Is Oregon Proof That Drug Decriminalization Will Fail?

The Drug Policy Institute's Kevin Sabet debates Reason's Zach Weissmueller.

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Is Oregon Proof That Drug Decriminalization Will Fail?

Drug policy scholar Kevin Sabet and Reason's Zach Weissmueller debate the resolution, "The failure of Oregon's experiment in decriminalizing all drugs is compelling evidence that other attempts at complete decriminalization will fail just as badly."

Arguing for the affirmative is Sabet, the director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida, and the co-founder and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. He is the author of Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana.

Arguing against the resolution is Weissmueller, a senior producer at Reason, who has been covering the drug war for well over a decade. He recently produced a documentary on why Oregon re-criminalized drugs.

The debate is moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein.

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

Comments

[MasterThief]

It's a sign that those pushing for it are blind to the problems it creates and disinterested in mitigating the negative consequences for the rest of the population.
Prosecute crime heavily and let people kill themselves in their shitbox apartments with as much fetanyl as they want. Don't socialize the costs of your personal freedom.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

This.

Combine libertarian ideals with no responsibility libirtineism and you get Portland.

[TJJ2000]

^THIS +1000000 ... Both comments right on the $.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Spokane is going that way too. And it’s even more miserable if you’re a landlord. I long for the days when if I had an addict scofflaw, that I could kick in the door, beat the shit out of the worthless junkie, and then toss him into the street. And if the junkie put up a fight, I could turn him over to the sheriff for a second beating and a nice long jail stay.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

Simpler times.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Yeah I don't see a failure of decriminalization as much as leftist government fucking it up. But to be fair it all started with prohibition that happened before any of us were born.

[Chumby]

…that happened before any of us were born.

Hank says hold his tin cup.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Decriminalization is bullshit. It’s either legal, or it’s not.

[Roberta]

No, there are steps in between. Almost all traffic and parking violations are non-criminal. So the illegal things we do the most aren't crimes. It's not as if non-criminal illegality is inherently politically unstable; there's no serious push to either legalize traffic violations or criminalize them. A rare exception was the criminalization of drunk driving.

No, there are other factors operating in political instability here.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

You’re confusing non criminal violations with the legalization of controlled substances. Which are legal or not. Parking violations are not ‘decriminalized’ crimes, they are infractions,

Drugs are legal, or not.

[Roberta]

There's nothing illegal that isn't criminal? And you think I'm the one who's confused here? Decriminalization doesn't make an act legal, it makes it not a crime.

Prostitution reformers have the terms mixed up.

[Social Justice is neither]

No, it makes it a weapon and an excuse to not do your job as a LEO or politician.

They can be lesser infractions than they are now but but this not a crime crime is just a mess and a lie.

[Zeb]

The substances can be legal or not (i.e. considered contraband), that's true. But that's a separate thing from whether possession, use, sale, etc. of the substances is a criminal offense.

[Social Justice is neither]

The problem is somewhere on that downward slide you can't even afford the shit box apartment so the costs get socialized eventually. That and so much of our welfare state is about making sure there are minimal consequences for shit decisions.

[Marshal]

Right. The answer comes down to whether leftists have enough power to influence the outcome. As we see in Portland they are uninterested in success, in fact they prefer failure which they claim can only mean they need more funding. And since they have this power almost everywhere in the US (even in red states the institutions administering the related programs will consist almost entirely of leftists) it's very likely Sabet is right.

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Well said.

[damikesc]

You can say it is not fair, but the way Enron dealt with CA during their, admittedly, lame attempt at deregulation helped insure that such a policy will not be tried again.

Portland did that to drug legalization.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Marxists don’t hold anyone accountable for their personal behavior, so legalization would also be a massive failure there.of course, everything they do is a massive failure.

[Neutral not Neutered]

Marijuana should be legalized across America. Trump and the GOP should pull the trigger on this and it might become bi partisan law which can only benefit the country with two parties finally agreeing on something.

Apply taxes as done with alcohol and create a new revenue stream.

All the impacts and results of legalizing marijuana are noted in Canada and have been positive.

