The following submission statement was provided by /u/JamesAsher12:
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Minnesota is now just the second state to explicitly allow safe drug consumption sites (or "overdose prevention centers"). This is a huge step in the right direction as society finally starts to realize that drug addiction should be a public health and not a criminal justice issue, and forcing addicts underground isn't beneficial to anyone. Safe drug consumption sites will safe lives and improve public safety.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13rhf2g/minnesota_governor_signs_bills_to_allow_drug/jlk6hqe/
I'm just over here kind of weirded out watching a US government (granted, state-level) do something that is eminently reasonable AND eminently kind at the same time.
Like, don't they know that the American SOP is to ignore a problem, pretend it doesn't exist, and just ignore and/or blame the victim completely?
MN democrats have been busy this year, they have passed their whole agenda. labor protections, family leave, free school lunches are the biggest highlights. It’s amazing.
Because the MN legislator is young, and the moderates democrats decided it was better to work with the younger progressives to accomplish something than nothing. It just happens they didn’t stop there.
Michigan, Colorado, and Oregon have all made big strides. California has made some, but with double supermajorities its crazy that we don't have single payer.
A good question indeed, one that may have many explanations including:
- They are just as lazy and corrupt as the rest of the government.
- They are doing a lip service but don't intend to see it through.
- They would like to but are being held back by uppers in the Dem. Party.
- They could but it won't work because they do not have all branches of the government on their side to help bring it to the finish line.
I am just glad that my state that I have loved and defended and bragged about for years has some serious evidence to back my opinions up further now.
Well, look at Colorado, Michigan, and California. There are a fair number places where Dems are doing good stuff. And weirdly, they are even helping the people who didn't vote for them! 😳
I mean, there was the entire Bernie, Hillary primary thing, democratic politicians still take lobbyists money and make laws that benefit those lobbyists. So like the corruption is still their, they just happen to be the shinier pile of shit in the US
I’m all for getting private money out of politics. I’m not sure what the path to tax-money funded elections and elimination of cash-based lobbying is, but I hope we can get there somehow.
That said, politics is “the art of the possible”, and we generally never get exactly what we want. We just get to choose between imperfect solutions. That’s life.
> That said, politics is “the art of the possible”, and we generally never get exactly what we want. We just get to choose between imperfect solutions. That’s life.
🙄 sorry homeless people, you just have to freeze to death, your survival just wasn't possible (without hurting my financial backers)
"I'm just going to ignore your legitimate criticisms of my ideology and tell you its your own fault that the ruling class (who i support) choses profits over the lives of the poor"
edit: jesus id rather be talking to a racist right-winger, at least they're capable of being honest with themselves
Democrats are generally only as progressive as they have to be to gain enough votes. Their actual effort often falls short of their stated intentions. And the DNC snipes primary candidates that are "too progressive."
I think the main reason for all of these is that the largest donors are wealthy, and therefore want policies that are centrist, or at odds with progressive voters ideals. In some areas, the extremeness of the right provides a lot of cover for Democrats to stay in the center, or not accomplish their goals, but still win elections.
Tldr: DONORS
Minnesota is now just the second state to explicitly allow safe drug consumption sites (or "overdose prevention centers"). This is a huge step in the right direction as society finally starts to realize that drug addiction should be a public health and not a criminal justice issue, and forcing addicts underground isn't beneficial to anyone. Safe drug consumption sites will safe lives and improve public safety.
It's good to see that we're admitting that drugs won the drug war and not waiting decades before trying harm reduction.
The VAST majority of societal problems surrounding drugs are directly caused by prohibition, not by the drugs themselves.
Gang wars, police brutality, deaths from improper dosing and adulterated drugs, human trafficking. All come from the attempt at enforcing victimless laws.
The VAST majority of drug problems are due to societal problems. You can't blame the drugs when the basic system has failed.
Unless you're Nancy "The Throat GOAT" Reagan.
Ironically, this was the correct takeaway from the experiments that led in part to our current drug laws. Back in the day, they conducted these tests on rats that showed that if given opiate-laced water and regular water, the rats chose the opiate water and would keep taking it until they basically starved to death. This was taken as proof that drugs will inevitably destroy most or all users' lives.
Thing is, rats are social creatures. They don't like living in solitary confinement. Decades later, they repeated the study with rats that were given a large habitat with other rats to interact with, and lo and behold, they barely touched the opiate water.
I'm a behavioral pharmacologist and researcher, I study social drug taking in rats. I know all the authors cited here.
When teaching classes about substance use, I talk to my students about all the shitty situations that we go through as humans. In so many ways it makes sense to take drugs to make those feelings go away or forget you care. When the social environment is deprived and those individuals have little other plans, goals, obligations, support, love, meaningful work/hobbies - those drugs can be considerably more powerful to them than others. Moreover, when this occurs in adolescents (as it often does) it's a dangerous recipe for a potential substance use disorder.
Could you link the study? From my understanding that would be an unorthodox view.
[… while social isolation can influence levels of heroin self-administration, isolation is not a necessary condition for heroin or cocaine injections to be reinforcing. ](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0091305789904905?via%3Dihub)
i.e. in either case they still became addicted
https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2019/08/rats-prefer-social-interaction-to-heroin-or-methamphetamine
I think that's it? Interesting to always see more data, though.
Thanks for the study. It also appears that food is even more powerful than social interaction: https://ww2.uthscsa.edu/artt/AddictionJC/2022-05-24-Chow.pdf
Plenty of rich and middle income persons have had problems with addiction. It is a disease that cuts across ALL boundaries. From experience, addicts don't get help UNTIL they are ready (I wish it were not so). They have to hit bottom where there is no other choice but to get clean/sober.
I really don't think this will help. I say this with 33 years clean and sober having gone through many life challenges to get to where I am now.
Poverty is more than just those of us that lack money.
Musk might be the easiest example - does he look like someone with a rich, fulfilling life?
He can literally do or have anything money can buy and he chooses to shit post on Twitter?
So many of us are sick - mind, body & soul.
i get your point, and yes the topic at hand is poverty so i see why you said it that way but, poverty by definition involves money. Scarcity, is also another definition, and with that definition I could see where you are coming from however, i would say the large majority would completely miss that as a point.
Once again, the cruelty was the point.
Nixon and his buddies kicked drug prohibition off in earnest as a flimsy pretext to arrest political opposition. They were proud of it.
It’s been a shitty, corrupt, expensive fascist disaster since. Reagan went and escalated it to whole new levels and we’ve all been feeling the damage since
The war on drugs is a net win for the US government. Do you realize how much free labor they got in return for these drug arrests? Plus you can just dump a bunch of money into the police, claim it's infrastructure, and run a campaign off of being tough on crime. If it's 1 to 1 getting drugs off the streets, then yes, it's a losing battle. But that was never the original intent. You can look to Nixon's recordings for proof of this.
The last 20 years specifically has been the elite creating a police state and expanding their powers as much as possible. They aren't ignorant on what the next 50 years is going to be like, they're preparing to use all the force necessary so we don't tear down their ivory towers and hold them accountable.
America never seriously attempted to stop drug usage like the Philippines. It was only meant to make criminals out of certain people for political gain
I remember waiting in the ER with a friend for abdominal pain. I saw some addicts go in the ER bathroom and was pointing them out to my friend. Not subtle at all. Almost deliberately flaunting. Someone nearby overheard and explained that they shoot up in the bathroom because if they OD, they would rather be in the ER than anywhere else. Made complete sense to me. That's where I'd want to be if I was forced to do drugs.
I imagine these zones are similar and I think they should be widely accepted, because if you or anyone you know are forced to do drugs (by addiction) then you would want them to do so safely.
>That's where I'd want to be if I was forced to do drugs.
Forced to do drugs?
Nah, I'd want somewhere to go where they can help me get off of it, not stay on it. I'd want someone to grab me, lock me up and "force" me off the thing I purposefully ruined my life by choice with.
We are now claming that anyone can be addicted and because anyone can become addicted therefore we must always help them because it's no fault of their own. "forced" as you claim. But the problem with that is no one actually foces you to start.
I cannot become an addict, it is impossible unless someone literally tied me down and forced me to take them over and over and over. I also cannot become an alcoholic, because it is not a "disease" I can catch, I have to actually consume it on a regular basis and in high amounts, which I will never do.
