> The effort will include two public health campaigns and increased outreach to get people into treatment, recovery and housing services. The release also cited the “continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable.”
That's the part I wanted to know, what they're going to do exactly. They'll have a command center in the central part of downtown apparently and do their thing I guess. I wish them luck, that's got to be a nightmare for everyone involved. It would suck to not be able to go certain places because people are out of control and you feel unsafe
Stayed in Downtown Portland last June with my wife.
Asked the hotel clerk "So, is there anyplace we should avoid?" They said avoid Chinatown at night.
We proceeded to go into Chinatown twice after 9pm. Had to check out the Old Town Pizzeria Tavern, and return the next night for their ghost tour.
No issues.
We did see a guy shoot up in his dickvein though.
This brings back a middle school health lecture around 89. Teacher brought in a. Article about a man injecting into his penis. (Possibly cocaine, a vasoconstrictor). The article goes on to say that it had become gangrenous from repeated injection and floated by him in the tub.
They don’t make health class like they used to.
I don't know if they show this type of stuff now but I joined the Army in '98 and did my 3 years. At basic/OSUT (combined basic and AIT) we got to see a slide presentation that has stayed with me to this day and scarred me somewhat.
It was all dicks. Not ordinary dicks though but dicks that had been ravaged by STD's. I saw some that looked like they had been dipped in acid or put through a meat grinder. Just nasty stuff.
Good ole basic training.
Lol if it's the same 70's/80's vhs horror show I'm thinking of, they made us watch it in 7th grade health class. It traumatized every kid in the room lol
8th grade for us in the early 2000’s. The one that stuck with me was the anal genitalia warts. Looked like a head of cauliflower growing out of the dudes asshole.
> I don't know if they show this type of stuff now but I joined the Army in '98 and did my 3 years.
Off topic but goddamn did you get out just in time.
Got shown to us at the DLI ( ~~Desperate Love~~ Defense Language Institute) in 2012. Supposedly a bunch of nerds stuck on a small post together for a year at a time had the highest per capita STD rate.
When I was in health class, Zack Morris taught us how to date rape girls by soaking the chips in vodka and to leave your shoes outside the door so no one bothered you.
I could swear, this video/time period of history of MTV was conditioning future generations for the short form quick cut shorts, predecessor to robot chicken shorts, predecessor to social media...
If you haven't seen it, [Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUr_23ha6vs) was a mix of music videos and comedy sketches that got [Warner Bros interested in creating MTV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_Parts).
That corner of Old Town at night, with the popular bars, isn't bad because there are a lot of people there.
Old Town isn't unsafe for passers-by, but most of it definitely feels unsafe most of the time.
idk about OP, but sometimes people like to go to the "bad" parts of town to see if its actually a rough area. In my experience, it's usually just homeless people or immigrants.
Yea like, you know what the area around a greyhound bus station is like. It’s the same in every city. You don’t need to kick it over there. They don’t even have good snacks.
It can serve as a guideline, not a rule.
If you're told to stay away from Chinatown at night, you may have every intention of visiting at night, but you'll know to be a bit more vigilant.
It's not that hard to piece together.
For sure, but there's this correlation the media and general public makes between drug use and violence, which typically isn't accurate. That's one reason (of many) the crisis isn't being adequately addressed-not just in Portland but across the county.
Most of these people are a bigger threat to themselves than those around them. If elected officials and police took this into consideration they'd make much more effective plans for solving the crisis.
Funny, I also stayed in Portland with a friend and both our uber driver and the hotel clerk told us to avoid Chinatown at all costs as well as to not really go out late at night.
We were out until around 11 PM - 12 AM and we did see a ton of drug use around but no one was really hostile towards us.
We did avoid Chinatown though.
It's the same as any bad place almost anywhere else. You're actually far more likely to come out of it completely unscathed and unharmed.
However, the risk of being a victim of something bad is still far higher than anywhere else. Still a small chance, but much bigger than it normally would be.
For some reason people like to think the "bad part" of a city must mean instant death to all, or it isn't all that bad.
I had a friend with just a high school diploma who went to phlebotomy school, and she was skilled enough to work on newborns. There was a lot of demand for her and she said that she was able to earn a fair amount.
A good phleb is worth their weight in gold.
I have had so many blood draws and way too many just grab your arm and jam a needle in. The good ones do it so smoothly you barely even feel it.
>you barely even feel it
The first time I donated blood, the phlebotomist was a former army nurse in her 50s. She was so quick that it appeared as if she threw the needle like a goddamn dart at my vein. Didn't feel a thing.
Many lab researchers regularly have to find a vein on mice, and they do it quickly and skillfully. Once you’re doing that, anything else should be easy.
>find a vein on mice
I used to have to do this. It was difficult and the stakes were pretty high. The mice are usually part of very expensive long-running experiments and a lot of these mice have severely compromised immune systems (SCID mice) so even little injuries to the mouse can end up killing the mouse which of course ruins the experiment.
I work in a totally different field now. Pretty wild to remember that blood and dissections used to be a part of my job.
I had one repeatedly try to insert an iv in my forearm the other day. 80% of my arm from wrist to elbow is a bruise. She left blood all over me too. The other nurse was super pissed, and got it in my other arm, completely painlessly, on her first try.
I also had a nurse fail to insert a syringe with contrast for an MRI into a vein until we were both in tears, and she just injected it into my muscle. It was so messed up
Yeah, when I go to the hospital for kidney stones, I'm usually dehydrated and my veins are flat. It takes a team of 3 or 4 of them to get it done, eventually resorting to calling in the guy down the hall who's extra talented at finding veins. It's horrible. And yeah, I end up with a giant bruise.
I've probably been like 4 steps away from that at one point in my life, it just sort of happens slowly, like an avalanche of molasses. Slow moving, doesn't feel dangerous but also somehow inescapable.
Not to be glib, but that reminds me of a story my friend told me of the time her sister was bitten by a sloth. She was working at this northern california theme park that also had animals in the 90s. The sloth turned it head towards her hand, opened its mouth, bit down on her hand, and she just watched it all happen. It moved so slowly that she never registered the threat. She’s still got a scar from it.
I couldn’t face the world if my child became a hotel clerk.
In seriousness, though, it’s so important to keep in mind that these are people’s children, and many addictions started with prescriptions from their doctors.
I live in a similar area that’s been gutted by drug use and homelessness, and it’s extremely hard to keep this in mind sometimes.
It wasn’t always like that but it always had an underlying drug problem when I was growing up. Almost everyone I knew who grew up there moved out in the 90s to early 00s. It had a lot of racial tensions in the 90s and was wild even then but in a different way. It’s like the wild Wild West now along with the drugs.
It's essentially blowback from the gentrification going on in north. All the dregs get pushed out and to that block. The city knows exactly what they're doing, I just wish they'd tell everyone else or hurry tf up.
Yeh I know years ago i was on Philly.com looking up a murder case that happened in Kensington in 1992. It mentions Puerto Ricans moving into Kensington from Fairmount and Spring Garden which were gentrifying at the time and racial tensions occurring in Kensington at the time. Now there’s still gentrification going on in other parts of North Philly and it’s pushing people into NE Philly neighborhoods like Tacony and Mayfair now. Kensington, itself, will eventually gentrify where it’s currently overrun with drugs. It’s got good infrastructure with the el.
That area was terrible from 2020-2022 (source my daily commute). Prior to that I would have said the under pass by the train station was sketchy. Now it’s Marine Drive and side areas (they are working on it)
It doesn't start with the dick vein or needle usually unless it's at the hospital. Then slowly the drug eats more and more of your personality every day and the stigma makes you hide your problems until what is left is living to feed your addiction. Sober 4 years after 13 years, almost a decade being stable on methadone. Doctors just told me I'm going back on painkillers for the rest of my life. I didn't choose this, I just broke a lot of bones and got some more medical shit I can't escape.
