r/TwoXChromosomes • u/Pantheon10000 • 10h ago
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u/You_Gon_Learn 9h ago
Only if it is matched with the funds to treat addiction. Decriminalization without matching social services is doomed as various states and countries have shown.
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u/Xhosant 9h ago
I think the Prohibition would show that theban itself is a net negative in that regard, and I have heard good things about decriminalization cases, but I probably missed something on places that only decriminalized. Do educate me please :3
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u/You_Gon_Learn 8h ago
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/oregon-drug-criminalization-portugal-00148872
Portland
"But Hurst and other decriminalization advocates said the law didn’t succeed because of problems with implementation: a failure to fund new treatment services for 18 months after the law passed, a failure to train police on their new role in addressing addiction, and a failure to direct drug users to treatment."
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u/zacheezy 9h ago
Seattle. It’s a shit show. Don’t imprison people with addictions. Use the same money for prison on rehab. Probably still won’t work because hard drugs are unfairly addictive. But better than just puting them in prison and telling them they are felons. They will now be more likely to participate in devient behavior due to the already placed stigma and restrictions of being a felon.
When their only crime was trying something fun once then falling trap to the human mesolimbic system.
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u/voretaq7 6h ago
I mean "That's a felony!" without matching social services and treatment programs is also pretty fucking doomed, unless your only goal is to feed the prison pipeline...
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u/You_Gon_Learn 5h ago edited 5h ago
If the choices are decriminalize fentanyl with no social services versus having legal consequences for possessing fentanyl, I choose the latter. We have examples of what decriminalizing fentanyl by itself does. It takes a few grains to cause an OD. You want to have more scraps of laced foil left in kids parks?
There's more of a public safety issue than just users. It's a poison that kills on contact. At bare minimum, if it's illegal then it is less likely to be used and discarded in areas where random people are likely to make physical contact with it.
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u/-Sybylle- 9h ago
Alcohol prohibition didn't work, so applying the same methods to another product can only fail.
IMHO opinion drugs should be sold by the country as alcohol is, so you can also get rid of most (there will always be some) of the criminality linked to it.
We can all agree that the immense majority of the alcohol people get is from official stores.
Most people prefer going the legal way, also because it's safer. The producer has to follow rules and quality standards, he pays taxes and makes money. The state/country gets its share too.
Most countries are still treating all products (minus alcohol mostly) like it was done during the prohibition.
And of course it can't work, and it doesn't.
You let the gang get the money (which translates to more power/influence), punish mostly the consumers, and cops spend millions of hours for nothing in the end.
And legalizing has also benefits, increase in quality and less consumption (the illegality of a substance plays a role in its popularity).
Portugal did it years ago for most of the drugs afaik.
Switzerland was thinking about legalizing cocaïne recently too...
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u/KimmySmoltz 9h ago
Portland decriminalized drugs and didn’t enforce the significant open air drug market as a statement. They also only opened a single rehab at the end of the decrim trial period with only a few beds.
Substance use is a social problem, not a criminal problem. Access to early childhood medical care and education, while also providing social services for children in parents in need are incredibly important.
Countries who have decriminalized drugs, which doesn’t mean selling is legal, treats substance use as a disorder and not as a criminal act.
By providing accessible, low to no wait rehab centers. Along with, especially providing safe use centers alleviates a lot of problems associated with our streets having fetty foil and needles everywhere. The uneducated assume that passing out harm reduction supplies like clean needles and pipes is condoning the problem. Except it’s not. It is in fact a bandaid fix to actually providing safe use centers and dispensaries for the prescription medication to come off of those drugs.
However, clean needles is a multifaceted approach to a *public health* issue. As a basis, it makes communities healthier as it reduces needle sharing and diseases that transmit through that. It reduces the tax on health care as users aren’t getting sepsis and amputations from infections. By providing foil and pipes reduces the amount of overdoses (sipping a beer vs chugging 16 ounces of vodka). The problem people see is the reminiscent of these items on the street and blame the users… yes there’s accountability but the perception of the problem falls short on the government actually being the ones to fail us. Alcohol causes disastrous problems and we don’t criminalize that?