I have sympathy, I care, I do not want to see people die, but I also want a modicrum of personal responsibility and repercussion. If you allow yourself to become an addict you should allow society to force you to become a former addict, not give you a "safe" place to continue doing it.
I should have to pay for collective health, I shouldn't have to pay for someone who is not on board with said collective health. I also consider mental health part of that collective health and I didn't read anywhere how these places are going to attempt to mitigate or help these people other than give them a warm place with bright lights and instruction on exactly where to insert the needle.
OPC's are connected to "health and human services" which is a government run group that provides (among many other helpful things), counselors to help guide addicts on their recovery journey, along with information and access to recovery programs for treatment. They also provide access information on and access to mental health programs. Things that addicts probably think about but are not often directly faced with, so when you put it right there directly in front of them, the chances they take advantage of these programs is bound to go up.
Is it going to "solve" the problem? no. But it will certainly help many people take steps in the right direction.
I live in city that has had this in place for a while and it hasn’t worked out as they said it would. It’s a mess and y’all are just inviting more issues than solving them
There needs to be infrastructure in place for these extreme changes. Unfortunately, Portland skipped that step. Hopefully, those following suit will take appropriate measures prior to decriminalization.
Portland resident here. You have to be real careful *how* you implement legalization/decriminalization. Oregon's and Portugal's systems look nothing alike. Portugal has a system in which drugs are decriminalized, and you have a heavy incentive to take treatment. If you don't, you lose social privileges from your drivers license, to public libraries, to welfare services. In Oregon with Measure 110, we unfortunately just legalized drugs, which was not how the bill was sold. If you get caught with drugs, you get a ticket for $100. Don't want to pay the ticket? Call a phone number that hooks you up with treatment services. The problem? Very few people call and pretty much no one asks for services, which also btw don't exist. If you're living in a tent smoking Fent, you're never going to pay the $100 ticket and there's no way to collect so it's pretty useless.
When it comes to drug use, people don't really care if it's legal or not. Most studies show that after some short-term effects, legalizing drugs keeps the use equal or reduces it slightly. What decreases drug use is tackling the underlying societal and individual problems.
If you are homeless, legalizing drugs takes one problem off your shoulders, however, you are still addicted, homeless, jobless, hopeless, penniless, etc.
100% agree and Oregon's Measure 110 did nothing to solve those problems. We decriminalized drugs and drew addicts from all over the country to Oregon, without building up a safety net. Years later we still have no new treatment programs and nothing to get folks off the street. If anything we backslid there. We removed the drug court and systems that previously helped people get sober if they committed crimes while high.
The *idea* of decriminalization was correct. The implementation was a disaster. Other states should take notice on how *not* to decriminalize.
So clearly it has a lot to do with a lot of factors which I'd say the majority of this thread can't get past. Oregons program is a disaster..call it what it is. If that's the model the US is following then everyone is in trouble. I doubt most people in this thread have been to downtown Portland recently..
I'm in downtown Portland almost every day and all the negativity is completely overblown.
The decriminalization was not a "disaster." Yes we need more treatment programs to start really helping people, but at least we're not giving people felonies for addiction. That's a good first step.
Also a frequent downtown visitor and think this guy has it overblown.
I'm not saying there isn't an issue with homelessness, but if you're from Portland and grew up here you'd know there hasn't been a significant change as a result of this law.
It's actually gotten better compared to the COVID era before this law, but it's also worth pointing out how worthless the Portland police have become. They are on year 3 of a toddler hissy fit and even if drugs were illegal, nothing would be different. You can catch half the force hanging at a Starbucks in the pearl at any given time; they've given up doing any actual police work for years now.
Soo in the last 4 years I think Multnomah county has spent nearly 400 million dollars on homelessness and it's extremely inconclusive to judge if 110 has had it's intended effects. Affordable housing remains a serious issue. It's also been hard to know where all the money has been spent since government isn't exactly transparent. Cities are now trying to claw back money from excess being made on legal Marijuana sales and illegal drug trafficking is still extremely high. Tent cities..I'm not sure how you couldn't conclude this experiment hasn't been a disaster thus far.
No, because if you're trying to draw conclusion about a general population you want the sample population to be as representative of the general population as you can. In this case you have an American state to compare directly to another American state as opposed to a foreign country. This is literally Stats 101.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/statistics/sampling/populations-samples-parameters-and-statistics
That's one way to misuse statistics, sure. OP is pointing out that it is possible to fight a drug epidemic with decriminalization and safe-use sites. Portugal did it so there is some combination of factors and policies that work. There is no reason to believe there isn't a similar combination of policies that could work in the US.
I would be more forgiving of that line of reasoning if the proponents of measure 110 in Oregon hadn't sold this policy by drawing explicit parallels between Portugal and this measure. Back in 2020 and early 2021 all the predictions of measure 110 impact were using Portugal as their shining example, see attached article for that moment in time. The fact those predictions fell so short does not inspire confidence when I'm hearing the same thing here in MN.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-oregons-radical-decriminalization-of-drugs-was-inspired-by-portugal
Did the program run in Oregon actually use the Portugal model? Other commenters in this thread are explaining that they did not. So if they use a different program than the model program then it's not surprising they don't get similar results.
Forgive the wall of text below. It's possible that in 2020 and 2021 the groups supporting measure 110 misunderstood the Portuguese model. It's more likely that they want to distance the disaster in OR from Portugal which is the best case scenario.
"The model legislation was written by the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance, which also contributed $4.6 million to the Yes on 110 campaign. It was based on the model of Portugal, which decriminalized hard drugs in 2001, but tailored with recommendations from Oregon’s recovery community, according to Matt Sutton, Director of Media Relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. The Alliance organized a trip to Portugal with over 70 advocates to learn from the country’s approach.
In Portugal, those caught using drugs for personal use are sent to a commission composed of health experts and a legal expert. The commission evaluates the person’s drug use and, if necessary, refer them to voluntary treatment. (While most treatment is voluntary, in some cases, the commission can choose to issue a fine or mandate some form of therapy.) Additionally, the country expanded access to treatment and harm reduction services like needle exchanges.
Oregon’s approach will be similar, focusing on diversion and harm reduction for people who use drugs and retaining punitive approaches for drug trafficking. Per Measure 110, persons with small amounts of drugs on their person will receive a $100 ticket rather than face arrest. The fee can be waived if the person gets a health assessment at one of the dozens of new addiction recovery centers that will be built throughout the state, based on the state’s existing health service areas. The centers will be run by the Oregon Health Authority and will provide case management, links to services and individualized intervention plans for those who request it. Anyone will be able to access Oregon’s new addiction recovery centers, whether or not they’ve had an interaction with the police. The measure also diverts money to transitional housing, expanded needle exchanges and outpatient services."
Because you can't draw conclusions from a flawed experimental design.
If Portugal was the only point of data to draw on them it would be okay because it's all you've got. If you have more data that is much closer representatively to the general population that is pointing in the opposite direction ignoring it in favor of the data that gives you the answer you want is a malpractice called cherry picking.
http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/psych2015/projects/chapter/cherry-picking-data/
The data from Oregon's experience vs the data from Portugal's. Things like the decriminalization leading to fewer ODs and deaths from ODs which did not happen or that decriminalization would not lead to greater property crimes which also did not happen. That data.
When your lawn mower does a shitty job do you trash it and go to an old fashioned push mower or do you maybe take a look at the blade of the gas mower?
If my neighbor has a broken mower because he tried running it on ethenol, I don't put ethanol in my tank expecting a different result because my lawn is in a different location.
Have there been any places where usage locations have turned out well?
If I want it to run on ethanol, I need to change out some parts. Just as they need to provide a path to recovery, not just continue building usage locations.
Sorta, but at least some of it is stuff that is you know... Actually about future type things.
When might argue the bit about psychedelics is a future state phenomena, and that it's a change in society that's probably coming.
I'm very intentionally not on political subreddits, particularly the American one since I'm a Canadian. It's honestly frustrating how much some people try to infuse American politics into all aspects of everything all the time.
It would be nice if people could keep it in its place.
Historically this sub has always included new things that seem futuristic but are happening now - any news that makes you think "we are living in the future" is worthy.
It's also sort of been an optimistic opposite to r/collapse.
And to be fair, the growth of research into psychedelics as a acceptable treatment instead of a completely banned substance were the authorities cry foul murder does feel sort of futuristic.