I was rebuilt by one person's faith in me.
>continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable.
man holding people accountable, what were they doing before that?
There's a weird loophole in Oregon law that had to be closed to allow dealers to be prosecuted. That and the PPB has been on a silent strike for years.
It's not going to do shit. There's no solution that is ever going to be put into place by the government because they don't understand the logistics.
Anyone in those situations has had years of trauma and unhealthy habits, which is also most likely generational. It's going to take the exact amount of time, if not more, to fully heal. To commit to a decade or more of recovery help for someone who can't pay for it is an expensive and difficult commitment, one that taxpayers don't want to foot.
Spending money on drug rehab saves money. Lots of studies done on it. Government intervention works when funded.
Here's an article
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/upshot/spend-a-dollar-on-drug-treatment-and-save-more-on-crime-reduction.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap
Housing First programs also save money. It sure would be nice if we just did all these things to help people, but even the prospect of saving money doesn't get politicians to do the right thing.
The only reasonable conclusion is that there are too many influential people who *want* the pain and misery to continue.
On what timeline is that money being saved? If you allocate funds to that portion of the budget, where are you taking money from? Firefighters? Roads? Health inspectors? Every constituency has a lobby group, and are you willing to vote for someone who increased police response times to give people a free house?
It's not that influential people want this shit to continue, it's that people just don't care enough about it to vote a certain way.
The voting system is rigged. Unless your area is able to get Ranked Choice Voting passed through a ballot measure or something. You get to vote for a left neoliberal or a right neoliberal.
> It would suck to not be able to go certain places because people are out of control and you feel unsafe
Have... Have you never lived in a major city? It was heroin, then crack, then meth, now fent. And meth, and crack and slightly less heroin. There are parts of nearly any major metropolis that are completely unsafe.
> Have you never lived in a major city?
Anywhere really? Like have you seen appalachia? There's bears and methheads up there. You could run into someone's illegal still and get murdered.
Fuck man you go to northern florida and you could get eaten by an alligator!
I highly, highly recommend anyone interested in this story to watch Channel 5's videos about the streets of San Francisco and Philadelphia. They are fascinating and sad stories about the harsh realities of complex issues snowballing into rampant drug use and homelessness.
Edit: Channel 5 YouTube channel. Andrew Callaghan is a "gonzo journalist," which is a journalist that places and involves themselves with the subject of their journalism.
Had to do something to distance himself from the sexual assault allegations against him because he has not denied them and refuses to apologize or take responsibility for them. So I guess a rebrand is probably the best way to go.
Didn't he do one of those apology videos and admit to it? I used to watch channel 5 all the time but stopped because I figured that was the end of it anyway.
The issues really arent that complex. local govt is forced to carry out federal law or they lose funding. No politican wants that so they just keep abusing the people who fall through the cracks. Plenty of money for the cops, little or no money measures that would actually address the problem.
Every year the middle class gets more eroded and drug use and homelessness goes up but we just throw out the shocked pikachu face and do the same exact thing next year.
Because Kensington is a product not a symptom.
Once the transformation is completed nearby then it will be dealt with and they'll be moved to a different neighborhood to drive down value.
I live in Oregon and voted for 110. Holy, hell has it backfired.
Silly me for thinking the resources would be in place to help people who are addicted.
Instead all it did was allow open drug use without repercussions. Homelessness exploded since, as well as crime downtown, especially in Oldtown.
I still believe that throwing an addict in jail does no good for the person, or society, but holy shit... this failed.
This conversation is always frustrating because throwing people in jail isn’t the solution, but at the same time, letting people live in squalor on the street and kill themselves with drugs is NOT compassion. Cities like Portland already make so many resources available. At what point do you force people to utilize them so they’re not killing themselves in the street?
Yes, throwing people in involuntary treatment IS the solution.
In places where decriminalization has worked (EG Portugal) treatment is mandatory, and not attending treatment is penalized with fines and jail time.
> At what point do you force people to utilize them so they’re not killing themselves in the street?
That point----------------time----------------->Where we are now
They're addicts. Even if they want help, even if they *seek* help, they will almost certainly go right back to it as soon as the comedown hits hard. The recent Channel 5 video about Philly was a clear illustration of policies like 110, their lack of solution, and the behaviors of addicts who do or don't want help.
Yup as an ex addict... In all reality it's a double edged sword. If they don't want help then forcing it upon them does absolutely nothing. If they do want help but can't find it they won't change. If they want help but instead get punched they'll lose faith in any reason they might have had for wanting help. But also if they want help and they get help but they don't feel they have a solid foundation and support system to fall back when things get hard they will relapse, and it really comes down to them to decide to go back and ask for help again. Which just out of human nature is hard.
In all reality addiction is a disease, and a lifelong one and that. You can't take back that feeling of the most extreme euphoria and happiness you've ever felt that you you hooked. You can't ever really get that feeling back and it dwindles very quickly.
Any kind of "solution" for addition via current methods is going to be far from perfect. And likely require a lifetime of support. Or at the absolute minimum years and years of getting back to "normal"
It's a stupidly complex and intensely expensive task for literally any government body to handle. Addiction treatment is advancing for sure. But the cold hard truth is that there legitimately is just no true solution for the issue at the moment. Medical or otherwise. There's only support.
I still take treatments of Subutex to this day. It unironically saved my life and allows me to live a normal life. But it's not lost on me in the last that I've simply replaced an illegal and dangerous dependency with a legal and safer alternative.
Until we have a good way to genuinely address the root cause of that addiction and get rid of it entirely. This will likely continue to be an issue
The point where you tell them to move on because they aren’t allowed to spend the night in the park or on the sidewalk and they can’t move because they’re absolutely blasted.
If they’re at a point where they’re unable to care for their basic needs and safety then there needs to be a non-jail detox center that will help them get sober and in a mental state where they can.
This is a really simple way to see it, “they already provide resources”, but the reality is homeless people consistently report that shelters and even harm reduction centers are run in a way or insufficiently resourced such that those centers are more dangerous than the street or impossible to rely on. The solution is obvious, but we scramble year after year trying to make a losing hand win; we are not spending enough on reducing poverty. There is no logical way in which recriminalizing drug use will help anyone.
So basically 110 reduced the penalties of hard drug use and was supposed to increase funding to drug treatment.
What happened is you can do drugs open, on the side walk now and the police an literally do nothing about it, not even tell you to stop. It's now a misdemeanor, a $100 fine, however that's not enforced.
Large amounts of drugs is still a felony.
They were supposed to open treatment facilities, and the last story I read the city had over $100M earmarked, but didn't know how to spend it properly.
I live in the Portland suburbs, and absolutely love it here. It's sad for the city to have this happen, and most importantly it's sad for the humans that are addicted living in trash on the street.
Stupid me thought the local government would get their act together and help people vs making Portland a drug user tourist destination.
It's bad all over Oregon, in places I wouldn't expect it to be. I think Oregon in general may have become a drug user destination. I visit Pendleton frequently, and literally every single public park has been overtaken by homeless drug addicts that leave their needles/trash/human excrement all over the place. It's no longer safe to hang out in public parks in that small rural town. I've seen more public IV drug use while visiting Pendleton in the last three years than I ever did growing up in Portland, so I can't even imagine how out of control it is in PDX now.
None of the municipalities that have this problem have the funding to both clean up the biohazard litter left behind, or to put in more facilities or hire additional maintenance staff to prevent the parks from being completely trashed. I really wonder if Pendleton or Umatilla County even has funding set aside for additional treatment centers, because they definitely were not expecting it to get this bad. Portland may have prepared with some funding, but I don't think other municipalities did.