And using British Columbia or Oregon as examples show when decriminalizing harder drugs go too far are available.

No reason to think there's not enough evidence to make proper informed decisions and policy on the matter.

[Incunabulum]

Well, it failed on Oregon.

[IceTrey]

It has to be legalized, decriminalization keeps the black market in place. Portugal proved it works. Also it's simply a question of liberty no one has the right to tell another what they can do.

[Rick James]

Unfortunately, that's the Chamber of Commerce version of what happened in Portugal. Here's some cold water.

In this article, Wharton adjunct professor of management and senior fellow at Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management Gregory Shea breaks down the unraveling of Portugal’s controversial drug policy, updating prior insights into organizational change from a case study in his book with Cassie Solomon, Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change Work.

Portugal had a drug addiction problem. A big one. To address it, the country engaged in systemic change in 2001 and achieved dramatically positive results. Today, Portugal has returned to the news due to a significant, though not total, return of its drug problem and the appearance of related experimental programs elsewhere such as in Portland, OR. Such articles often mention decriminalizing drug usage, emphasizing its centrality in the consideration and evaluation of programs like Portugal’s. How important is decriminalization in curtailing drug abuse? What can we learn about sustaining organizational change from the answer to that question?

It's a long complex article and the guy sounds like he came to the same conclusions I did. "Decriminalization is not the singular solution", it's just one piece in a very complex problem.

Also, the subtext of much of the article is... it requires huge public investments to keep the 'harm-reduction' treadmill running, which is why I no longer trust Libertarians on this issue. It's the ultimate agree-to-disagree bullshit match which I predicted back in the Mike Riggs days of Reason. We're going to agree to 'harm reduction' and then find ourselves disagreeing on how much public monies are going to be spent on perpetually keeping deeply addicted people alive, and in the end, we'll keep the both the decriminalization and the public financing of sustaining Johnny FentanylHead forever and ever, amen, all while suffering the second-order effects of having large numbers of fentanyl heads roving around your neighborhood wreaking havoc.

[Rick James]

Oh, and Portugal didn't legalize, they decriminalized. Which, based on your comment, means Portugal's decriminalization worked (which it didn't).

[MollyGodiva]

Drug decriminalization is profoundly stupid because it is still illegal and still has penalties. Full legalization is the proper course of action.

[TJJ2000]

...PLUS Universal Taxpayer-Theft Medicare so the drug-stupid careless lifestyle can be 'subsidized'?
I point this out in hopes you realize just how impracticable 'subsidizing' (i.e. Gov-Gun theft) is.

Individual Liberty is definitely the 'proper course of action'.
But you can't defend Individual Liberty while asking others to pay for it.
That brings about '[WE] Identify-as *special* RULES!' - gangster wars. (i.e. It is not a balanced equation)

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Funny, you Marixists have a mortal lock on Oregon government. Yet still no legalization.

[DesigNate]

Even if they went full legalization, they’d find a way to fuck everything up.

[Rick James]

Decriminalization comes in two main flavors.

1. The laws and penalties remain in place, but are not enforced.
2. The laws and penalties are removed meaning that the activity is neither illegal nor regulated.

Real libertarians prefer #2.

Legalization means that it's explicitly made legal and it is presumed to be regulated. Agree-to-disagree libertarians prefer this option.

"Let's abolish the FDA... except to tell us what's in our over-the-counter drugs and shit, man!"

[sarcasmic]

"Let's abolish the FDA... except to tell us what's in our over-the-counter drugs and shit, man!"

Don't need the FDA for that. Tort law could easily handle it. As it is, because the drugs are illegal users can't sue dealers it the stuff it too weak, too strong, tainted, or something else entirely. If they were then there would be self-regulation out of fear of getting sued.

[Roberta]

No, legalization of an action means changing it from illegal to not-illegal. It doesn't presume any other particular laws pertaining thereto — except for prostitution reformers, who use the terms in quirky ways.

Like the way ownership of gold was legalized.

[Use the Schwartz]

The thing we fucked up is fucked up, let's fuck it up more.

End the failed War on Drugs and let the chips fall where they may.