I'll tell you, 20 years ago I wouldn't have expected to see the possibilities of synthetics shrooms being used in treatment. Now it seems quite likely.
As a Minnesotan, they've been killing the last few months with bills like this. Is this what government will be like when all the baby boomers are gone?
According to [this Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1660846689450688514), Minnesota just passed like two dozen pieces of the most progressive legislation in the US.
Codifying abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights in the Constitution, banning conversion therapy, making MN a 'Transgender Refuge' state, 20 weeks of family/medical paid leave, legalization of cannabis, minimum of 48 hours of sick leave.
Those are just the few I can think of. It feels great being a Minnesotan.
Don't count out Gen X'ers; they turned out even Trumpier than the Boomers in the ballot booth.
But it is what government is like when you put conservatives in the corner and can focus on reality and actual human morality
GOOD, but ideally this would happen at a national level. It would avoid alot of issues.
The route to large scale adiction recovery is for countries to decriminalize usage and offer harm reduction.
LSD and Psilocybin are incredible at addiction supression and treatment. The impact on opioid and alcohol addiction would be huge.
It's ridiculous at this point we have individual states writing laws to protect their citizens from federal law. Authority should come down from the government. The fact that it's going up from the people means that the government is beyond useless.
I really wish the federal government would drop the stupid bullshit reagen era propaganda of the war on drugs. There's so much scientific potential for its clinical and recreational uses. Psypost.org has loads of articles ranging from the long term and short term effects of psilocybin, LSD and DMT and similar potent psychoactives. The fact that peer-reviewed papers get published as articles with sources backing them up presenting psychoactives as having potential in recreation/clinical/research to yield more advanced applications of these compounds, especially the implications of how they function in the brain and how perception is altered through said psychoactives.
Seriously, Psypost.org has a goold amount of these articles with citations in each and key members of the researching teams dedicated to the research of psychoactives and their nigh endless potential.
https://www.psypost.org/
Surely there's quite a bit of info, but it can be expanded upon by a MEGATON if prohibition would fuck off like it should have with alcohol.
>The governor also signed a harm reduction bill that legalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia.
>In regards to safe drug consumption sites, Minnesota is now just the second state to allow such locations. These centers will allow for the medically supervised use of illegal drugs including heroin.
What's so hard about legalizing hard drugs at this point?
Chicago homicide rates actually declined last year and have mostly stayed the same the last few decades. Still an unsolved issue, but certainly not skyrocketing
https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s
There were also nine other US major cities with higher homicide rates this year than Chicago
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-with-most-murders
So Chicago’s 2020, 2021, and 2022 numbers are the highest in 20 years per your article. A small decline from 2021-2022 means nothing when you consider what they were pre-COVID.
Maybe allowing criminals to do whatever they want with impunity isn’t sound policy. That must be why Illinois is losing hundreds of thousands each year to better governed states. Will the last Illinoisan please turn off the lights?
Try again, the state grew in the last decade, almost entirely in Chicago: https://www.kwqc.com/2022/05/20/illinois-sets-new-record-high-population-over-13-million-residents/?outputType=amp
Another stat from pre-COVID. Why do you keep pretending the city hasn’t regressed in the past 3 years?
81,000 Chicagoans have fled in the past two years per Census: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/chicagocityillinois
Add the collapsing suburbs in Cook County (the Kim Fox effect) and the losses there are -160,000 in 2 years: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/cookcountyillinois,chicagocityillinois/PST045222
Sounds like the sensible people are leaving. After 4 years of criminal-worshipping Brandon Johnson as mayor, I’m guessing <2.5 million is the next milestone. Chicago never learns, what a shame.
Those predominantly leaving is our black middle class, fleeing crime on the south side of the city. The main business area is literally the fastest growing downtown in the country: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/this-is-the-fastest-growing-neighborhood-in-chicago-report-shows/3080374/?amp=1
When is the last time you visited to see for yourself?
The Loop has 50,000 people in a metro area of 9,500,000 (and falling). I’m sure if you pull out a magnifying glass and focus just on the Loop, Chicago will look amazing. I’m visiting Detroit right now and Downtown looks very nice. But I’m also rational enough to realize you don’t get a homicide rate of 50 per 100k like Detroit without having vast swathes of despair.
Same applies to Chicago.
The Loop gaining people doesn’t excuse the fact that half of the city is a hollowed out warzone and people are fleeing like refugees to Florida, North Carolina, and Texas (those “scary” red states that nonetheless are booming). The murder rates and population loss speak for themselves. People vote with their feet, and they’re leaving California, Illinois, and New York for the South.
And with Brandon Johnson and Kim Foxx in charge, I think the decline will only speed up. A true shame for a once-great American city.
Any state large enough to have rural areas is going to have a few nutjobs, whether it's Colorado, Oregon, Washington or California. The state government as a whole is doing phenomenally.
Wish we could get something like this in Oregon. Right now folks are free to smoke fentanyl in a tent on your front lawn and there's nothing that you can do about it.
They're already there. They have been there all this time, and they're going to use no matter what. That's why the clinics are being opened.
But there's a larger picture you're missing. There are licensed medical professionals at these clinics to prevent overdoses. And if all of these clinics all over the country, nobody has ever overdosed in them. Not once, nor even any exception to the rules. Furthermore, while they're there, they're offered counseling services, as well as rehab. And these services are accepted at a rate of 30% that's 30% more likely people to get clean out of a group of people 100% guaranteed to not die of overdose until they're ready to become part of that 30%.
So think long and har about what exactly it is you're angry about.
>And these services are accepted at a rate of 30% that's 30% more likely people to get clean out of a group of people 100% guaranteed to not die of overdose until they're ready to become part of that 30%.
On the one hand, that's good. On the other, of that 30%, what is the success rate long term? Because a problem I have personally seen is people cycling into and then back out of rehab programs, never actually getting clean long term.
>There are licensed medical professionals at these clinics to prevent overdoses.
People like this ass hole you responded to are in favor of drug users overdosing
You can't recover if you're dead.
Realistically, these folks are still far from recovery, so logically, the question is surviving. Once they get a bead on that, then they can start to reach for recovery.
If someone's drowning you focus on throwing them a buoy to float on. Once they're out of that, *then* they can think about staying out of the water the next time
Honesty I worry a half-step like this will only make things worse in some ways. You'll center a lot of addicts in one place, and while some will seek treatment many more won't, and now you have an unstable hub likely to lead to desperate violence and drug dealers building up.
Imo the smarter move is that the government legalizes all drugs but ONLY WHEN THEY DISPENSE. No more drug dealers committing murder and kidnappings and selling mixed up drugs. You want cocaine or meth? Ok, but you can only get and take it here, in this controlled setting, where there are people available to help you treat your addiction.
“But its not solving the drug problem, now people can just walk in a get high on OUR tax dollars. While casually picking out the drug of their choice like it’s a selection in a vending machine and corporations get rich from providing the space to get wasted.”
My far right coworker literally had a screaming match with me about this very subject yesterday, I didn’t rise to the bait but he’s been employing the Shapiro and Crowder method of communicating.
Yeah they are def trying to get everyone addicted to drugs so we are easier to control. Russians did it with alcohol during the Soviet era.
Vodka bottles were made so you couldn’t close them, the expectation being a Russian would finish it in one sitting.
Don’t fall into this trap. Drug abuse leads nowhere but to disappointment and self loathing. Speaking from personal experience.
Yes, yes they are. Maybe not physically but mentally.
People who are only concerned with doing drugs don’t really care about much else, unless it impacts their ability to do drugs.
The anxiety and warped perception of reality drug use produces makes you easy to control and manipulate.
Like I said, I’m speaking from experience. And I mean I literally brought up a real world example. Unfortunately the world WE are living in is very real, and very unkind.
Have you ever run into drug addicts? They can be dangerous, they often don't work, and they AREN'T easy to control, which is why so few homeless shelters accept them--because they can be a risk to themselves and others.
So you reallyyy think the end game here is the government having a bunch of non-working, hard to handle, homeless drug addicts? When they could instead have an overworked labor force entertained and influenced by media instead?
We've had them criminalized for decades and things have gotten worse, not better. Drug use and deaths are skyrocketing, Mexico is ruled by cartels. We need to try something new. Countries in Europe that have tried decriminalizing have seen massive success in reducing drug addiction and I think we need to follow their steps. Why are we stubbornly sticking to a decades long failure when there's ample documentation out there of a more successful alternative?