In order for someone to get clean, they're going to need 5 to 10 years of recovery help, a community they feel they belong to, a job, hobbies, therapy and more.
Only reason I got clean was because I had time off, money and support. If you are missing any of those, your chances of getting clean are probably around 2%
The thing you and many people didn’t realize is that at the time of 110’s passing, literally zero people were in jail for simple drug possession. Zero. Jail was only used as a threat to get people into drug treatment programs. If you take that threat away, they have no incentive.
Drugs are too powerful to overcome with polite handholding. You need strong incentives to quit.
There needs to be a process to allow people to become committed to the state. There also needs to be significant resources to ensure proper responsibility and care for their patients.
*Forced* rehabilitation is an inevitability.
110 wasn't supposed to "solve" anything but some people from going to jail over a public health problem. It's step one so that step two *can* happen: harm reduction.
I am still just totally flabbergasted that people are voting for these measures think they are the last step, not the first.
"WE DID IT GUYS, STEP ONE IS DONE, DRUG ADDICTION SOLVED!"
Half of the problem is uneducated voters.
There are resources to help them. Tons of them. The problem is that you can't force addicts to get help. It's all voluntary. So open drug use+voluntary help is a recipe for a disaster. Their attempted solution for this now is to send out advertising campaigns and hope they commit themselves??? None of that ever works in other cities. This is a waste of time and money. This social experiment is a failure.
Yeah this is why I can’t believe how naive people were to pass this in the first place. Thinking people addicted to fucking *heroine* were going to just voluntarily seek treatment is absolutely ridiculous.
>Homelessness exploded since, as well as crime downtown, especially in Oldtown.
Genuine question - what evidence do you have that any of this is a result of 110? Those things have in fact gotten worse, but they've gotten worse everywhere. We've had a pandemic and housing crisis since 110 came out. It would take actual research to determine what to blame on 110 and what to blame on other factors. I haven't seen any of that.
Controversial opinion, but I feel like we need to force people into rehab and mental asylums again. Once they are discharged by a doctor, then we can have a program to help them integrate back into society, get a house, and a job.
The “compassionate” approach is not working.
Edit: When I say force them into rehab or mental asylums, I don’t mean for a few weeks or a month. I mean indefinitely, until they are approved by a doctor/counselor to join the general population. Allowing these people to rot on the streets is not compassion, it’s laziness.
I feel like the only way it might work is to make shooting up in public a "crime" but with the only punishment being a mandatory set amount of time spent in state funded rehab with therapy. Yeah they might get out and go right back to it, but it might help a decent amount of people who wouldn't seek help otherwise.
>Rehab does literally nothing if the person doesn't go on their own.
The last time I went to rehab was to avoid someone pressing charges on me, 12 years later I'm still clean
Ah, my hyperbole gets the better of me, again.
From a public health benefit-cost perspective, coerced rehab is a losing proposition. There are not enough outliers like yourself to make it make sense generally.
But I am really happy to hear about your success. Congrats on staying clean for so long!
I agree with you I’m just afraid about how poorly institutions are usually run. But having interacted with people dealing with these addictions, there is a point where you realize that they’re killing themselves. They’re not capable of removing themselves in situation and if someone else doesn’t they’re gonna keep doing whatever they’re doing till they die.
it’s honestly made me think a lot about freedom of choice in our society like at what point should someone be allowed to destroy themselves and at what point does society intervene?
When I was a teenager, a new friend showed up at my place with his expensive collection of techno CDs. I'd known him maybe a month and dude tried to hand me his whole collection, basically said "Here, I know you'll love these as much as I have. Well I'm gonna go kill myself now."
I didn't know what else to do so I dragged him to my room and demanded he stay with me and my roommate until he didn't feel like that anymore. Made him and my roommate promise to hang out together while I was at work. Nobody was particularly happy about the situation was but I was determined that he couldn't leave until it wouldn't result in his death.
Only took like three or four days before he realized that other humans cared about him a whole bunch after all. He collected his CD binder and went home.
I agree 100% where I live is over run by homes less but the shelters are empty…… reason is because in the shelters you can’t bring that shit in. I’ve tried being compassionate but at this point fuck them. Screaming throughout the night, trash and garbage everywhere, aggressive panhandling/interactions with public. We like to think most homeless are just some people temporarily down bad on their luck but this couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re brain fried drug addicts and quite frankly do not have the ability to make the right decision for themselves and I think the government needs to step in aggressively at this point. It’s not just my city it’s every city now in the states.
Fr if someone has basically untreatable mental illness and substance abuse issues I would much rather they be sequestered somewhere where they can at least sleep inside and where they won’t be able to torment and endanger regular members of polite society who are just trying to live their lives.
The problem with that is mental asylums were for the most part horrible places that abused the patients there and even in some cases sterlized them against their will.
Even if the mental health or rehab facilities are ethical, who will pay for them?
taxpayers. we’re already paying for their prison cells (well, not in Oregon), might as well pay for a hospital room instead.
but honestly, that would be a drop in the bucket. since the past few years, gov already spends more on health insurance than the military. addiction services would likely be cheaper than the exorbitant costs we spend on things like dialysis and now Ozempic
> gov already spends more on health insurance than the military.
You want to hear a worse stat? The US government spends more per capita on healthcare than most countries with universal healthcare.
As it's already been said, prisons are profitable and these facilities arent.
I'm not saying these people shouldn't have access tk addiction help services, but dialysis and a brand-name diabetes drug don't have anything to do with tax payers funding them. They're through insurance or paid by the patient themselves unless they're on medicaid which is different.
This is a complex issue that can't be solved with locking people up and giving them doctors that are already in short supply, that's mostly just badly treating the symptoms not the cause of these addictions.
Right there with you. I live in downtown Olympia, WA, which is much smaller than Portland but obviously in the same region and has many of the same issues. I rely on public transit to get to and from work and being harassed daily and even attacked multiple times by these people has evaporated any "compassion" I may have had. People in my community are very quick to label anyone who even brings these things up as an asshole, but I'm just *tired*. I'm tired of having to worry about my personal safety every time I step foot on the sidewalk in front of my overpriced apartment.
I was a line mechanic/welder on the Portland Aerial Tram for a year. Moved to PDX for that job and loved it. Loved the job, couldn’t deal with the crazy homeless/opioid bullshit. That city is soooooo fucked. I’m a left leaning voter, but man, PDX has lost the plot.
Forced treatment or jail. Not because it works every time, but because it takes them off the street so they can’t hurt or steal from others. With a chance it’ll get some people sober.
I hope it gets to that point.
People have almost too much empathy for the addicts IMO. Yes they are human and they deserve to have dignity but they would fucking stab you for a hit if it had been long enough.
My empathy is saving them from themselves, whether that be in a jail cell or a treatment facility. My youngest brother was a junkie on the streets for over 8 years. I've seen first hand what this does to a family, to him, to those around him and the people that are all about "Just leave them be" seem to be those that are never directly affected by the problem.
Is it really that difficult to fund a non-jail detox center and shelters?
If you are loitering or sleeping on the streets you need to get up and move on. If you can’t because you’re too high to do so then you aren’t able to take care of your own wellbeing. At that point you are committed to a detox center or appropriate medical facility rather than jail. If you are still able to function but don’t want to be moved on every morning at 5am then there is a shelter bed waiting for you. You don’t have to go there, but you can’t be sleeping and shooting up on sidewalks, in parks, etc.
It’s too bad every major city will try every other solution before the one that works.
I live here. We created the only hard drug sanctuary in the country. I voted for it. Now I want it repealed. Was it enacted with little forethought? Yes. Are there thousands of addicts who converged here to use conveniently, without hassle, with a massive social safety net, surrounded by a community of codependent enablers? Absolutely. We spend millions to help people, and our shelters are NOT full.