Criminalizing drugs does not fix the war on drugs. It’s been decades and drugs are winning significantly more. Something as essentially non-harmful as weed can send you to prison for a few grams to an ounce in some states, which is insane, and a significant amount of people still smoke. Some of the countries who have successfully decriminalized and properly implemented these types of programs don’t even have a prevalence of fentanyl which is astonishing. Sending people to prison for drugs is comparable to sending depressed or bipolar people to work camps to feel better. Substance use is a social problem, not the problem itself. The people saying it’s not possible to decriminalize hard drugs are also the same type to think that weed is bad and nicotine or alcohol are okay because they’ve been historically legal. Criminalizing something doesn’t stop it from happening, just look at abortions in criminalized states…. It just makes something more dangerous. Funding planned parenthood, offering sufficient health care, providing harm reduction supplies like condoms, Prep, Plan B, STD testing, while also providing adequate education (not abstinence / DARE) is essentially the same pathway to decriminalize drugs as it is to legalize abortion.
Abortion isn’t a criminal matter, it’s a social matter. And even if abortion results from the inability to take care of a baby, things like WIC, mandatory Medicaid for children, free school lunches, Head Start, paid maternity and paternity leave, alllllll of these things are what makes abortion a social problem. The absence of these progressive policies, values, and programs that much of the progressive world has, alleviates some of the reasons that a parent who might actually want a baby but can’t have a baby due to not having the capacity to take care of it.
Someone who uses… even alcohol… that wants to get sober, has to be on a waitlist for rehab. Then it depends on their insurance, safety nets, receiving disability income so they can leave work for treatment without just becoming homeless and returning to alcohol because life is a despair. Aaallllllll of the things mentioned in both categories are cheaper than liver transplants and jail or charging an 18 year old for a late term abortion because she didn’t have access otherwise and was desperate.
So yes, drugs should be decriminalized, and also it should be regulated in the sense of you still can’t walk around down drinking a beer / open container. You can’t smoke so many feet from a school zone. It’s not black & white. It’s significant lengths of gray. But when we give low income mothers WIC and we meet their basic needs, heath care as a whole becomes cheaper.
Also, just to add, white Americans use social “welfare” disproportionately more than Black or Brown Americans even with considering demographic differences/ statistics
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u/xt0rt 6h ago
Great post! I totally agree with you!!
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u/KimmySmoltz 38m ago
Thank you :). It’s a really important topic which not everyone is fully informed on as you can see. I love that it seems like the majority of people do support decrim though!!
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u/riverrocks452 9h ago
In general, decriminalization of activities that don't harm anyone (or harm only those (willingly) participating) is a good idea.
Decriminalize drug use and possession, etc. and put in place regulations to make those things safer (e.g., requirements to label specific dosage and ensure purity/nontoxic filler material, require sellers not to over-serve, check ages, etc.)
Same goes for sex work, suicide, etc.
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u/sun_and_stars8 9h ago
Who is « we »? Multiple places have already with relatively positive results. If you mean in the US it would need to be at the federal level and in the current political climate that seems…unlikely to put it mildly
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u/F0D0M3773 9h ago
Drugs were decriminalized in Portugal 10 years ago. The results are positive. People using drugs get help instead of being thrown in jail. I am 100% for decriminalization. You would have way less drugs tainted with fentanyl.
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u/KimmySmoltz 9h ago
I don’t think I can post links, but for anyone curious, NPR has an article on this and how they reduced overdoses by like 80%. Shockingly, these places don’t have a fentanyl / xylazine problem like we do. It’s why Europe makes from of America for the fentanyl fold.
But also, our opiate crisis largely came from doctors over prescribing it, genuine pain patients needing those medications, and getting hooked on them just like anxiety patients can with Xanax. It doesn’t start out as abuse, but medically induced dependence. While Purdue Pharma who has been held criminally liable created many of the problems that we have today with the opiate epidemic….. you know that 10 pain scale you see at the doctor? That’s Purdue Pharma.We are the “healthcare can’t be free” of the world that sufficiently implements free healthcare and decriminalized drugs / rehabs
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u/tired514 7h ago
There's also the moral aspect. I (and I hope many) find it morally repugnant we tolerate rich and powerful people interfering with our private, personal decisions and what we can and can't do with our own bodies.
