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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

It is unlucky to correlate with the start of the horrible fentanyl epidemic and a huge increase in unhoused. Correlation isn’t causation, but given the huge cost of fent treatment and the low success rates of such treatment, the other side of decriminalization is unlikely to see much implementation.

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One advantage of having 50 states with various laws is that we don’t need to just speculate about this stuff. The fentanyl epidemic and increased homelessness impacted many places, but the evidence is that it was much, much worse in Oregon.

There’s a good summary here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-dru...

> The drug-overdose-death rate increased by 43 percent in 2021, its first year of implementation—and then kept rising. The latest CDC data show that in the 12 months ending in September 2023, deaths by overdose grew by 41.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent nationwide. No other state saw a higher rise in deaths.

Opinions about why the policy failed vary, but the rollback is happening because there is wide agreement that it has failed.

That isn't really much evidence though: unhoused, who are more likely to get addicted to fent, have long migrated to west coast cities due to mild weather and social services, ever since the late 19th century when the meme was a classic hobo with a bindle hopping a freight train to San Francisco. You will see similar horrible affects of fentanyl in Vancouver BC as well, so we don't even have to speculate if American policy is to blame.

I'd encourage you to read the article. This is something that has been studied in depth. It's true there was an increase in visible homelessness in cities across the west coast (although, at least in SF, this has since declined) but drug overdoses have been much, much worse in Portland than in other west coast cities.

The article is paywalled so I can only get through the beginning. I live in Ballard (Seattle) and every other day there is a fent overdose. SF is having the same problem, as are LA and Vancouver. It might be worse in Portland (though maybe just relative to population), but it is bad across the entire coast (Seattle's problem is worse than Portland's because Seattle is more populated than Portland).

There is a lot of politics involved in politicians saying their city has the worst problem. But you are going to see similar problems if you do a one day drive (or take the Cascade amtrack) from Vancouver BC to Portland OR. Drug enforcement in all of these cities (+ Californian cities) is all fairly lax, even if drugs aren't decriminalized, people are still doing fent in public or on public transit without much harassment.

> One advantage of having 50 states with various laws is that we don’t need to just speculate about this stuff.

That's actually a disadvantage, and explains why the US will never be able to address the homelessness problem.

If you have one jurisdiction where the approach is to aggressively kick out the homeless and another where they try their best at solving the problem, the would-be solver location will inevitably fail because all the homeless will migrate there. No single city or state can solve homelessness for the entire country.

You need every jurisdiction to cooperate at solving it simultenously, but the prisioners dilemma of 50 states encourages individual states to push the problem onto others, solving nothing and guaranteeing nobody else can solve either it.

The 50 state solution is a great feature because it effectively prevents unification solutions.

I think something similar happened in British Columbia.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/29/british-columb...

At this point having federally funded "drug camps" where folks are housed, fed, given regular opioids, and live out their days is probably more humane than anything else we can come up with, at least until until someone develops some kind of semi-permanent methadone.

There's millions of things we could or need to spend tax dollars on and you suggest enabling drug addicts?

Sincerely: Fuck no.

As a taxpayer, I want precisely zero cents of it going towards enabling drug addicts. I would sooner see my taxes burned on another Boeing Starliner.

Is it really enabling them if they are forced into camps? It would get them off the streets (and out of our way) in a way that would not be as directly mean to them as jail. I suspect it would not be as expensive as what we are trying now, as long as it was actually a drug camp and not a luxury hotel.

I think this would work great actually, it will just never happen because it’s too easy to attack politically.

“You’re Japanese internment camping the homeless!” “You’re concentration camping the homeless!” “You’re gulaging the homeless!” Etc.

Being forced anywhere starts to sound like jail, except it would be a free for all in there. How would the policy force anyone into a camp without guards? Why would this work great?

How much does the drug war cost?

> There's millions of things we could or need to spend tax dollars on and you suggest enabling drug addicts?

Drug camps aren't really enabling drug addicts, it is just giving up on them and dealing with the humane problem of just keeping them alive for as long as possible as cheaply as possible.

But I can also empathize with your position, which is more what the Chinese do. Zero tolerance is given to drug addicts, and unless their families pay up for treatment, they are going to work camps until they die. With harsh consequences, people avoid that, even if they are unhoused.

So it sounds like people choose to be drug addicts and also choose not to be if the consequences are in place. Got it.

If there is a huge stigma against being a drug addict, you better believe that people will think a lot harder about it when offered drugs at a party. There is a lot of personal choice involved, so I totally get that we don't want society to enable behavior, there has to be consequences so someone decides not to get addicted to fent.

I totally agree with you. I just wanted to summarize tersely.

Otherwise known as ... Prison

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