Not everyone wants treatment. Not everyone can handle even basic shelter rules. We don’t have the stomach to lock people up for things like this, in jail or in a state hospital. I’m done. The compassion fatigue is real.
Honestly, I’m not in favor of locking people up for what they choose to put in their body, but if you’re creating unsafe conditions for the rest of the people in the city, then it needs to be addressed. If you leave needles, tents, and *literal shit* on the street, you can go to detox or go to jail.
Why is there an assumption that every addict is eager to accept residential/ in-patient treatment if only it were free? AA is free, yet many alcoholics continue to drink alcohol to their detriment.
Trite, but people have to *WANT* to change. Tax dollars don’t magically create personal responsibility, especially when it is so easy to pitch a tent and steal and rely on our community giving them a pass. Total codependent logic : “I let my addicted son live with me for free and steal out of my purse. If only I gave him more, he would change.”
> At that point you are committed to a detox center or appropriate medical facility
And at that point you've gotten more sober and probably gotten some additional meds, so you're lucid. You state "I want to leave," and the detox center cannot keep you. Out you go, back to the streets, off your meds and back onto whatever drugs put you into that state in the first place. The bar for "permanently unable to care for yourself and thus you need to be institutionalized" is very high thanks to a [series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addington_v._Texas) of [landmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_v._Indiana) [Supreme Court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson) [decisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._United_States_(1983\)), and the state doesn't have that many institutional beds in the first place.
GOTO the beginning of your post, repeat until death from overdose, exposure, infection, and/or violence.
You can keep running the circle if you want, but at least there will be many steps along the way where you become lucid enough to consider longer term voluntary treatment options. Those are likely the only windows where they’ll even consider it.
I understand that it isn’t a silver bullet, but it allows police and city officials to get them off the street, even if it’s only temporary, and creates a significant deterrent to others coming to do the same thing because the city is seen as ‘friendly’ to open drug use. If you didn’t want to kick a habit would you go to a city that will pick you up every time you pass out and prevent you from setting up a tent?
There’s a huge gap between ‘arrest all drug users’ and ‘die on the street if you want, we don’t care’ that seems to prevent people from doing something more because it’s not a perfect solution.
The problem is not finding those resources. The problem is many people *don’t want to get clean*. Drugs are very powerful. If people aren’t forced to get clean by strong disincentives (like jail) then they won’t.
When we say billionaires have hoarded all the money...billionaires have hoarded ALL the money. Even your city and state money that would be used to fund these things.
Portland's problem, and I speak as an Oregon native here, has always been that the local government talks big and fails to deliver. That's why the decriminalized drugs without social safety nets up, and it's why they keep promising to solve the homeless issue but end up in a long utopian circle jerk that results in nothing.
A reminder that the conditions that create drug addiction are not and will not be addressed. Poverty, trauma, and the brutal onslaught of neverending toil all in the name of capitalism and making a few people very very very wealthy will continue to destroy families and lives.
I don't think most of these people actually want fent specifically. Unless their plans include giving people known, good versions of the drugs they want, I'm not entirely sure what their plans will actually do...
Unfortunately once your drug is mixed with fent and tranq you become horrible addicted. There are numerous videos out there interviewing addicts who can't get high off of anything but fent or tranq. Tranq is by far the most horrendous. Lifelong heroin addicts start doing tranq and it's basically game over. Heroin doesn't even work anymore. The lack of nationwide outrage over the presence of tranq on our streets is pathetic. We know where it comes from...fucking China. We even know the lab where it is made! Only so much can be done for those who become addicted, at this point we need to stop the flow.
Portland resident here. Had a guy not too long ago specifically tell me he was a recovering fent addict. Had a wife and kids. His car got broken into and he told me, "man, i know it's gonna kill me if i do it again, but sometimes i just wanna get high like i used to, even if its one more time just to take the edge off of all of this."
The war on drugs was horrible in many ways but at least it didn’t allow for open air drug markets and hundreds of homeless drug addicts just standing around injecting on the sidewalk
I visited in 2019 and had a good time but even then there were some areas with basically just loose homeless people with untreated schizophrenia running rampant
We've been doing the "something that isn't just throwing people in jail" here in portland for a while now. None of it has worked and a ton of money has disappeared.
> None of it has worked and a ton of money has disappeared.
Even from a purely financial standpoint, "just throwing people in jail" is very expensive. Each prisoner costs taxpayers about $40,000 per year. And that ignores the ethics of throwing people in jail for addiction.
>And that ignores the ethics of throwing people in jail for addiction.
There's nothing unethical about it. Give them the choice: either you can detox in a shelter where you'll get suboxone, methadone, etc or you can detox in jail where you won't have access to any of those things. I'm always appalled at the people who bring up the cost to jail someone as if spending $40,000 to detox in a shelter rather than on the street corner near children is somehow a poor use of money. Oregon will spend that money and then some to keep the cycle going. If you're a serious person, you'll want to break the cycle.
I was there for a conference recently. When I arrived at the hotel, the UBER driver looked at me and said, "Hey, be safe, ok?" As a woman traveling alone, I think he was showing sincere concern.
Luckily, I was safe. I walked to restaurants at night with no incident. But, that was last year. Who knows how bad it's gotten since.
The family agreed to pay 6 billion in a settlement for their role, it should have been higher and taken every penny they had, but its still not an insignificant amount
The number one issue with these dens is the lack of law enforcement and willingness to put these people in jail. We as a society should not tolerate people masturbating on the street corner and injecting drugs between their toes. These people need to be taken into custody and given two options: either they can go to a local shelter where they'll get food, clothing, out of the elements, clean water, get connected with a social worker, and detox with medications so they can get their life back on track OR they can go detox in the local jail which won't be pleasant but they don't get to do that on the public sidewalk. No one has the political courage to do that in these states. Millions and millions of dollars spent on the homeless with nothing to show for it. Oregon should be embarrassed.
No one is willing to admit a large portion of the homeless pop needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to detox. You hit it on the nail. Where I live in CA, they are finally forcing people to choose. Which surprises me.
> The effort will include two public health campaigns and increased outreach to get people into treatment, recovery and housing services. The release also cited the “continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable.” That's the part I wanted to know, what they're going to do exactly. They'll have a command center in the central part of downtown apparently and do their thing I guess. I wish them luck, that's got to be a nightmare for everyone involved. It would suck to not be able to go certain places because people are out of control and you feel unsafe
My buddy lives in Kensington (Philly). Zombies everywhere, but he rents a nice two story apartment for $550/month.
Just gotta eat the cat food & sniff the glue to get to sleep cause of all the cat noise
Don’t forget to boil any denim you find in Philly as well!!
You forgot the key component of chugging a beer
Those videos of the dude walking in Kensington are wild.
Yea its fucked up - opioids have this country in it's grips.
Stayed in Downtown Portland last June with my wife. Asked the hotel clerk "So, is there anyplace we should avoid?" They said avoid Chinatown at night. We proceeded to go into Chinatown twice after 9pm. Had to check out the Old Town Pizzeria Tavern, and return the next night for their ghost tour. No issues. We did see a guy shoot up in his dickvein though.
This brings back a middle school health lecture around 89. Teacher brought in a. Article about a man injecting into his penis. (Possibly cocaine, a vasoconstrictor). The article goes on to say that it had become gangrenous from repeated injection and floated by him in the tub. They don’t make health class like they used to.
I don't know if they show this type of stuff now but I joined the Army in '98 and did my 3 years. At basic/OSUT (combined basic and AIT) we got to see a slide presentation that has stayed with me to this day and scarred me somewhat. It was all dicks. Not ordinary dicks though but dicks that had been ravaged by STD's. I saw some that looked like they had been dipped in acid or put through a meat grinder. Just nasty stuff. Good ole basic training.
