In September, in a stunning reversal of policy for the Pacific north-west state, Oregon enacted legislation turning low-level drug possession into a more serious crime punishable by up to 180 days in jail:
Just four years ago, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, a groundbreaking drug decriminalization measure that abandoned jail sentences for possessing small amounts of drugs and imposed an infraction citation instead. Passed on the heels of Black Lives Matter uprisings, the measure aimed to treat addiction as a disease instead of a crime, prioritize services and recovery over jail, reduce overcrowding behind bars and help address racial disparities in policing and prosecutions.
At the time, Oregon was grappling with rising overdoses. It ranked second nationally for drug addiction rates and worst in the US for access to treatment. The problem was systemic, rooted in decades of failure to invest in the level of behavioral health services needed for people with mental illnesses and addiction. Measure 110 called for an infusion of $302m for addiction recovery and harm reduction services, with a focus on underserved communities, including Black and Indigenous people impacted by criminalization.
Drug policy reform advocates hoped the first-in-the-nation decriminalization experiment would become a model.
[…]
From September, when the new law was enacted, through 26 March, the Medford police force carried out 902 drug possession arrests — more than double the number of cases in Portland (a city with seven times the population). Jackson county has logged 1,170 arrests total.
[…]
One of the livability team’s main priorities has been clearing homeless encampments, and as Verling drove his patrol car onto a pedestrian greenway, the impact was clear. During the pandemic, encampments were a common site. Now, there were few visible signs of homelessness. Several locals were jogging.
This seems like a Rorschach test:
The state’s affordable housing shortage is the primary driver of homelessness, with over 27% of renters facing severely unaffordable rent, forced to spend half or more of their income on housing. Some unhoused people like Nikki come from out of state in hopes of better services. Her main motivation, she said, was healthcare: she’s a transgender woman, and her deep-red home state of Missouri had become a leader in anti-trans laws and medical restrictions. But she also liked the environment of Medford, in an area known as the Rogue Valley. There’s a backdrop of mountain ranges, and a greenway bike path connecting local cities.
“It’s been awesome living here, and it’s been shit,” said Nikki, who asked to use a nickname as she talked openly about drug use. She said she regularly uses meth and has done stints in rehab that didn’t last.
She said she had spent time in the county jail when she was picked up on warrants, forced into the men’s section. For people with serious addictions, detox in jail is “horror beyond what you can imagine”, she said. Incarceration can also increase overdose risks when people are released with lower tolerance.
Now, Nikki tries to sleep in hidden corners in the woods where police won’t bother her – “out of sight, out of mind”.
“The problem was systemic, rooted in decades of failure to invest in the level of behavioral health services needed for people with mental illnesses and addiction.”
Here is my edgelord hot take: The REAL problems are even more systemic than that. One real problem is that the psychiatric industry is a money-making industry, not a sacred duty to reform or to humanize. Another real problem is that many so-called therapists have terrible god complexes and severely subpar skills, so they do much more harm than good to their patients. Even if the shrinks had been given decades of funding for “behavioral health services,” they mostly would have served themselves, and they would have degraded and corrupted American culture.
Another real problem is the fact that “right” and “left” people are not honest about the biological limits of humanistic ethics. Some of the “right” edgelords just hope that the most dysfunctional drug addicts will die as quickly as possible and be forgotten — but these edgelords ignore the fact that the corpses are always lionized as martyrs. Some of the “left” edgelords are positive thinkers, clinging to an ideal vision where the George Floyds of America will suddenly become clean and sober particle physicists and neurosurgeons — but these edgelords live far away from poor people in a bubble of wealth and privilege.
Permitting drug addicts to kill themselves is too honest; it kills the American Dream of a tough, fair game in which the hard-working underdog can rise to the top. Endless throwing resources to keep drug addicts from dying is too dishonest, and America does not have the physical resources to send paramedics to Narcan all the junkies.
It is not safe for Americans honestly to discuss their crises under their real names. Honest grassroots organizers get SWATted. Logging onto 8kun through seven proxies to tell the truth anonymously does not build meaningful grassroots political communities.
I generally consider anonymous political speech to be the only practical recourse for most Americans, but some Americans are going to have to take the risk and attach their names to their unpleasant wake-up calls. Too much anonymity can actually be harmful, if that anonymity leads to nihilism; as one critic of anonymity once said: “… if Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind; reason is of no use to us—the freedom of Speech may be taken away—and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-10840
Gaikokumaniakku says:
Conquest’s Third Law strikes again.
The psychiatric industry is one of the oldest parts of the “secular” quack theocracy… even with that meme-fied couch as confession booth.
Almost everything that theocracy under fig leaf does is a “scared duty” (aka “vain and unaccountable”)… what of it? Everything it does overgrows with bureaucracies. Everything it does turns into yet another pork ladder or patronage scheme — in best cases completely, more often still making the problem worse.
https://imgflip.com/i/9pd3eb
“The state’s affordable housing shortage is the primary driver of homelessness, with over 27% of renters facing severely unaffordable rent, forced to spend half or more of their income on housing.”
This is caused by banks’ securitization of houses, particularly the mortgage as a legal tool. If banking corporations lose the ability to accept mortgages upon houses the price level will fall by 90-99%. Since the States are responsible for registry maintenance and occupancy enforcement, there are fifty opportunities waiting for the taking. The first mover will experience an economic boom such as has never been seen before in history.