politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
They effectively did one without the other. From what I've been able to gather Oregon is actually one of the worst states for mental health and addiction care. Now of course they realized this and tried to appropriate money to deal with that. But they didn't get enough and there was no lead time. They decriminalized before the new infrastructure was in place. So all of the aid groups and government health agencies that did exist were playing catch up the entire time. Imagine the crunch with the entire state emergency hiring counselors, trying to buy new buildings for safe use centers, and new inpatient centers; all at the same time.
So the net effect was people watched a drug problem get worse (because COVID did that all over the world) with less tools to deal with it than before. Instead of what they wanted to see, which would have been different tools to deal with it. In the end shutting it down and going back to arrests and courts became an easy case for Conservatives.
The lesson aid groups and governments should take away is not that decriminalization is bad. Just that they must have enough health infrastructure to deal with the problem because there's a lot of people who would be in the prison system that are going to suddenly be in the health system. And a pandemic is a horrible time to make sweeping policy changes on anything but getting through the pandemic.
I'm glad that you shared this, because it's good to know the pitfalls when implementing changes in policy. I want a robust and easy access healthcare system anyway, but it's good to know it's a prerequisite for softening on drugs.
You're a legend, thanks for taking the time to reply, i appreciate it.