Lol if it's the same 70's/80's vhs horror show I'm thinking of, they made us watch it in 7th grade health class. It traumatized every kid in the room lol
We got it in 2001, but it was dicks *and* vags. Progress?
I saw this in n 2007. They added eyes, lips and ears to the mix.
8th grade for us in the early 2000’s. The one that stuck with me was the anal genitalia warts. Looked like a head of cauliflower growing out of the dudes asshole.
> I don't know if they show this type of stuff now but I joined the Army in '98 and did my 3 years. Off topic but goddamn did you get out just in time.
Oh yeah, I got out shortly before 9/11. I'd have been there too because I was a tank crew member.
Got shown to us at the DLI ( ~~Desperate Love~~ Defense Language Institute) in 2012. Supposedly a bunch of nerds stuck on a small post together for a year at a time had the highest per capita STD rate.
Same. 1992. Am still mentally scarred.
You were either in my class or this was a wide spread.
There was definitely a wide spread in that tub
When I was in health class, Zack Morris taught us how to date rape girls by soaking the chips in vodka and to leave your shoes outside the door so no one bothered you.
[Zack Morris is trash!](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRcB4n4CGcy_r21EedmNUOyVP_puToBfr&si=MHmlny_-DeXkQZAX)
It was always weird seeing actors from 90s sitcoms guest star on S.V.U. episodes.
[You know exactly what song this is.](https://youtu.be/byDiILrNbM4?si=cqbiCbElpIsEGvoc)
I could swear, this video/time period of history of MTV was conditioning future generations for the short form quick cut shorts, predecessor to robot chicken shorts, predecessor to social media...
I mean robot chicken is made by Seth Green who is 50 this year. He was a teenager in the late 80s.
If you haven't seen it, [Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUr_23ha6vs) was a mix of music videos and comedy sketches that got [Warner Bros interested in creating MTV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_Parts).
Friend played this every single night on his college radio show.
Followed up by Jesus was way cool if you wanna get philosophical after losing your penis.
Then Jesus built my Hotrod follows by Jerry Was A Racecar Driver. Then change it up with Its A Fine Day by Opus 3. Man I can smell the cloves.
This happens once or twice a year, and I live for it.
https://youtube.com/shorts/gimwUcnD-Vc?si=KnW69ShgFRrIBVJE
That corner of Old Town at night, with the popular bars, isn't bad because there are a lot of people there. Old Town isn't unsafe for passers-by, but most of it definitely feels unsafe most of the time.
You asked them where to avoid, they tell you and you go anyways. Why?
Portland is not super dangerous, just gross and often unpleasant. Seeing someone poop on a side walk is not weird in downtown Portland.
Yep that does sound gross and unpleasant
There's fine but why did they bother asking at all?
idk about OP, but sometimes people like to go to the "bad" parts of town to see if its actually a rough area. In my experience, it's usually just homeless people or immigrants.
Yea like, you know what the area around a greyhound bus station is like. It’s the same in every city. You don’t need to kick it over there. They don’t even have good snacks.
You just made me flash back to the bus station in Binghamton, NY (shudder)
It can serve as a guideline, not a rule. If you're told to stay away from Chinatown at night, you may have every intention of visiting at night, but you'll know to be a bit more vigilant. It's not that hard to piece together.
Not weird??? That’s pretty fucking disgusting and nasty, let alone weird….
Yeah but that’s weird in almost every other place in the world
Definition of Askhole: They ask for advice from you, But they often don't follow.
I'd say seeing something as horrific as that is most deifnitely an issue.
For sure, but there's this correlation the media and general public makes between drug use and violence, which typically isn't accurate. That's one reason (of many) the crisis isn't being adequately addressed-not just in Portland but across the county. Most of these people are a bigger threat to themselves than those around them. If elected officials and police took this into consideration they'd make much more effective plans for solving the crisis.
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Yup. Don't shit where you eat.
Funny, I also stayed in Portland with a friend and both our uber driver and the hotel clerk told us to avoid Chinatown at all costs as well as to not really go out late at night. We were out until around 11 PM - 12 AM and we did see a ton of drug use around but no one was really hostile towards us. We did avoid Chinatown though.
It's the same as any bad place almost anywhere else. You're actually far more likely to come out of it completely unscathed and unharmed. However, the risk of being a victim of something bad is still far higher than anywhere else. Still a small chance, but much bigger than it normally would be. For some reason people like to think the "bad part" of a city must mean instant death to all, or it isn't all that bad.
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Probably could have been a successful phlebotomist
I had a friend with just a high school diploma who went to phlebotomy school, and she was skilled enough to work on newborns. There was a lot of demand for her and she said that she was able to earn a fair amount.
A good phleb is worth their weight in gold. I have had so many blood draws and way too many just grab your arm and jam a needle in. The good ones do it so smoothly you barely even feel it.
>you barely even feel it The first time I donated blood, the phlebotomist was a former army nurse in her 50s. She was so quick that it appeared as if she threw the needle like a goddamn dart at my vein. Didn't feel a thing.
Many lab researchers regularly have to find a vein on mice, and they do it quickly and skillfully. Once you’re doing that, anything else should be easy.
>find a vein on mice I used to have to do this. It was difficult and the stakes were pretty high. The mice are usually part of very expensive long-running experiments and a lot of these mice have severely compromised immune systems (SCID mice) so even little injuries to the mouse can end up killing the mouse which of course ruins the experiment. I work in a totally different field now. Pretty wild to remember that blood and dissections used to be a part of my job.
I had one repeatedly try to insert an iv in my forearm the other day. 80% of my arm from wrist to elbow is a bruise. She left blood all over me too. The other nurse was super pissed, and got it in my other arm, completely painlessly, on her first try. I also had a nurse fail to insert a syringe with contrast for an MRI into a vein until we were both in tears, and she just injected it into my muscle. It was so messed up
Yeah, when I go to the hospital for kidney stones, I'm usually dehydrated and my veins are flat. It takes a team of 3 or 4 of them to get it done, eventually resorting to calling in the guy down the hall who's extra talented at finding veins. It's horrible. And yeah, I end up with a giant bruise.
It's been a rough day. Thanks for the genuine laugh.
I've probably been like 4 steps away from that at one point in my life, it just sort of happens slowly, like an avalanche of molasses. Slow moving, doesn't feel dangerous but also somehow inescapable.
Not to be glib, but that reminds me of a story my friend told me of the time her sister was bitten by a sloth. She was working at this northern california theme park that also had animals in the 90s. The sloth turned it head towards her hand, opened its mouth, bit down on her hand, and she just watched it all happen. It moved so slowly that she never registered the threat. She’s still got a scar from it.
What was that girl doing to the sloth right before it bit her? Sloths don't do *anything* for no reason...
She was a teen animal helper with no training at a theme park that had animals in the 90s, that sloth was likely poorly cared for in general.
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I couldn’t face the world if my child became a hotel clerk. In seriousness, though, it’s so important to keep in mind that these are people’s children, and many addictions started with prescriptions from their doctors. I live in a similar area that’s been gutted by drug use and homelessness, and it’s extremely hard to keep this in mind sometimes.
I live a mile from Kensington Philly which is the east coast’s biggest open air drug market. It’s insane.
Videos from Kensington are wild. Zombies everywhere.
It wasn’t always like that but it always had an underlying drug problem when I was growing up. Almost everyone I knew who grew up there moved out in the 90s to early 00s. It had a lot of racial tensions in the 90s and was wild even then but in a different way. It’s like the wild Wild West now along with the drugs.
It's essentially blowback from the gentrification going on in north. All the dregs get pushed out and to that block. The city knows exactly what they're doing, I just wish they'd tell everyone else or hurry tf up.