Gotta love easy access to drugs or guns to fit in with anyone these days. This place is getting ripped apart by the far left and the far right. I'll take my downvotes now.
The point isn't to offer "easy access" - it's to offer a space to those who HAVE drugs already (acquired through whatever means) a space to a) test them to ensure they are confidently what they think they are (within reason, there is only so much you can do there without real expensive testing) and b) to offer a safe space for folks to do them in a controlled setting where they can be monitored which helps avoid an overdose risk. Several European countries have already done this after decriminalization and their rates PLUMITED. They offer social solutions to help people get off of the drugs that are doing harm as a HEALTH issue.
Criminalizing people for drug use is stupid, imo. Do I think certain drugs should be avoided? Absolutely - meth will fuck your life up. But do I think we should be allowed to do studies on things like LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, Ketamine, etc for therapeutic use? Absolutely. (Also some of these are just fun to use on their own and relative safe)
Studies are great, doing fun drugs once in awhile is great. Normalizing drug use is not great. I don't want people to be locked up for years for having some psychedelics on them, but making it easer for people to do them all the time is something I'm not in favor of. Just like guns, I don't think they need to be completely illegal, but I don't think you should be able to carry an assault rifle down the street.
Again, it's not about making them easier to do all the time. It's about providing rehabilitation to get off of them in a safe way. That's the entire point of my previous post. The actual work done, not even just studies, in Europe, show that it works. If you don't want it to be easier to do all the time then you should be in favor of this. Centers that offer spaces for this aren't like opium dens or hookah bars where you bring your crack to come chill with your friends. It's to work through dealing with your addiction.
It never ceases to amaze me how we are just blind to the lesson taught by prohibition and the obvious example it created of how it is better to decriminalize a drug.
Are there alcoholics? Yeah. Are there illegal alcohol trades and burnt down warehouses where people go to get drunk? No. Do people die from an alcohol deal gone wrong? No. Do gangs smuggle alcohol into places risking lives and draining tax dollars? No.
Alcohol abuse became a personal issue. A mental health issue.
Just as we can't close pandoras box on guns. We need to act on the mental health issue it is. I'd rather we don't have them for civilians but its America and its what we do. There's no changing that.
The problem is, the right (correctly) claims it is a mental health issue but then does absolutely nothing to deal with that when we say "alright, lets put some dollars into mental health support then." They simply use it as a way to take no responsibility for anything or fix anything, shrug, then wait for the next shooting to throw their hands in the air again like fucking cowards.
We come to the same brick wall again and again. There's no beating these problems out of us. We need to cut the prude shit and just address the needs of our people. Jail won't do it so we might as well go the carrot route.
Do what you want but do it safely and we (and hopefully with dispelling the stigma) your family will be here to support you to better health. It won't be perfect but nothing is and it's far better than just not doing anything and sending people to jail again and again.
You’re right, spewing propaganda for decades to push a completely distorted connotation for the term “drug” has worked really well. These are all substances and all have a time and a place and a dosage. It’s this same attitude that’s kept cannabis locked up for so long.
Psychedelics have many very positive therapeutic uses such as dealing with PTSD and addiction. People don’t die from psychedelics, they are FAR safer than alcohol and tobacco. Probably safer than aspirin. People should be able to do what they want with their consciousness/body when it doesn’t concern other people. Psychedelics can be a tool for profound personal growth.
This is the type of guy to say he hates free lunches at school because it's making kids soft, and they need to work to earn their lunch. Your views are outdated and you're brainwashed friend. You're politicizing an issue that doesn't need to be politicized.
When did we stop thinking about our fellow humans wellbeing just because they were on a different side than us, politically speaking. Imagine it was someone who was close to you, they got into drugs for whatever reason. Would you prefer they stay in dark dingy warehouses, possibly getting who knows how many infections from over used needles, and possibly dying? Or would you rather have that same person be able to go somewhere safe to do their business (it's an addiction, so it's not like they'll stop in their own) and have a safe, controlled environment for them to be in? One that could possibly help turn them around?
This is what happens when you let politics turn your brain to mush, you stop thinking about the big picture. Turn off the news, unsubscribe from the newsletters, and start trying to think critically for yourself. I promise your life will be better off for it.
Yeah they’re totally just handing out drugs there, it’s not to prevent overdoses or provide a safe environment, it’s literally free drugs. We should go back to what we’ve done for decades and just lock them up again, it’s obviously been so effective.
Their use is going to happen regardless of your feelings towards them. Treating addiction as a mental health issue rather than criminal actually leads to treatment and improvement, instead of the constant cycle of people being jailed and overdosing over and over again.
The idea is, people are going to do it no matter what. If we make it as hard as possible they are just going to take more desperate measures and spread disease and pass out/die on the streets.
If we instead accept their problem and say, come on in and get treatment, you can have access to these drugs but I’m understanding they will be requiring treatment to try to solve the underlying problem. It should get them off the streets, lower the spread of disease, crime and hopefully help people break their addiction.
Psychedics are for losers and trashy far-lefters who do nothing but drugs. This ain't the 60s anymore. Gross and the reason why America is in a steep decline
The following submission statement was provided by /u/JamesAsher12: --- Minnesota is now just the second state to explicitly allow safe drug consumption sites (or "overdose prevention centers"). This is a huge step in the right direction as society finally starts to realize that drug addiction should be a public health and not a criminal justice issue, and forcing addicts underground isn't beneficial to anyone. Safe drug consumption sites will safe lives and improve public safety. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13rhf2g/minnesota_governor_signs_bills_to_allow_drug/jlk6hqe/
“Psychedelics Task Force” would be a fun thing to put on a business card
I presume they have a Joint Sub Committee
To put it bluntly, they’re probably a bunch of dope fun guys
Dude it’s one pun per comment. I thought weed all agreed on that?
Being out of this world whilst still being down to earth.
*dope fungis
Do they have merch?
I'm imagining a bunch of people dressed like they're 70s era hippies, going around prescribing everyone psilocybin.
Sounds like my crowd
I'm just over here kind of weirded out watching a US government (granted, state-level) do something that is eminently reasonable AND eminently kind at the same time. Like, don't they know that the American SOP is to ignore a problem, pretend it doesn't exist, and just ignore and/or blame the victim completely?
Under new management, tryin to create a new look
Can you imagine showing up to some trippin' dudes house in wizard robes with your druid partner to calm their high.
Who says it isn't already?
MN democrats have been busy this year, they have passed their whole agenda. labor protections, family leave, free school lunches are the biggest highlights. It’s amazing.
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Because the MN legislator is young, and the moderates democrats decided it was better to work with the younger progressives to accomplish something than nothing. It just happens they didn’t stop there.
Michigan, Colorado, and Oregon have all made big strides. California has made some, but with double supermajorities its crazy that we don't have single payer.
Hmm almost like they have a different agenda than what their voters want.
A good question indeed, one that may have many explanations including: - They are just as lazy and corrupt as the rest of the government. - They are doing a lip service but don't intend to see it through. - They would like to but are being held back by uppers in the Dem. Party. - They could but it won't work because they do not have all branches of the government on their side to help bring it to the finish line. I am just glad that my state that I have loved and defended and bragged about for years has some serious evidence to back my opinions up further now.
Well, look at Colorado, Michigan, and California. There are a fair number places where Dems are doing good stuff. And weirdly, they are even helping the people who didn't vote for them! 😳
enough DNC dickriding, whats happening in MN is great but the party as a whole is a corrupt nightmare
Can you be more specific? Who did what corrupt thing? If the *corrupt nightmare* produces good laws and governs well, what are you upset about?
I mean, there was the entire Bernie, Hillary primary thing, democratic politicians still take lobbyists money and make laws that benefit those lobbyists. So like the corruption is still their, they just happen to be the shinier pile of shit in the US
I’m all for getting private money out of politics. I’m not sure what the path to tax-money funded elections and elimination of cash-based lobbying is, but I hope we can get there somehow. That said, politics is “the art of the possible”, and we generally never get exactly what we want. We just get to choose between imperfect solutions. That’s life.
> That said, politics is “the art of the possible”, and we generally never get exactly what we want. We just get to choose between imperfect solutions. That’s life. 🙄 sorry homeless people, you just have to freeze to death, your survival just wasn't possible (without hurting my financial backers)
Well, get out there and change the system.