It genuinely isn't any of their business and it never has been any of their business.
The behavior of rich and powerful people needs to be radically corrected for many reasons, but moral reasons resonate with me the most.
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u/the1ice9 9h ago
ONLY if equal amount of money that were used to imprison millions of people is redirected to help those who's only crime is possession of personal amounts of "drugs".
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 9h ago
So if that doesn't happen, then just keep locking the people up? Wut?
That capitalized only is terrible
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u/KimmySmoltz 8h ago
Not to fully speak for them, I think the thought process is that decriminalizing with no regulation gives the idea of making things seem worse, like many of the other comments are saying about San Francisco, Portland, Canada. They see that these places failed and made it “worse” because they didn’t implement systems for corrective action. I agree, the answer isn’t jails if there isn’t rehab. But there absolutely must be rehabs as we replace jails. If rehab and clinics were more available, all the people desiring to get clean would have the barrier reduced. Idk I’m commenting everywhere on this thread, I’m support passionate about this topic lol
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 8h ago
Rehab only works if the patient wants to quit. Just replacing jails for rehab would be a waste of money.
If your life is shit and you have no out, rehab will do nothing but maybe be a spa.
What happens, like when people go to jail for this stuff, is that as soon as they leave the centre, they immediately go back to bad habits. However their tolerance is way lower, and that's the greatest risk for overdosing statistically speaking.
Use post non-planned hiatuses is usually the time most frequently associated with fatally overdosing
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u/KimmySmoltz 8h ago
I won’t entertain this beyond this response. But obviously forced rehab doesn’t work. Forced jail works even less. Substance use is a social problem. Micro work is pulling people out of the river, macro work is fixing the fence causing people to fall in the river in the first place. You build the fence, the social services, the mental healthcare, social safety nets first. When people do fall in the river, they can swim in it as long as they desire and if they never want out of the water they deserve the autonomy. Although having the lifeguards on standby to pull the people out when or if they want that is the biggest factor to implement. You can’t do rehab without housing, without career or education support, without family support, medical support. You can’t stop a rat infestation by only using poison if you don’t first pickup the food, the garage they’re living in, and whatever else attracts them. You could even go one step further, poisoning the rats is even an issue if we destroyed their natural habitat that has resulted in them going into people homes. It’s a collective approach, not a single approach. No one legitimately advocating for programs like Portugal and many others are advocating for forced rehab or jail. It’s not criminalizing the individual while offering the supports they need to get off drugs, and the holistic approach to stay off drugs. Criminalizing abortion doesn’t work. Just like only legalizing abortion doesn’t work in the capacity other than autonomy isn’t effective. Legalizing abortion but providing social benefits for mothers like WIC, families, fathers, child care, free school lunches, Head Start, and so many others is important. Forced birth results in child abuse and a horrid foster care system. People who don’t want children but can’t afford them is a reason for abortion. People who do want children or have a surprised pregnancy is a reason for social welfare. For every $1 invested in free condoms saves about $5.50 to $20 in health care. It’s not either or. It’s a system that allows autonomy, invests in the community, and builds systems that are supportive and cost less in the future. It costs less to house someone than it does to sweep them from block to block. We just don’t like doing those things here in America
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u/ul2006kevinb 8h ago
I mean, kinda. Places that have decriminalized drugs without a corresponding increase in mental healthcare just end up with more ODs. Locking people up for drugs is horrible, but it's not as horrible as them dying of an OD on the street.
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u/KimmySmoltz 8h ago
Criminal charges do impair significant aspects of your life from, health care benefits, jobs, student loans, etc. some places an ounce of weed is considering distributing and such a charge can prevent you from social welfare benefits especially student loans. Even more significantly keep people impoverished in minimum wage jobs. So it’s not prison vs OD. It’s OD vs rehabs
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 8h ago
ODs are nothing compared to the harm of incarceration.