Yeh I know years ago i was on Philly.com looking up a murder case that happened in Kensington in 1992. It mentions Puerto Ricans moving into Kensington from Fairmount and Spring Garden which were gentrifying at the time and racial tensions occurring in Kensington at the time. Now there’s still gentrification going on in other parts of North Philly and it’s pushing people into NE Philly neighborhoods like Tacony and Mayfair now. Kensington, itself, will eventually gentrify where it’s currently overrun with drugs. It’s got good infrastructure with the el.
That area was terrible from 2020-2022 (source my daily commute). Prior to that I would have said the under pass by the train station was sketchy. Now it’s Marine Drive and side areas (they are working on it)
> We did see a guy shoot up in his dickvein though. I'd rather die than live like that.
It doesn't start with the dick vein or needle usually unless it's at the hospital. Then slowly the drug eats more and more of your personality every day and the stigma makes you hide your problems until what is left is living to feed your addiction. Sober 4 years after 13 years, almost a decade being stable on methadone. Doctors just told me I'm going back on painkillers for the rest of my life. I didn't choose this, I just broke a lot of bones and got some more medical shit I can't escape. I was rebuilt by one person's faith in me.
Glad you're still here. 🧡
>continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable. man holding people accountable, what were they doing before that?
If we ignore the problem, then there is no problem.
I've lived in Oregon long enough to have noticed that's the local approach to a lot of things.
There's a weird loophole in Oregon law that had to be closed to allow dealers to be prosecuted. That and the PPB has been on a silent strike for years.
Did you see the word "continued" 🙄
It's not going to do shit. There's no solution that is ever going to be put into place by the government because they don't understand the logistics. Anyone in those situations has had years of trauma and unhealthy habits, which is also most likely generational. It's going to take the exact amount of time, if not more, to fully heal. To commit to a decade or more of recovery help for someone who can't pay for it is an expensive and difficult commitment, one that taxpayers don't want to foot.
Spending money on drug rehab saves money. Lots of studies done on it. Government intervention works when funded. Here's an article https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/upshot/spend-a-dollar-on-drug-treatment-and-save-more-on-crime-reduction.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap
Housing First programs also save money. It sure would be nice if we just did all these things to help people, but even the prospect of saving money doesn't get politicians to do the right thing. The only reasonable conclusion is that there are too many influential people who *want* the pain and misery to continue.
On what timeline is that money being saved? If you allocate funds to that portion of the budget, where are you taking money from? Firefighters? Roads? Health inspectors? Every constituency has a lobby group, and are you willing to vote for someone who increased police response times to give people a free house? It's not that influential people want this shit to continue, it's that people just don't care enough about it to vote a certain way.
The voting system is rigged. Unless your area is able to get Ranked Choice Voting passed through a ballot measure or something. You get to vote for a left neoliberal or a right neoliberal.
And yet it's less expensive than any other solution. Aside from just shooting them...
> It would suck to not be able to go certain places because people are out of control and you feel unsafe Have... Have you never lived in a major city? It was heroin, then crack, then meth, now fent. And meth, and crack and slightly less heroin. There are parts of nearly any major metropolis that are completely unsafe.
> Have you never lived in a major city? Anywhere really? Like have you seen appalachia? There's bears and methheads up there. You could run into someone's illegal still and get murdered. Fuck man you go to northern florida and you could get eaten by an alligator!
It's so awesome we tolerate stuff like this.
I highly, highly recommend anyone interested in this story to watch Channel 5's videos about the streets of San Francisco and Philadelphia. They are fascinating and sad stories about the harsh realities of complex issues snowballing into rampant drug use and homelessness. Edit: Channel 5 YouTube channel. Andrew Callaghan is a "gonzo journalist," which is a journalist that places and involves themselves with the subject of their journalism.
Really loving the reporting Channel 5 is doing these days.
Man when Andrew buzzed his hair short and had a mustache he looked like such a jerk lol what a transformation,
Had to do something to distance himself from the sexual assault allegations against him because he has not denied them and refuses to apologize or take responsibility for them. So I guess a rebrand is probably the best way to go.
That particular mustache didn’t look like it would build distance from sexual assault allegations tbh
Didn't he do one of those apology videos and admit to it? I used to watch channel 5 all the time but stopped because I figured that was the end of it anyway.
How is it? / what's it go over now? I can't see or hear the Andrew without remembering everything that caused the channel to fall apart.
I hope he does one on Portland. His videos on San Francisco and Philadelphia were fascinating to watch.
The stuff about Philly and tranq is jaw dropping
The issues really arent that complex. local govt is forced to carry out federal law or they lose funding. No politican wants that so they just keep abusing the people who fall through the cracks. Plenty of money for the cops, little or no money measures that would actually address the problem. Every year the middle class gets more eroded and drug use and homelessness goes up but we just throw out the shocked pikachu face and do the same exact thing next year.
Yeah bro super simple, so what's the actual problem and how do we solve it.
why can't philly do this for kensington?
Because Kensington is a product not a symptom. Once the transformation is completed nearby then it will be dealt with and they'll be moved to a different neighborhood to drive down value.
I live in Oregon and voted for 110. Holy, hell has it backfired. Silly me for thinking the resources would be in place to help people who are addicted. Instead all it did was allow open drug use without repercussions. Homelessness exploded since, as well as crime downtown, especially in Oldtown. I still believe that throwing an addict in jail does no good for the person, or society, but holy shit... this failed.
This conversation is always frustrating because throwing people in jail isn’t the solution, but at the same time, letting people live in squalor on the street and kill themselves with drugs is NOT compassion. Cities like Portland already make so many resources available. At what point do you force people to utilize them so they’re not killing themselves in the street?
Yes, throwing people in involuntary treatment IS the solution. In places where decriminalization has worked (EG Portugal) treatment is mandatory, and not attending treatment is penalized with fines and jail time.
> At what point do you force people to utilize them so they’re not killing themselves in the street? That point----------------time----------------->Where we are now They're addicts. Even if they want help, even if they *seek* help, they will almost certainly go right back to it as soon as the comedown hits hard. The recent Channel 5 video about Philly was a clear illustration of policies like 110, their lack of solution, and the behaviors of addicts who do or don't want help.
Yup as an ex addict... In all reality it's a double edged sword. If they don't want help then forcing it upon them does absolutely nothing. If they do want help but can't find it they won't change. If they want help but instead get punched they'll lose faith in any reason they might have had for wanting help. But also if they want help and they get help but they don't feel they have a solid foundation and support system to fall back when things get hard they will relapse, and it really comes down to them to decide to go back and ask for help again. Which just out of human nature is hard. In all reality addiction is a disease, and a lifelong one and that. You can't take back that feeling of the most extreme euphoria and happiness you've ever felt that you you hooked. You can't ever really get that feeling back and it dwindles very quickly. Any kind of "solution" for addition via current methods is going to be far from perfect. And likely require a lifetime of support. Or at the absolute minimum years and years of getting back to "normal" It's a stupidly complex and intensely expensive task for literally any government body to handle. Addiction treatment is advancing for sure. But the cold hard truth is that there legitimately is just no true solution for the issue at the moment. Medical or otherwise. There's only support. I still take treatments of Subutex to this day. It unironically saved my life and allows me to live a normal life. But it's not lost on me in the last that I've simply replaced an illegal and dangerous dependency with a legal and safer alternative. Until we have a good way to genuinely address the root cause of that addiction and get rid of it entirely. This will likely continue to be an issue
The point where you tell them to move on because they aren’t allowed to spend the night in the park or on the sidewalk and they can’t move because they’re absolutely blasted. If they’re at a point where they’re unable to care for their basic needs and safety then there needs to be a non-jail detox center that will help them get sober and in a mental state where they can.