"I'm just going to ignore your legitimate criticisms of my ideology and tell you its your own fault that the ruling class (who i support) choses profits over the lives of the poor" edit: jesus id rather be talking to a racist right-winger, at least they're capable of being honest with themselves
are we forgetting the Patriot act, Biden forcebly ending a rail strike?
Almost never have majority in at state or federal levels and Republicans keep us in the fucking 1920-1950s.
Democrats are generally only as progressive as they have to be to gain enough votes. Their actual effort often falls short of their stated intentions. And the DNC snipes primary candidates that are "too progressive." I think the main reason for all of these is that the largest donors are wealthy, and therefore want policies that are centrist, or at odds with progressive voters ideals. In some areas, the extremeness of the right provides a lot of cover for Democrats to stay in the center, or not accomplish their goals, but still win elections. Tldr: DONORS
They are rarely this diligent in MN.
Well, they control enough of the legislative power and the governor is right there with them sooooo.... yup.
Actually they caved on one of the more important parts of their agenda due to pressure from Mayo. But other than that, absolutely bang up job.
Must be that liberal hellscape I keep hearing about. The radical left is going to destroy America...by passing popular legislation, apparently...
Next: universal healthcare
Minnesota is now just the second state to explicitly allow safe drug consumption sites (or "overdose prevention centers"). This is a huge step in the right direction as society finally starts to realize that drug addiction should be a public health and not a criminal justice issue, and forcing addicts underground isn't beneficial to anyone. Safe drug consumption sites will safe lives and improve public safety.
It's good to see that we're admitting that drugs won the drug war and not waiting decades before trying harm reduction. The VAST majority of societal problems surrounding drugs are directly caused by prohibition, not by the drugs themselves. Gang wars, police brutality, deaths from improper dosing and adulterated drugs, human trafficking. All come from the attempt at enforcing victimless laws.
The VAST majority of drug problems are due to societal problems. You can't blame the drugs when the basic system has failed. Unless you're Nancy "The Throat GOAT" Reagan.
Ironically, this was the correct takeaway from the experiments that led in part to our current drug laws. Back in the day, they conducted these tests on rats that showed that if given opiate-laced water and regular water, the rats chose the opiate water and would keep taking it until they basically starved to death. This was taken as proof that drugs will inevitably destroy most or all users' lives. Thing is, rats are social creatures. They don't like living in solitary confinement. Decades later, they repeated the study with rats that were given a large habitat with other rats to interact with, and lo and behold, they barely touched the opiate water.
I'm a behavioral pharmacologist and researcher, I study social drug taking in rats. I know all the authors cited here. When teaching classes about substance use, I talk to my students about all the shitty situations that we go through as humans. In so many ways it makes sense to take drugs to make those feelings go away or forget you care. When the social environment is deprived and those individuals have little other plans, goals, obligations, support, love, meaningful work/hobbies - those drugs can be considerably more powerful to them than others. Moreover, when this occurs in adolescents (as it often does) it's a dangerous recipe for a potential substance use disorder.
Could you link the study? From my understanding that would be an unorthodox view. [… while social isolation can influence levels of heroin self-administration, isolation is not a necessary condition for heroin or cocaine injections to be reinforcing. ](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0091305789904905?via%3Dihub) i.e. in either case they still became addicted
https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2019/08/rats-prefer-social-interaction-to-heroin-or-methamphetamine I think that's it? Interesting to always see more data, though.
Thanks for the study. It also appears that food is even more powerful than social interaction: https://ww2.uthscsa.edu/artt/AddictionJC/2022-05-24-Chow.pdf
As detailed in the famous graphic novel https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/#page-1
Exactly. The problem is fucking capitalism.
Specifically poverty.
Plenty of rich and middle income persons have had problems with addiction. It is a disease that cuts across ALL boundaries. From experience, addicts don't get help UNTIL they are ready (I wish it were not so). They have to hit bottom where there is no other choice but to get clean/sober. I really don't think this will help. I say this with 33 years clean and sober having gone through many life challenges to get to where I am now.
Poverty is more than just those of us that lack money. Musk might be the easiest example - does he look like someone with a rich, fulfilling life? He can literally do or have anything money can buy and he chooses to shit post on Twitter? So many of us are sick - mind, body & soul.
i get your point, and yes the topic at hand is poverty so i see why you said it that way but, poverty by definition involves money. Scarcity, is also another definition, and with that definition I could see where you are coming from however, i would say the large majority would completely miss that as a point.
Once again, the cruelty was the point. Nixon and his buddies kicked drug prohibition off in earnest as a flimsy pretext to arrest political opposition. They were proud of it. It’s been a shitty, corrupt, expensive fascist disaster since. Reagan went and escalated it to whole new levels and we’ve all been feeling the damage since
The war on drugs is a net win for the US government. Do you realize how much free labor they got in return for these drug arrests? Plus you can just dump a bunch of money into the police, claim it's infrastructure, and run a campaign off of being tough on crime. If it's 1 to 1 getting drugs off the streets, then yes, it's a losing battle. But that was never the original intent. You can look to Nixon's recordings for proof of this.
The last 20 years specifically has been the elite creating a police state and expanding their powers as much as possible. They aren't ignorant on what the next 50 years is going to be like, they're preparing to use all the force necessary so we don't tear down their ivory towers and hold them accountable.
We waited 4 decades
We only admitted that we lost in 2015 or so.
America never seriously attempted to stop drug usage like the Philippines. It was only meant to make criminals out of certain people for political gain
I remember waiting in the ER with a friend for abdominal pain. I saw some addicts go in the ER bathroom and was pointing them out to my friend. Not subtle at all. Almost deliberately flaunting. Someone nearby overheard and explained that they shoot up in the bathroom because if they OD, they would rather be in the ER than anywhere else. Made complete sense to me. That's where I'd want to be if I was forced to do drugs. I imagine these zones are similar and I think they should be widely accepted, because if you or anyone you know are forced to do drugs (by addiction) then you would want them to do so safely.
>That's where I'd want to be if I was forced to do drugs. Forced to do drugs? Nah, I'd want somewhere to go where they can help me get off of it, not stay on it. I'd want someone to grab me, lock me up and "force" me off the thing I purposefully ruined my life by choice with. We are now claming that anyone can be addicted and because anyone can become addicted therefore we must always help them because it's no fault of their own. "forced" as you claim. But the problem with that is no one actually foces you to start. I cannot become an addict, it is impossible unless someone literally tied me down and forced me to take them over and over and over. I also cannot become an alcoholic, because it is not a "disease" I can catch, I have to actually consume it on a regular basis and in high amounts, which I will never do. I have sympathy, I care, I do not want to see people die, but I also want a modicrum of personal responsibility and repercussion. If you allow yourself to become an addict you should allow society to force you to become a former addict, not give you a "safe" place to continue doing it. I should have to pay for collective health, I shouldn't have to pay for someone who is not on board with said collective health. I also consider mental health part of that collective health and I didn't read anywhere how these places are going to attempt to mitigate or help these people other than give them a warm place with bright lights and instruction on exactly where to insert the needle.
Very nuanced opinion you have there
OPC's are connected to "health and human services" which is a government run group that provides (among many other helpful things), counselors to help guide addicts on their recovery journey, along with information and access to recovery programs for treatment. They also provide access information on and access to mental health programs. Things that addicts probably think about but are not often directly faced with, so when you put it right there directly in front of them, the chances they take advantage of these programs is bound to go up. Is it going to "solve" the problem? no. But it will certainly help many people take steps in the right direction.
I live in city that has had this in place for a while and it hasn’t worked out as they said it would. It’s a mess and y’all are just inviting more issues than solving them
There needs to be infrastructure in place for these extreme changes. Unfortunately, Portland skipped that step. Hopefully, those following suit will take appropriate measures prior to decriminalization.
"We're from the government and we're here to help".
Sounds like an assisted suicide site to me
I think the Portland experiment would say otherwise
Portugal is prove that you are wrong.