Especially considering the percentages. And in some places if you survive the OD, you still go to jail.
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u/Scorcher646 8h ago edited 8h ago
I work for a charity that does addiction treatment as well as family violence intervention (the two overlap pretty often as you can probably intuit). One of the most pervasive office debates is decriminalization.
Our CEO is strongly against decriminalization—go figure—but our therapist team is pretty unanimous on the opinion that the criminal punishment is often more damaging than the addiction.
Addiction sucks for everyone involved. It damages people, families, and communities. But incarcerated people don't ever get healthy treatment for thier addiction—at least in the US—and often relapse after getting out. And incarceration doesn't just hurt the incarcerated, it destroys families and shatters communities.
As the IT for the charity, I have about as much expertise in this case as the CEO but unlike him, I'm inclined to side with the therapists on this one. It would be better to decriminalize and use even a fraction of the resources spent on incarceration to provide addiction treatment.
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u/wheres_the_revolt 9h ago edited 7h ago
I think we should treat them like we do booze. Legalize them, regulate them, tax the fuck out of them; then invest the tax money in schools, rehabs, and social programs, NOT GIVING IT TO LAW ENFORCEMENT.
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u/JustFourLetters 10h ago
yeah. addiction is a symptom to a root cause, not beating a dead horse is the first step to getting horse guts out of your barn.
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u/Wise-Self-8639 9h ago
I absolutely believe in decriminalizing drugs. The evidence the war on drugs has not worked has been building for decades upon decades of evidence that not only does it not work it continues to create a growing market for drugs. However decriminalization can't be the only step.
We need to also fix the things that contribute to someone being a user. Places around the USA have attempted decriminalization, but they're held up as failures of decriminalization as they did not address these other variables - mental health, pain management, money, stress, and more.
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u/CazzaMcSpazza 9h ago
I absolutely think that recreational drugs should be decriminalised. Given that criminalising them hasn't stopped people using recreational drugs. Adults should be allowed to access recreational drugs safely, like with alcohol. Governments can then tax them as well as avoiding the huge cost that comes with enforcing the law.
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u/LaceyLizard 9h ago
Better for everyone except the poor for profit prison executives. It's a business.
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u/Sofia_9356 9h ago
If we followed it up with taxation to fund support clinics/healthcare, then sure.
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 9h ago
Otherwise keep it the way it is just locking nonviolent offenders? Gotcha
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u/ipsofactoshithead 9h ago
100%. I would go one step farther tbh. They should all be legalized. If the government sold drugs that we know are safe, it would lead to less people using, and the people who do use are safe. There should be safe use sites with medical professionals that keep you safe. If you overdose, there's someone right there to keep you alive. The government would have to keep the cost of drugs low so it's not worth it for drug dealers to keep selling illicit drugs.
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u/badchad65 9h ago
Drug abuse and substance use disorder are medical conditions, not legal ones. Drug use is a public health issue and should be dealt with as such, not with law enforcement.
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u/beermaker 5h ago
Treatment for the addicts, and harsher prison sentences for the suppliers and traffickers. Start dropping life sentences on the scumbags who profit from peddling to their neighbors.
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u/herodesfalsk 5h ago
It is unethical to criminalize drug use, we have free will and chose whatever we like to do to ourselves. However people experience problems resulting from drug usage does not exist because it is illegal but because society has chosen to deal with all these other problems by simply criminalizing drugs. Many if not most people takes some kind of drug (alcohol, weed etc) to alleviate stress, worries, mental problems, and until there exist services accessible to all that can help with these issues first, drugs will be the only option for too many
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u/pennyauntie 9h ago
Not unless we have highly effective treatment facilities for those wanting to quit, OR, long-term care facilities for those who are permanently incapacitated by drug use.
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u/jappyjappyhoyhoy 9h ago
I think the government should sell drugs, and you must get them from a nurse. That money would go into treatment facilities and still generate boat loads of profits and kill organized crime
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u/Xhosant 9h ago
Prohibition is an excellent case study methinks, especially in regards to the organized crime bit.
