Mayor Ted Wheeler Has Plans to Criminalize Public Drug Use
Mayor Ted Wheeler Has Plans to Criminalize Public Drug Use
r/Portland goes wild
How about criminalizing dealing, Ted? Dealing was never officially decriminalized with measure 110 but it sure isn't being effectively prosecuted. I don't mean weed or psychedelics but if you're dealing new meth, heroin, or fentanyl, you're basically sentencing your users to death. Seriously, treat that shit like murder 1 if it's a drug that statistically kills most of it's users.
That's the confusing bit. Even if one considers this a good approach, criminalization hasn't really been our problem. Lack of enforcement has been our problem. This seems to just expand the list of crimes we're not enforcing, not referring to the DA's office, and not following up on.
I kinda see this as a mixed bag. On the one hand we really cannot have public drug use on our streets... But on the other hand we really need to be connecting these people to services that can get them the help we need... like addiction treatment, housing, ect.
I just hope these measures go more to that than to perpetuating their suffering
The problem is we decriminalized possession, but didn't do the other half of the job which is providing treatment centers. We needed to replace putting users in jail with putting them in rehab. Portugal seems to have done it right when they decriminalized (Paywall remover)
I don't see how getting the police involved and getting these people in the criminal justice system is going to do anything for them. My understanding is that the services available aren't equipped to provide what's needed, and everything is on a huge waiting list.
The people who need the help are often alienated from society and refuse what's available, cause the best they can imagine is grinding away at a minimum wage job in return for rent (maybe) and groceries. I can see how they would find doing drugs in a tent more appealing than that on a fundamental level, though neither are a dignified way to live.
Anyone in the city who does not own property is affected by this housing crisis that has been going on for a decade. If cheap rents existed, then you could get maybe just a bit more than rent and food from your minimum wage grind and it wouldn't be so alienating. Criminalizing posession and use of drugs makes no progress toward these fundamental issues. It's bad for the city on all levels imo, unhoused, "average citizens", cops, and so on...