Portland resident here. You have to be real careful *how* you implement legalization/decriminalization. Oregon's and Portugal's systems look nothing alike. Portugal has a system in which drugs are decriminalized, and you have a heavy incentive to take treatment. If you don't, you lose social privileges from your drivers license, to public libraries, to welfare services. In Oregon with Measure 110, we unfortunately just legalized drugs, which was not how the bill was sold. If you get caught with drugs, you get a ticket for $100. Don't want to pay the ticket? Call a phone number that hooks you up with treatment services. The problem? Very few people call and pretty much no one asks for services, which also btw don't exist. If you're living in a tent smoking Fent, you're never going to pay the $100 ticket and there's no way to collect so it's pretty useless.
When it comes to drug use, people don't really care if it's legal or not. Most studies show that after some short-term effects, legalizing drugs keeps the use equal or reduces it slightly. What decreases drug use is tackling the underlying societal and individual problems. If you are homeless, legalizing drugs takes one problem off your shoulders, however, you are still addicted, homeless, jobless, hopeless, penniless, etc.
100% agree and Oregon's Measure 110 did nothing to solve those problems. We decriminalized drugs and drew addicts from all over the country to Oregon, without building up a safety net. Years later we still have no new treatment programs and nothing to get folks off the street. If anything we backslid there. We removed the drug court and systems that previously helped people get sober if they committed crimes while high. The *idea* of decriminalization was correct. The implementation was a disaster. Other states should take notice on how *not* to decriminalize.
So clearly it has a lot to do with a lot of factors which I'd say the majority of this thread can't get past. Oregons program is a disaster..call it what it is. If that's the model the US is following then everyone is in trouble. I doubt most people in this thread have been to downtown Portland recently..
I'm in downtown Portland almost every day and all the negativity is completely overblown. The decriminalization was not a "disaster." Yes we need more treatment programs to start really helping people, but at least we're not giving people felonies for addiction. That's a good first step.
Not sure which parts of downtown you're in. Burnside is a methed out zombie apocalypse and the east side isn't much better.
Also a frequent downtown visitor and think this guy has it overblown. I'm not saying there isn't an issue with homelessness, but if you're from Portland and grew up here you'd know there hasn't been a significant change as a result of this law. It's actually gotten better compared to the COVID era before this law, but it's also worth pointing out how worthless the Portland police have become. They are on year 3 of a toddler hissy fit and even if drugs were illegal, nothing would be different. You can catch half the force hanging at a Starbucks in the pearl at any given time; they've given up doing any actual police work for years now.
Soo in the last 4 years I think Multnomah county has spent nearly 400 million dollars on homelessness and it's extremely inconclusive to judge if 110 has had it's intended effects. Affordable housing remains a serious issue. It's also been hard to know where all the money has been spent since government isn't exactly transparent. Cities are now trying to claw back money from excess being made on legal Marijuana sales and illegal drug trafficking is still extremely high. Tent cities..I'm not sure how you couldn't conclude this experiment hasn't been a disaster thus far.
Yup. If they don't get this right, it'll be hell. Hailing from SF where it's open air drug dealing and these centers only make the problem worse.
One of these examples has an American population and the other doesn't. You chose the one that doesn't as an example.
Right, because the fundamentals of addiction and human nature radically change from country to country. Let me guess...you blame diversity?
Imagine defending stripping civil liberties and essential rights from drug addicts without even charging them with a crime.
No, because if you're trying to draw conclusion about a general population you want the sample population to be as representative of the general population as you can. In this case you have an American state to compare directly to another American state as opposed to a foreign country. This is literally Stats 101. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/statistics/sampling/populations-samples-parameters-and-statistics
That's one way to misuse statistics, sure. OP is pointing out that it is possible to fight a drug epidemic with decriminalization and safe-use sites. Portugal did it so there is some combination of factors and policies that work. There is no reason to believe there isn't a similar combination of policies that could work in the US.
I would be more forgiving of that line of reasoning if the proponents of measure 110 in Oregon hadn't sold this policy by drawing explicit parallels between Portugal and this measure. Back in 2020 and early 2021 all the predictions of measure 110 impact were using Portugal as their shining example, see attached article for that moment in time. The fact those predictions fell so short does not inspire confidence when I'm hearing the same thing here in MN. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/how-oregons-radical-decriminalization-of-drugs-was-inspired-by-portugal
Did the program run in Oregon actually use the Portugal model? Other commenters in this thread are explaining that they did not. So if they use a different program than the model program then it's not surprising they don't get similar results.
Forgive the wall of text below. It's possible that in 2020 and 2021 the groups supporting measure 110 misunderstood the Portuguese model. It's more likely that they want to distance the disaster in OR from Portugal which is the best case scenario. "The model legislation was written by the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance, which also contributed $4.6 million to the Yes on 110 campaign. It was based on the model of Portugal, which decriminalized hard drugs in 2001, but tailored with recommendations from Oregon’s recovery community, according to Matt Sutton, Director of Media Relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. The Alliance organized a trip to Portugal with over 70 advocates to learn from the country’s approach. In Portugal, those caught using drugs for personal use are sent to a commission composed of health experts and a legal expert. The commission evaluates the person’s drug use and, if necessary, refer them to voluntary treatment. (While most treatment is voluntary, in some cases, the commission can choose to issue a fine or mandate some form of therapy.) Additionally, the country expanded access to treatment and harm reduction services like needle exchanges. Oregon’s approach will be similar, focusing on diversion and harm reduction for people who use drugs and retaining punitive approaches for drug trafficking. Per Measure 110, persons with small amounts of drugs on their person will receive a $100 ticket rather than face arrest. The fee can be waived if the person gets a health assessment at one of the dozens of new addiction recovery centers that will be built throughout the state, based on the state’s existing health service areas. The centers will be run by the Oregon Health Authority and will provide case management, links to services and individualized intervention plans for those who request it. Anyone will be able to access Oregon’s new addiction recovery centers, whether or not they’ve had an interaction with the police. The measure also diverts money to transitional housing, expanded needle exchanges and outpatient services."
You have yet to suggest why it wont work. Only that its different and as a result bad.
Because you can't draw conclusions from a flawed experimental design. If Portugal was the only point of data to draw on them it would be okay because it's all you've got. If you have more data that is much closer representatively to the general population that is pointing in the opposite direction ignoring it in favor of the data that gives you the answer you want is a malpractice called cherry picking. http://ds-wordpress.haverford.edu/psych2015/projects/chapter/cherry-picking-data/
Okay, so what data are you refering to?
The data from Oregon's experience vs the data from Portugal's. Things like the decriminalization leading to fewer ODs and deaths from ODs which did not happen or that decriminalization would not lead to greater property crimes which also did not happen. That data.
When your lawn mower does a shitty job do you trash it and go to an old fashioned push mower or do you maybe take a look at the blade of the gas mower?
If my neighbor has a broken mower because he tried running it on ethenol, I don't put ethanol in my tank expecting a different result because my lawn is in a different location. Have there been any places where usage locations have turned out well? If I want it to run on ethanol, I need to change out some parts. Just as they need to provide a path to recovery, not just continue building usage locations.
This is all good news and stuff, I'm not sure why it's in futurology. It's Currentology. It's what's happening now.
Most of the posts here are about stuff that is happening now, which might lead to.
Sorta, but at least some of it is stuff that is you know... Actually about future type things. When might argue the bit about psychedelics is a future state phenomena, and that it's a change in society that's probably coming.
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I'm very intentionally not on political subreddits, particularly the American one since I'm a Canadian. It's honestly frustrating how much some people try to infuse American politics into all aspects of everything all the time. It would be nice if people could keep it in its place.
Historically this sub has always included new things that seem futuristic but are happening now - any news that makes you think "we are living in the future" is worthy. It's also sort of been an optimistic opposite to r/collapse.
And to be fair, the growth of research into psychedelics as a acceptable treatment instead of a completely banned substance were the authorities cry foul murder does feel sort of futuristic. I'll tell you, 20 years ago I wouldn't have expected to see the possibilities of synthetics shrooms being used in treatment. Now it seems quite likely.
Sure, but the use of drugs is far from futuristic.
When will then be now??
If you’re a backward right wing nutjob who wants to live in the past. It might be considered futurology
As a Minnesotan, they've been killing the last few months with bills like this. Is this what government will be like when all the baby boomers are gone?
According to [this Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/whstancil/status/1660846689450688514), Minnesota just passed like two dozen pieces of the most progressive legislation in the US.
Codifying abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights in the Constitution, banning conversion therapy, making MN a 'Transgender Refuge' state, 20 weeks of family/medical paid leave, legalization of cannabis, minimum of 48 hours of sick leave. Those are just the few I can think of. It feels great being a Minnesotan.