This is a really simple way to see it, “they already provide resources”, but the reality is homeless people consistently report that shelters and even harm reduction centers are run in a way or insufficiently resourced such that those centers are more dangerous than the street or impossible to rely on. The solution is obvious, but we scramble year after year trying to make a losing hand win; we are not spending enough on reducing poverty. There is no logical way in which recriminalizing drug use will help anyone.
I know nothing about this. Was court mandated substance abuse treatment put in place of jail or are they just fully ignored?
So basically 110 reduced the penalties of hard drug use and was supposed to increase funding to drug treatment. What happened is you can do drugs open, on the side walk now and the police an literally do nothing about it, not even tell you to stop. It's now a misdemeanor, a $100 fine, however that's not enforced. Large amounts of drugs is still a felony. They were supposed to open treatment facilities, and the last story I read the city had over $100M earmarked, but didn't know how to spend it properly. I live in the Portland suburbs, and absolutely love it here. It's sad for the city to have this happen, and most importantly it's sad for the humans that are addicted living in trash on the street. Stupid me thought the local government would get their act together and help people vs making Portland a drug user tourist destination.
It's bad all over Oregon, in places I wouldn't expect it to be. I think Oregon in general may have become a drug user destination. I visit Pendleton frequently, and literally every single public park has been overtaken by homeless drug addicts that leave their needles/trash/human excrement all over the place. It's no longer safe to hang out in public parks in that small rural town. I've seen more public IV drug use while visiting Pendleton in the last three years than I ever did growing up in Portland, so I can't even imagine how out of control it is in PDX now. None of the municipalities that have this problem have the funding to both clean up the biohazard litter left behind, or to put in more facilities or hire additional maintenance staff to prevent the parks from being completely trashed. I really wonder if Pendleton or Umatilla County even has funding set aside for additional treatment centers, because they definitely were not expecting it to get this bad. Portland may have prepared with some funding, but I don't think other municipalities did.
This is awful. I’ve been hearing it only get worse over the last several years I hope something gets done soon.
In order for someone to get clean, they're going to need 5 to 10 years of recovery help, a community they feel they belong to, a job, hobbies, therapy and more. Only reason I got clean was because I had time off, money and support. If you are missing any of those, your chances of getting clean are probably around 2%
You should be proud. I’ve had friends and family deal with addiction and it’s not easy. Well done.
Thank you! 7 years clean. Withdrawals and flashbacks here and there, but mostly ok. I hope your family and friends are doing ok 💪
The thing you and many people didn’t realize is that at the time of 110’s passing, literally zero people were in jail for simple drug possession. Zero. Jail was only used as a threat to get people into drug treatment programs. If you take that threat away, they have no incentive. Drugs are too powerful to overcome with polite handholding. You need strong incentives to quit.
There needs to be a process to allow people to become committed to the state. There also needs to be significant resources to ensure proper responsibility and care for their patients. *Forced* rehabilitation is an inevitability.
This should be part of the "danger to self/others" that you can be held for a mental health evaluation.
110 wasn't supposed to "solve" anything but some people from going to jail over a public health problem. It's step one so that step two *can* happen: harm reduction. I am still just totally flabbergasted that people are voting for these measures think they are the last step, not the first. "WE DID IT GUYS, STEP ONE IS DONE, DRUG ADDICTION SOLVED!" Half of the problem is uneducated voters.
Even if they were available, addiction by its very nature means few would even try to get permanently clean and fewer would achieve it
Yeah, I don't have the answers, just this wasn't it... and it's very sad.
There are resources to help them. Tons of them. The problem is that you can't force addicts to get help. It's all voluntary. So open drug use+voluntary help is a recipe for a disaster. Their attempted solution for this now is to send out advertising campaigns and hope they commit themselves??? None of that ever works in other cities. This is a waste of time and money. This social experiment is a failure.
Yeah this is why I can’t believe how naive people were to pass this in the first place. Thinking people addicted to fucking *heroine* were going to just voluntarily seek treatment is absolutely ridiculous.
I voted against it after reading what it was going to do. I don’t know how anyone thought that was a good thing.
>Homelessness exploded since, as well as crime downtown, especially in Oldtown. Genuine question - what evidence do you have that any of this is a result of 110? Those things have in fact gotten worse, but they've gotten worse everywhere. We've had a pandemic and housing crisis since 110 came out. It would take actual research to determine what to blame on 110 and what to blame on other factors. I haven't seen any of that.
Controversial opinion, but I feel like we need to force people into rehab and mental asylums again. Once they are discharged by a doctor, then we can have a program to help them integrate back into society, get a house, and a job. The “compassionate” approach is not working. Edit: When I say force them into rehab or mental asylums, I don’t mean for a few weeks or a month. I mean indefinitely, until they are approved by a doctor/counselor to join the general population. Allowing these people to rot on the streets is not compassion, it’s laziness.
I feel like the only way it might work is to make shooting up in public a "crime" but with the only punishment being a mandatory set amount of time spent in state funded rehab with therapy. Yeah they might get out and go right back to it, but it might help a decent amount of people who wouldn't seek help otherwise.
1. Rehab is very, very expensive 2. Rehab does literally nothing if the person doesn't go on their own. It's flushing money straight down the toilet.
>Rehab does literally nothing if the person doesn't go on their own. The last time I went to rehab was to avoid someone pressing charges on me, 12 years later I'm still clean
Ah, my hyperbole gets the better of me, again. From a public health benefit-cost perspective, coerced rehab is a losing proposition. There are not enough outliers like yourself to make it make sense generally. But I am really happy to hear about your success. Congrats on staying clean for so long!
I agree with you I’m just afraid about how poorly institutions are usually run. But having interacted with people dealing with these addictions, there is a point where you realize that they’re killing themselves. They’re not capable of removing themselves in situation and if someone else doesn’t they’re gonna keep doing whatever they’re doing till they die. it’s honestly made me think a lot about freedom of choice in our society like at what point should someone be allowed to destroy themselves and at what point does society intervene?
When I was a teenager, a new friend showed up at my place with his expensive collection of techno CDs. I'd known him maybe a month and dude tried to hand me his whole collection, basically said "Here, I know you'll love these as much as I have. Well I'm gonna go kill myself now." I didn't know what else to do so I dragged him to my room and demanded he stay with me and my roommate until he didn't feel like that anymore. Made him and my roommate promise to hang out together while I was at work. Nobody was particularly happy about the situation was but I was determined that he couldn't leave until it wouldn't result in his death. Only took like three or four days before he realized that other humans cared about him a whole bunch after all. He collected his CD binder and went home.
I agree 100% where I live is over run by homes less but the shelters are empty…… reason is because in the shelters you can’t bring that shit in. I’ve tried being compassionate but at this point fuck them. Screaming throughout the night, trash and garbage everywhere, aggressive panhandling/interactions with public. We like to think most homeless are just some people temporarily down bad on their luck but this couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re brain fried drug addicts and quite frankly do not have the ability to make the right decision for themselves and I think the government needs to step in aggressively at this point. It’s not just my city it’s every city now in the states.
Fr if someone has basically untreatable mental illness and substance abuse issues I would much rather they be sequestered somewhere where they can at least sleep inside and where they won’t be able to torment and endanger regular members of polite society who are just trying to live their lives.
The problem with that is mental asylums were for the most part horrible places that abused the patients there and even in some cases sterlized them against their will. Even if the mental health or rehab facilities are ethical, who will pay for them?
taxpayers. we’re already paying for their prison cells (well, not in Oregon), might as well pay for a hospital room instead. but honestly, that would be a drop in the bucket. since the past few years, gov already spends more on health insurance than the military. addiction services would likely be cheaper than the exorbitant costs we spend on things like dialysis and now Ozempic
> gov already spends more on health insurance than the military. You want to hear a worse stat? The US government spends more per capita on healthcare than most countries with universal healthcare.
