News

21687 readers

3420 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

189

Psychedelics are about to become a casualty of Oregon’s opioid crisis (www.vox.com)

submitted 3 months ago by MicroWave to c/news

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Four years ago, the state decriminalized all drugs. Now it’s trying to course-correct — and might make a mistake in the process.

In 2020, it looked as though the war on drugs would begin to end in Oregon.

After Measure 110 was passed that year, Oregon became the first state in the US to decriminalize personal possession of all drugs that had been outlawed by the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, ranging from heroin and cocaine to LSD and psychedelic mushrooms. When it went into effect in early 2021, the move was celebrated by drug reform advocates who had long been calling for decriminalization in the wake of President Nixon’s failed war on drugs.

Now, amid a spike in public drug use and overdoses, Oregon is in the process of reeling back its progressive drug laws, with a new billthat aims to reinstate lighter criminal penalties for personal drug possession. And while the target is deadly drugs like fentanyl, the law would also result in banning non-clinical use of psychedelics like MDMA, DMT, or psilocybin — drugs that are unconnected to the current overdose epidemic and the public displays of drug use.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] TempermentalAnomaly 2 points 3 months ago

Portugal never mandated treatment. It require a hearing by a local board made of experts including medical personelle. The quote you cited is clear about this, but you state otherwise. And the quote correctly notes that Oregon does have this or some of the other additional measure.

More importantly, what is missing from the quote, is the boards rarely ever forced people into treatment. The article you quote goes on to state the following:

The sites include social workers and mental health professionals to encourage people to enter treatment. The goal is to start people on a path to health — even if they don’t start treatment immediately, said Brendan Saloner, associate professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

“The entire kind of logic of the rooms is very much designed around: ‘Let’s bring these folks indoors, they’re using drugs. They are here in our community,’” he said.

If that quote didn't drive home the central principles, this one should:

“The key innovation of Portugal is having services that people need when they need them,” he said. “And I think that a lot of the bones of that could kind of come together in Oregon, but it’s going to take resources, time and patience.”

We didn't do that. Forcing people into treatment was never the solution.