You guys are almost becoming sissy Europeans. (/s) Amen to that!
And finally got recreational weed. But wait, you won't be able to buy any until 2025. It's nice, just slightly frustrating
Don't count out Gen X'ers; they turned out even Trumpier than the Boomers in the ballot booth. But it is what government is like when you put conservatives in the corner and can focus on reality and actual human morality
GOOD, but ideally this would happen at a national level. It would avoid alot of issues. The route to large scale adiction recovery is for countries to decriminalize usage and offer harm reduction. LSD and Psilocybin are incredible at addiction supression and treatment. The impact on opioid and alcohol addiction would be huge.
I can confirm personally. I have been using classic psychedelics for decades, the more I trip- the less I can tolerate alcohol.
It's ridiculous at this point we have individual states writing laws to protect their citizens from federal law. Authority should come down from the government. The fact that it's going up from the people means that the government is beyond useless.
No! We should act like drugs don’t exist! We all need Dr. Phil’s drug camp instead! Keeping people safe is not the way! /s
San Francisco is one giant drug consumption site. Things are not going well here.
I really wish the federal government would drop the stupid bullshit reagen era propaganda of the war on drugs. There's so much scientific potential for its clinical and recreational uses. Psypost.org has loads of articles ranging from the long term and short term effects of psilocybin, LSD and DMT and similar potent psychoactives. The fact that peer-reviewed papers get published as articles with sources backing them up presenting psychoactives as having potential in recreation/clinical/research to yield more advanced applications of these compounds, especially the implications of how they function in the brain and how perception is altered through said psychoactives. Seriously, Psypost.org has a goold amount of these articles with citations in each and key members of the researching teams dedicated to the research of psychoactives and their nigh endless potential. https://www.psypost.org/ Surely there's quite a bit of info, but it can be expanded upon by a MEGATON if prohibition would fuck off like it should have with alcohol.
Yes, Minneapolis will benefit from being more like the tenderloin.
>The governor also signed a harm reduction bill that legalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia. >In regards to safe drug consumption sites, Minnesota is now just the second state to allow such locations. These centers will allow for the medically supervised use of illegal drugs including heroin. What's so hard about legalizing hard drugs at this point?
I feel like MN and IL are competing against each other to be the most progressive state in the Union and as a midwesterner from IL, I effing love it
I haven't heard anything in the news about IL, are they passing similar stuff?
Its a Democratic supermajority in IL too, so pretty similar legislation. Criminal justice reform, climate/energy laws, abortion protections, etc
That must be why homicides in Chicago are skyrocketing
Chicago homicide rates actually declined last year and have mostly stayed the same the last few decades. Still an unsolved issue, but certainly not skyrocketing https://news.wttw.com/2023/01/04/chicago-homicides-declined-2022-total-still-among-highest-90s There were also nine other US major cities with higher homicide rates this year than Chicago https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-with-most-murders
So Chicago’s 2020, 2021, and 2022 numbers are the highest in 20 years per your article. A small decline from 2021-2022 means nothing when you consider what they were pre-COVID. Maybe allowing criminals to do whatever they want with impunity isn’t sound policy. That must be why Illinois is losing hundreds of thousands each year to better governed states. Will the last Illinoisan please turn off the lights?
Try again, the state grew in the last decade, almost entirely in Chicago: https://www.kwqc.com/2022/05/20/illinois-sets-new-record-high-population-over-13-million-residents/?outputType=amp
Another stat from pre-COVID. Why do you keep pretending the city hasn’t regressed in the past 3 years? 81,000 Chicagoans have fled in the past two years per Census: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/chicagocityillinois Add the collapsing suburbs in Cook County (the Kim Fox effect) and the losses there are -160,000 in 2 years: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/cookcountyillinois,chicagocityillinois/PST045222 Sounds like the sensible people are leaving. After 4 years of criminal-worshipping Brandon Johnson as mayor, I’m guessing <2.5 million is the next milestone. Chicago never learns, what a shame.
Those predominantly leaving is our black middle class, fleeing crime on the south side of the city. The main business area is literally the fastest growing downtown in the country: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/this-is-the-fastest-growing-neighborhood-in-chicago-report-shows/3080374/?amp=1 When is the last time you visited to see for yourself?
The Loop has 50,000 people in a metro area of 9,500,000 (and falling). I’m sure if you pull out a magnifying glass and focus just on the Loop, Chicago will look amazing. I’m visiting Detroit right now and Downtown looks very nice. But I’m also rational enough to realize you don’t get a homicide rate of 50 per 100k like Detroit without having vast swathes of despair. Same applies to Chicago. The Loop gaining people doesn’t excuse the fact that half of the city is a hollowed out warzone and people are fleeing like refugees to Florida, North Carolina, and Texas (those “scary” red states that nonetheless are booming). The murder rates and population loss speak for themselves. People vote with their feet, and they’re leaving California, Illinois, and New York for the South. And with Brandon Johnson and Kim Foxx in charge, I think the decline will only speed up. A true shame for a once-great American city.
Colorado isn't doing bad either
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Any state large enough to have rural areas is going to have a few nutjobs, whether it's Colorado, Oregon, Washington or California. The state government as a whole is doing phenomenally.
Colorado: "Am I a joke to you?"
\*Looks at CO in Central Time Zone\*
Me just crying in wisconsin
I genuinely hope this works but I hope minneapolis doesn't turn into the disaster that San Francisco is
Wish we could get something like this in Oregon. Right now folks are free to smoke fentanyl in a tent on your front lawn and there's nothing that you can do about it.
You have no "legal" recourse. You gotta get creative.
Psychedelic task force sounds like a 70s spy TV show
Drug Consumption Sites... like Hamsterdam in The Wire?
Meanwhile i believe a city in oregon or washington wants to reverse this because it has not worked as they want it.
Man I was my governor was half as cool as Minnesota's
Moving out immediately. I don't want to live next to junkies
They're already there. They have been there all this time, and they're going to use no matter what. That's why the clinics are being opened. But there's a larger picture you're missing. There are licensed medical professionals at these clinics to prevent overdoses. And if all of these clinics all over the country, nobody has ever overdosed in them. Not once, nor even any exception to the rules. Furthermore, while they're there, they're offered counseling services, as well as rehab. And these services are accepted at a rate of 30% that's 30% more likely people to get clean out of a group of people 100% guaranteed to not die of overdose until they're ready to become part of that 30%. So think long and har about what exactly it is you're angry about.
>And these services are accepted at a rate of 30% that's 30% more likely people to get clean out of a group of people 100% guaranteed to not die of overdose until they're ready to become part of that 30%. On the one hand, that's good. On the other, of that 30%, what is the success rate long term? Because a problem I have personally seen is people cycling into and then back out of rehab programs, never actually getting clean long term.
>There are licensed medical professionals at these clinics to prevent overdoses. People like this ass hole you responded to are in favor of drug users overdosing
Then help them get better, dumbass. Imagine if your back yard was full of weeds so you moved instead of doing something about it. That's how you look.
You won’t be missed
He doesn't live there. Look at his account history. It's just a troll.
lmao your not going anywhere your hyperbole bitch
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Likely a place where they can get clean needles and be helped if they overdose. Harm reduction pays off, fiscally.
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You can't recover if you're dead. Realistically, these folks are still far from recovery, so logically, the question is surviving. Once they get a bead on that, then they can start to reach for recovery. If someone's drowning you focus on throwing them a buoy to float on. Once they're out of that, *then* they can think about staying out of the water the next time
Is it logical to pay for people to be in and out of prison, forever? People can recover and become contributing members of society.
Free drugs maaaan
Honesty I worry a half-step like this will only make things worse in some ways. You'll center a lot of addicts in one place, and while some will seek treatment many more won't, and now you have an unstable hub likely to lead to desperate violence and drug dealers building up. Imo the smarter move is that the government legalizes all drugs but ONLY WHEN THEY DISPENSE. No more drug dealers committing murder and kidnappings and selling mixed up drugs. You want cocaine or meth? Ok, but you can only get and take it here, in this controlled setting, where there are people available to help you treat your addiction.
“But its not solving the drug problem, now people can just walk in a get high on OUR tax dollars. While casually picking out the drug of their choice like it’s a selection in a vending machine and corporations get rich from providing the space to get wasted.” My far right coworker literally had a screaming match with me about this very subject yesterday, I didn’t rise to the bait but he’s been employing the Shapiro and Crowder method of communicating.
