Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs

What Oregonians—myself included—failed to take into account is to what degree word would get around and attract every wannabe user who could afford a bus ticket.<p>Oops.<p>This needs to be at the federal level—with sufficient social support—or not at all.

The funding earmarked by the law that passed in 2020 and went into effect in 2021 wasn’t fully released until late 2022.<p>It is unsurprising that people would have a negative view of things <i>right now</i> since the only real effect they’ve likely seen so far are the reduction in criminal charges and not the massive influx of money into treatment and housing etc.

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I know there’s mixed feelings about this for many reasons but I think fundamentally this is the right step. Drugs are not the problem, mental health and lack of social services is. If we criminalize drugs, we’re throwing people who are struggling into prison which only exacerbates their problems.

God help us if governments make drugs legal then illegal as a means of ensnaring more people into the system. We can say it&#x27;s necessary because addiction is skyrocketing, but if the response to a change is to imprison people, then how is that not a despotic scheme of monumental proportions?