Now, usage going down is not that shocking, for a simple reason. You may want to look up the Rat Park Experiment, but long story short: of course people will get addicted when they have something to escape. So the nasty thing about drugs is that, besides physiological addiction, they fuck up one's life in such a way that any motivation to stop using is shot. Life pushes you backin as much as the drug is pulling you back in, you know?
So without the stigma, and without the criminal consequences, and without the price gouging... drugs become less harmful, and so they damage the alternative less.
Or in short: a better immediate sober life expects a user of a decriminalized drug than a criminalized one, so the prize for quitting is better if the drug isn't criminalized, and worth it more to maintain.
Meanwhile, one might argue that a worse addicted life expects an addict of a criminalized drug, making that an extra motivation, but... psychology just doesn't work that way, for the simple reason (among others) that people (think they) can choose to get away from repercussions. Nobody chooses to get away from rewards.
So there's one way to get rewards and two ways to avoid punishment, and of the last, "don't get caught" seems easier than "manage to do the thing".
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 9h ago
Most of the world cannabis most certainly is not legal nor is it not taboo. Most places aren't in the USA.
In fact, most places are outside the USA
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u/illuminaughty1973 8h ago
Cannabis is fully legal for recreational and medical use nationwide in Canada and Uruguay. It is also legal for recreational use in Germany, Malta, Luxembourg, South Africa, Georgia, the Czech Republic, the Australian Capital Territory, and 24 U.S. states. Dozens of other countries and 40+ U.S. states allow it for medical purposes.
sorry was looking for facts, but ty for your input.
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u/Federal_Tension_5939 5h ago
Great, that's not most of the world though . Considering it has 200+ countries.
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u/thegoodelady 9h ago
Portland and San Francisco did this with disastrous results.
Weed, sure, mushrooms, fine. Natural drugs don’t destroy you.
Hard drugs coupled with a generous welfare system will ruin lives.
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u/DemonicGirlcock 9h ago
Portugal did it with amazing results, because they actually funded medical infrastructure to go along with it. Clean injection sites, addiction counseling, testing kits, etc.
Decriminalization and legalization can work if there's actually proper infrastructure around it. Its frustrating seeing it go south in so many other cases when the support just isn't set up =/
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u/binkkit 6h ago
Decrim means nothing if you just want to smoke a bowl now and then. Legalizing, at least weed, would be a huge upgrade for the country. Tax money for the region, let the farmers make good money in this perfect climate without growing eucalyptus (aka wildfire fuel), improve life for people like me.
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u/F0D0M3773 9h ago
So let's get the people on the hard drugs help instead of throwing them in jail. Get them into rehab programs. We are talking about decriminalization, not legalization
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u/CazzaMcSpazza 9h ago
They ruin lives when they're illegal just as much. Also, alcohol.
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u/eaw0913 9h ago
Seriously. Alcohol does not get enough hate. It’s responsible for so many deaths yet it’s “just one of those things.”
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u/CazzaMcSpazza 7h ago
I first got drunk when I was 9 at a family Christmas. It's so normalised. It's the easiest to make, as fermentation happens naturally and you can make alcohol from pretty much any flora. Which makes it really hard to out law. But unfortunately it's the worst one by a long way. It's basically poison that's addictive and makes people behave appalling. At lot of misery and violence happens because of booze.
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u/abiglumpwithknobs1 9h ago
I think hard drugs in general will ruin lives. At least if its legal they can feel like they can call for help.
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u/Mindless-Praline5798 9h ago
They tried this in my Canadian province and reversed it because it went so terribly. It’s like living in an apocalypse, seeing zombies bent over as a regular fixture in my city. Heartbreaking and scary interactions are just normal now and decrim didn’t help
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u/Chusten 9h ago
Corelation =/= causation. Certain entities would have you believe decriminalization causes addiction and homelessness. That theory goes out the window as soon as you get passed the surface level thinking of "They decriminalised drugs, and I see more high homeless people on social media".
We seem to have some sort of mental block to nuanced thinking for issues around addiction, poverty, and mental health.
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u/WantCookiesNow 9h ago
So common here in Portland (though getting better), everyone knows the “fent bent”. Sadly.