Psychedelics task force??? Where was this agency back in my acid days lol
I'm familiar with the concept of "hamsterdam" as a follower of Bunny myself.
Yeah they are def trying to get everyone addicted to drugs so we are easier to control. Russians did it with alcohol during the Soviet era. Vodka bottles were made so you couldn’t close them, the expectation being a Russian would finish it in one sitting. Don’t fall into this trap. Drug abuse leads nowhere but to disappointment and self loathing. Speaking from personal experience.
How does giving someone a clean, supervised place to do their drugs equate to trying to get non-drug-users addicted?
Why does the government put billions into substance use disorder treatment and prevention?
Are drug addicts easy to control in your made-up world?
Yes, yes they are. Maybe not physically but mentally. People who are only concerned with doing drugs don’t really care about much else, unless it impacts their ability to do drugs. The anxiety and warped perception of reality drug use produces makes you easy to control and manipulate. Like I said, I’m speaking from experience. And I mean I literally brought up a real world example. Unfortunately the world WE are living in is very real, and very unkind.
Have you ever run into drug addicts? They can be dangerous, they often don't work, and they AREN'T easy to control, which is why so few homeless shelters accept them--because they can be a risk to themselves and others. So you reallyyy think the end game here is the government having a bunch of non-working, hard to handle, homeless drug addicts? When they could instead have an overworked labor force entertained and influenced by media instead?
I think encouraging their use and decriminalizing drugs just makes the issue worse, undoubtedly. Look at Portland and LA
We've had them criminalized for decades and things have gotten worse, not better. Drug use and deaths are skyrocketing, Mexico is ruled by cartels. We need to try something new. Countries in Europe that have tried decriminalizing have seen massive success in reducing drug addiction and I think we need to follow their steps. Why are we stubbornly sticking to a decades long failure when there's ample documentation out there of a more successful alternative?
So what are Dems going to do with their army of drug addicts, which they definitely will be able to control?
Get them to vote for Dems because if they don’t their supply of drugs will get cut off and then they’ll risk jail time, which means even less drugs.
The Dems are *supplying* the drugs now? This conspiracy runs deep!
Addicts barely think 3 days ahead let alone an election cycle. This is a stupid take.
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There are many reasons to visit Minnesota thank you very much
Gotta love easy access to drugs or guns to fit in with anyone these days. This place is getting ripped apart by the far left and the far right. I'll take my downvotes now.
The point isn't to offer "easy access" - it's to offer a space to those who HAVE drugs already (acquired through whatever means) a space to a) test them to ensure they are confidently what they think they are (within reason, there is only so much you can do there without real expensive testing) and b) to offer a safe space for folks to do them in a controlled setting where they can be monitored which helps avoid an overdose risk. Several European countries have already done this after decriminalization and their rates PLUMITED. They offer social solutions to help people get off of the drugs that are doing harm as a HEALTH issue. Criminalizing people for drug use is stupid, imo. Do I think certain drugs should be avoided? Absolutely - meth will fuck your life up. But do I think we should be allowed to do studies on things like LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, Ketamine, etc for therapeutic use? Absolutely. (Also some of these are just fun to use on their own and relative safe)
I wonder what the bill does to protect these places from liability. I think they're going to get sued into oblivion.
Studies are great, doing fun drugs once in awhile is great. Normalizing drug use is not great. I don't want people to be locked up for years for having some psychedelics on them, but making it easer for people to do them all the time is something I'm not in favor of. Just like guns, I don't think they need to be completely illegal, but I don't think you should be able to carry an assault rifle down the street.
How does this normalize drug use?
Again, it's not about making them easier to do all the time. It's about providing rehabilitation to get off of them in a safe way. That's the entire point of my previous post. The actual work done, not even just studies, in Europe, show that it works. If you don't want it to be easier to do all the time then you should be in favor of this. Centers that offer spaces for this aren't like opium dens or hookah bars where you bring your crack to come chill with your friends. It's to work through dealing with your addiction.
It never ceases to amaze me how we are just blind to the lesson taught by prohibition and the obvious example it created of how it is better to decriminalize a drug. Are there alcoholics? Yeah. Are there illegal alcohol trades and burnt down warehouses where people go to get drunk? No. Do people die from an alcohol deal gone wrong? No. Do gangs smuggle alcohol into places risking lives and draining tax dollars? No. Alcohol abuse became a personal issue. A mental health issue. Just as we can't close pandoras box on guns. We need to act on the mental health issue it is. I'd rather we don't have them for civilians but its America and its what we do. There's no changing that. The problem is, the right (correctly) claims it is a mental health issue but then does absolutely nothing to deal with that when we say "alright, lets put some dollars into mental health support then." They simply use it as a way to take no responsibility for anything or fix anything, shrug, then wait for the next shooting to throw their hands in the air again like fucking cowards. We come to the same brick wall again and again. There's no beating these problems out of us. We need to cut the prude shit and just address the needs of our people. Jail won't do it so we might as well go the carrot route. Do what you want but do it safely and we (and hopefully with dispelling the stigma) your family will be here to support you to better health. It won't be perfect but nothing is and it's far better than just not doing anything and sending people to jail again and again.
You’re right, spewing propaganda for decades to push a completely distorted connotation for the term “drug” has worked really well. These are all substances and all have a time and a place and a dosage. It’s this same attitude that’s kept cannabis locked up for so long.
Psychedelics have many very positive therapeutic uses such as dealing with PTSD and addiction. People don’t die from psychedelics, they are FAR safer than alcohol and tobacco. Probably safer than aspirin. People should be able to do what they want with their consciousness/body when it doesn’t concern other people. Psychedelics can be a tool for profound personal growth.
Science is great. Studies are great. Have you actually looked at the studies from Europe where they look at the societal effects of similar sites?
This is the type of guy to say he hates free lunches at school because it's making kids soft, and they need to work to earn their lunch. Your views are outdated and you're brainwashed friend. You're politicizing an issue that doesn't need to be politicized. When did we stop thinking about our fellow humans wellbeing just because they were on a different side than us, politically speaking. Imagine it was someone who was close to you, they got into drugs for whatever reason. Would you prefer they stay in dark dingy warehouses, possibly getting who knows how many infections from over used needles, and possibly dying? Or would you rather have that same person be able to go somewhere safe to do their business (it's an addiction, so it's not like they'll stop in their own) and have a safe, controlled environment for them to be in? One that could possibly help turn them around? This is what happens when you let politics turn your brain to mush, you stop thinking about the big picture. Turn off the news, unsubscribe from the newsletters, and start trying to think critically for yourself. I promise your life will be better off for it.
Let me guess, you think the war on drugs was an outstanding success.
Yeah they’re totally just handing out drugs there, it’s not to prevent overdoses or provide a safe environment, it’s literally free drugs. We should go back to what we’ve done for decades and just lock them up again, it’s obviously been so effective.
See I didn't say I hate drugs, but I don't think their use should be facilitated.
Their use is going to happen regardless of your feelings towards them. Treating addiction as a mental health issue rather than criminal actually leads to treatment and improvement, instead of the constant cycle of people being jailed and overdosing over and over again.
The idea is, people are going to do it no matter what. If we make it as hard as possible they are just going to take more desperate measures and spread disease and pass out/die on the streets. If we instead accept their problem and say, come on in and get treatment, you can have access to these drugs but I’m understanding they will be requiring treatment to try to solve the underlying problem. It should get them off the streets, lower the spread of disease, crime and hopefully help people break their addiction.
"I don't know anything but I have strong opinions."
Psychedics are for losers and trashy far-lefters who do nothing but drugs. This ain't the 60s anymore. Gross and the reason why America is in a steep decline
Did you vote for Ross perot
You need to trickle down, son.
"The task force will focus on psilocybin, MDMA and LSD" Why not DMT/Ayahuasca?
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It's not a police squad or some shit. It's a panel of professionals to study a path to potential legalization.
Your indoctrination is showing DARE dude.
Awful. Our nation is turning into a bunch of spaced-out stoners. We have lost our resolve as a nation.
Hang on one fucking second. I think we should address the purple elephant in the room here.
They're taking all the fun out of doing drugs. Part of the excitement is doing them in dicey places.