[Roberta]

Now that I've had a chance to listen to the whole thing, it would seem a great deal turns on a question of fact. If Kevin Sabet's assertion that taking fentanyl, for instance, is an experience orders of magnitude better than anything else, and that is typical of the average person, is correct, then the whole issue is silly; we should all be on fentanyl to the maximum extent feasible, and forget all other questions of life. However, I've had fentanyl, and it's nowhere near that good; in fact I doubt it would be good at all much of the time, just mildly interesting to try here and there.

[Zeb]

Yeah, the idea that there's something inherent in the drugs that inevitably leads to addiction is wrong. Plenty of people do drugs, enjoy them and don't become junkies. Why some people do become junkies is way more complicated than "the drugs are just too good".

[Rick James]

Did Zach's argument when forced to confront Portland (or Seattle) boil down to "real decriminalization has never been tried"?

[Zeb]

Well, as you point out above there is no "real decriminalization", just different approaches to it. And that it's not, by itself, the solution to the problems of drug abuse.
As I've said often, any kind of decrim/legalization needs to come with a radical shift towards personal responsibility. Do drugs if you want, but if you make a scene on the streets, or victimize other people, you get put in prison or shot in the face by someone defending himself, no sympathy or victim narratives. People are responsible for their own behavior.
And that's probably also just scratching the surface. Other social problems and the "homeless industrial complex" are big parts of it too, I'm sure.

[Chumby]

Didn’t this article get posted three days ago? Nick used to turn one interview into multiple articles, but this is pushing it.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Man reason has gotten lazy. Reposting old articles without even posting a new link/comment section.

[Chumby]

JD Vance is wrong
Trump’s dastardly tariffs
Jawboning

Yup. Still, they are putting in more effort than sarc’s attempts at sobriety.

[I, Woodchipper]

decriminalizing drug use vs. allowing all the drug induced anti-social behaviors that go with it are two different things.

Portland let all the junkies make a mess of the place. If they weren't on drugs, it's still bad behavior that should be stopped.

People doing drugs in privacy and causing no problems should not be considered criminal. yes, I realize that's not common but it does happen

[Zeb]

It's common enough I think (especially if you consider being a real alcoholic drug abuse, which it is). You just hear less about it because they aren't causing problems. Most drug users, even of hard drugs, aren't on the streets causing mayhem.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

Totally fair. You don't see the "good" users because they're doing it the way you would prefer. And, incidentally, they way the drug legalization laws promised / required. Nobody is supposed to be out in public getting high as shit and causing mayhem. We all see how well that has been enforced.

I think a lot of people (not including me) have been surprised by the enormous numbers of people willing to just shoot up and die slowly on the streets if the opportunity is there. And I think the legalization movement may have hit its zenith as a consequence. Sure, some zero-tolerance states will lighten up a bit on weed in the coming years. But a lot of the early adopters are probably going to move in the opposite direction, scaling back legalization and enforcing the laws as written / passed. Kind of like the border.

[MasterThief]

Proof? No.
Evidence? Absolutely.

[sarcasmic]

Decriminalization is very much like alcohol Prohibition. Prohibition outlawed the production, distribution and sale of alcohol. It did not criminalize possession and use.

So claiming that decriminalization is equivalent to legalizing drugs is ignorant and stupid. Because it comes with all the problems of Prohibition.

Those include unregulated products so no one knows for sure what they’re getting. Inability to resolve disputes on court. Corruption in law enforcement. Violence. Death. All the bad stuff that comes with prohibition. Because if it is illegal to produce, distribute and sell, it’s illegal. Don’t matter if they don’t bust users. It’s still illegal.

So equating decriminalization with legalization is dumb. Really, really dumb.

[DesigNate]

Agreed.

[sarcasmic]

So no, decriminalization doesn't work. Because prohibition doesn't work.

[Rob razor]

Legal drugs would fix many of the issues. Mainly the drug supply will have the correct drug, weight and allow intervention. Sadly, the Government would tax the shit out of it and keep the black market going.

[Roberta]

How will "the drug supply...allow intervention"?