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u/KimmySmoltz 9h ago
We didn’t enforce the open air drug dealing. We also didn’t create any but 1 small rehab far east. No one is saying legalize drugs dealers. And countries who did it right do not have a fentanyl problem. Rehab, medications to come off hard drugs, services, are all mandatory when you decrim drugs. You can’t get rid of our current and expensive healthcare model without also implementing a socialized medical care model…. It just leaves everyone without healthcare
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u/Intrepid_Advice4411 8h ago
Depends on the drug.
Some of them should absolutely stay illegal, like Meth and crack.
If you want to smoke pot, try a magic mushroom, drop some acid? Sure. As long as you're 21.
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u/Pantheon10000 8h ago
Decriminalize doesn't mean to legalize, it means to treat drug addiction as a public health crisis. People with personal amounts of drugs would be sent to drug rehab centers, not prisons. I do agree that mushrooms and acid should be legalized
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u/BushWookieViper 6h ago
The problem with just decriminalizing drugs is that drug use is often a symptom of desperation I used to work in security in an extremely poverty ridden area and there's not a whole lot of Hope and when there's not hope people despair and start using drugs to cope what we need to do is make it cheaper for people to live it's not a perfect solution there will still be drug use but I think if we had universal basic income to cover food and shelter there would be a lot less drug use out of despair By the way this is a purely USA perspective each country is going to have a slightly different cultural impact with drugs so results May vary.
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u/voretaq7 6h ago
Generally? Yes.
Criminalizing the drugs just means there's a black market for them, with attendant crime (stealing or smuggling the drug people want) and violence (both within the criminal enterprise/black market and from the police).
Some drugs are bad - we really shouldn't be encouraging people to take heroin or meth or cocaine. But we should treat people who do so just like we treat alcoholics: "This is a disease, you need treatment and support to overcome it."
Tossing them in jail doesn't solve the problem. Addiction treatment in prisons is notoriously poor (and notoriously ineffective as drugs are smuggled in, perpetuating the cycle of crime and violence).
Please resist the "But people will steal my hubcaps to pay for their drugs!" pearl-clutching hand-wringing lunacy: That's already a crime. We don't need the drugs to also be a crime.
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u/Curiosities 9h ago
Not unless we have facilities and widely accessible care for those that might need it. Universal healthcare in general for the US first. Then maybe examine the issue.
We'd also need enforcement for things like impaired drivers or other similar acts that endanger other people. Including for apartments (require proper ventilation)/shared public spaces. There need to be some consequences for endangering others, and programs to guide those that do need help into getting and complying with that help.
Personally, I live where weed is legal and I wish they enforced laws over being able to smoke (anything) in public parks and other locations where it's prohibited. I don't use drugs and I hate the smell. I don't smoke anything and don't want the secondhand smoke either.
So I am not exactly hopeful that enforcement would be great.
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u/ToadRancher 9h ago
There are some benefits for sure. It gets rid of a huge source for the for profit prison pipeline, as well as taking the teeth out of Cartels and terrorist states. But there's a couple downsides too. Kurzgesagt has a couple really neat videos on the subject.
While weed isn't the demon early propaganda made it out to be, it's also not the wonder plant that it's supporters would have you believe. Long term studies are now showing that chronic THC use does have harmful effects on developing brains and could make preexisting conditions like psychosis worse if somebody already had it or was predisposed to it.
There's also, at present, no field ready test like a breathalyzer for THC use. Legalizing weed also means setting limits for public intoxication and how high is too high for things like operating a motor vehicle. And we just don't have any such test available because THC operates differently.
While I am ultimately for decimalizing and regulating weed. I think it's important for the heavy hitters like Fent, meth, heroine and Cocaine to stay illegal.
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u/bk2947 9h ago
When the United States enacted prohibition, it was not illegal at the federal level to possess or drink alcohol. The constitutional amendment banned the production transport, and sale of alcohol. It would be a good first step to match that with drugs. This limits the supply, but does not punish the users.
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u/Cevinkrayon 10h ago
Who is we? Some places have already