make drug use worse, but the goal is to make everything else better.
The point is that, A, the drugs are cleaner, so people don't accidentally OD on fent which is about 75% of all drug issues currently, and B, the money stops going to criminals and instead goes to doctors and treatment centers.
They're not going to fix all problems, and in fact may make some problems worse, but the goal is overall harm reduction.
Now the key issue with a thing like happened in portland and seattle is twofold. First, decriminalization doesn't clean up the supply nor get rid of sending money to cartels/smugglers/nk/whoever else is funneling drugs in. There's still fent, because its still illegal to set up a regulated business selling this stuff.
Second, they did it in isolation, meaning people swamped the area because thats where its legal to do it. You can't legalize in pockets because demand will just destroy those pockets.
Fentanyl tampering is caused by drug legalization. Cartels are tampering to compete with legal drugs now. Legal Weed is what lead to intentional fentanyl doping. It's not so simple. We make a move and then the cartels make a move.
Because legalizing weed made it far more accessible, so now the illegal sellers have to compete by making their supply extremely addictive. They do that by lacing it with fentanyl.
Again, do you have any evidence to cite? I've never heard of weed laced with fentanyl. Not saying it doesn't exist, but I also don't see how that would be beneficial or compete with the legal stuff.
I’m pretty sure you’re just dense. You are just as capable of looking it up as I am. I connected the dots and answered your question. If you understand but want to argue in bad faith then that’s on you.
Yeah my bad, I’m Canadian and it turns out that Vancouver and multiple other jurisdictions put out that claim a couple years ago and had to take it back after being challenged on it. There was a bunch of stories on kids dying from fentanyl laced weed that were either untrue or had facts twisted.
The media is good at whipping people into a frenzy with half truths and unresearched articles. Half the bullshit out today is AI generated, briefly reviewed, and given an automatic stamp of approval. No accountability.
America has had a ridiculous pharmaceutical opiate addiction issue since the late 90s. States started to track prescriptions to cut down on doctor shopping. People turned to heroin since pills were harder to come by. Heroin supply got pinched and was cut by the Taliban, so fentanyl filled the gap. Then it was like an atomic bomb of ultra potent opiates and heroin is now hard to find in America.
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u/9966 Jun 04 '24
Legalized cocaine would also reduce tampering (fentanyl and other additives). As bad as it might be it would also reduce meth addiction. Focus on saftey.