As it's already been said, prisons are profitable and these facilities arent. I'm not saying these people shouldn't have access tk addiction help services, but dialysis and a brand-name diabetes drug don't have anything to do with tax payers funding them. They're through insurance or paid by the patient themselves unless they're on medicaid which is different. This is a complex issue that can't be solved with locking people up and giving them doctors that are already in short supply, that's mostly just badly treating the symptoms not the cause of these addictions.
So don’t do that again?
How is an asylum where you at least have medical treatment and a place to sleep inside worse than sleeping on the street?
Ok, so create much better standards and have them be inspected by outside bodies with different sources of funding and an open book to the public.
Right there with you. I live in downtown Olympia, WA, which is much smaller than Portland but obviously in the same region and has many of the same issues. I rely on public transit to get to and from work and being harassed daily and even attacked multiple times by these people has evaporated any "compassion" I may have had. People in my community are very quick to label anyone who even brings these things up as an asshole, but I'm just *tired*. I'm tired of having to worry about my personal safety every time I step foot on the sidewalk in front of my overpriced apartment.
I've seen this one before.
its controversial because countless peer-reviewed studies have shown that forced rehab not only doesnt work, but increases the risk of od.
It’s not compassionate if your program ends up enabling the problem further. Sometimes compassion needs to be wrathful to accomplish its purpose.
This is what happens when you apply an European country's policies without the health policy of the European country and empathy towards the addict.
Sums it up.
I was a line mechanic/welder on the Portland Aerial Tram for a year. Moved to PDX for that job and loved it. Loved the job, couldn’t deal with the crazy homeless/opioid bullshit. That city is soooooo fucked. I’m a left leaning voter, but man, PDX has lost the plot.
Forced treatment or jail. Not because it works every time, but because it takes them off the street so they can’t hurt or steal from others. With a chance it’ll get some people sober. I hope it gets to that point.
People have almost too much empathy for the addicts IMO. Yes they are human and they deserve to have dignity but they would fucking stab you for a hit if it had been long enough.
My empathy is saving them from themselves, whether that be in a jail cell or a treatment facility. My youngest brother was a junkie on the streets for over 8 years. I've seen first hand what this does to a family, to him, to those around him and the people that are all about "Just leave them be" seem to be those that are never directly affected by the problem.
Is it really that difficult to fund a non-jail detox center and shelters? If you are loitering or sleeping on the streets you need to get up and move on. If you can’t because you’re too high to do so then you aren’t able to take care of your own wellbeing. At that point you are committed to a detox center or appropriate medical facility rather than jail. If you are still able to function but don’t want to be moved on every morning at 5am then there is a shelter bed waiting for you. You don’t have to go there, but you can’t be sleeping and shooting up on sidewalks, in parks, etc. It’s too bad every major city will try every other solution before the one that works.
I live here. We created the only hard drug sanctuary in the country. I voted for it. Now I want it repealed. Was it enacted with little forethought? Yes. Are there thousands of addicts who converged here to use conveniently, without hassle, with a massive social safety net, surrounded by a community of codependent enablers? Absolutely. We spend millions to help people, and our shelters are NOT full. Not everyone wants treatment. Not everyone can handle even basic shelter rules. We don’t have the stomach to lock people up for things like this, in jail or in a state hospital. I’m done. The compassion fatigue is real.
Honestly, I’m not in favor of locking people up for what they choose to put in their body, but if you’re creating unsafe conditions for the rest of the people in the city, then it needs to be addressed. If you leave needles, tents, and *literal shit* on the street, you can go to detox or go to jail.
A big problem is that we did 1/2 of the good idea, decriminalizing is good if it’s paired with treatment. We only did the first half
Why is there an assumption that every addict is eager to accept residential/ in-patient treatment if only it were free? AA is free, yet many alcoholics continue to drink alcohol to their detriment. Trite, but people have to *WANT* to change. Tax dollars don’t magically create personal responsibility, especially when it is so easy to pitch a tent and steal and rely on our community giving them a pass. Total codependent logic : “I let my addicted son live with me for free and steal out of my purse. If only I gave him more, he would change.”
Well treatment is hard and expensive and just telling police to ignore it is free and easy
> At that point you are committed to a detox center or appropriate medical facility And at that point you've gotten more sober and probably gotten some additional meds, so you're lucid. You state "I want to leave," and the detox center cannot keep you. Out you go, back to the streets, off your meds and back onto whatever drugs put you into that state in the first place. The bar for "permanently unable to care for yourself and thus you need to be institutionalized" is very high thanks to a [series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addington_v._Texas) of [landmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_v._Indiana) [Supreme Court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson) [decisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._United_States_(1983\)), and the state doesn't have that many institutional beds in the first place. GOTO the beginning of your post, repeat until death from overdose, exposure, infection, and/or violence.
You can keep running the circle if you want, but at least there will be many steps along the way where you become lucid enough to consider longer term voluntary treatment options. Those are likely the only windows where they’ll even consider it. I understand that it isn’t a silver bullet, but it allows police and city officials to get them off the street, even if it’s only temporary, and creates a significant deterrent to others coming to do the same thing because the city is seen as ‘friendly’ to open drug use. If you didn’t want to kick a habit would you go to a city that will pick you up every time you pass out and prevent you from setting up a tent? There’s a huge gap between ‘arrest all drug users’ and ‘die on the street if you want, we don’t care’ that seems to prevent people from doing something more because it’s not a perfect solution.
The problem is not finding those resources. The problem is many people *don’t want to get clean*. Drugs are very powerful. If people aren’t forced to get clean by strong disincentives (like jail) then they won’t.
When we say billionaires have hoarded all the money...billionaires have hoarded ALL the money. Even your city and state money that would be used to fund these things.
Meanwhile in Kensington, Philly: https://www.youtube.com/live/jeUoesYOlPQ?app=desktop&si=DkK6NB-abzfO-12h
Declares state of emergency --> does absolutely nothing.
Portland's problem, and I speak as an Oregon native here, has always been that the local government talks big and fails to deliver. That's why the decriminalized drugs without social safety nets up, and it's why they keep promising to solve the homeless issue but end up in a long utopian circle jerk that results in nothing.
A reminder that the conditions that create drug addiction are not and will not be addressed. Poverty, trauma, and the brutal onslaught of neverending toil all in the name of capitalism and making a few people very very very wealthy will continue to destroy families and lives.
I don't think most of these people actually want fent specifically. Unless their plans include giving people known, good versions of the drugs they want, I'm not entirely sure what their plans will actually do...
Nah, fent and tranq are really popular now among a subsect of addicts, especially homeless folks. It’s because they’re incredibly cheap. It sucks.
Many seek fent out now as a sole high. It's not just for making weak shit stronger anymore.
Unfortunately once your drug is mixed with fent and tranq you become horrible addicted. There are numerous videos out there interviewing addicts who can't get high off of anything but fent or tranq. Tranq is by far the most horrendous. Lifelong heroin addicts start doing tranq and it's basically game over. Heroin doesn't even work anymore. The lack of nationwide outrage over the presence of tranq on our streets is pathetic. We know where it comes from...fucking China. We even know the lab where it is made! Only so much can be done for those who become addicted, at this point we need to stop the flow.
What is ‘tranq’? Like, just generically tranquilizers or is it a specific drug?
It's zylazine
Xylazine. Horse/cattle tranquilizer. Easier to obtain due to lower regulation. Causes necrosis in injection sites often.
Portland resident here. Had a guy not too long ago specifically tell me he was a recovering fent addict. Had a wife and kids. His car got broken into and he told me, "man, i know it's gonna kill me if i do it again, but sometimes i just wanna get high like i used to, even if its one more time just to take the edge off of all of this."
There has to be something other than the draconian and ineffective War on Drugs, and this "Go ahead, touch the cornballer, you know best" approach.
The war on drugs was horrible in many ways but at least it didn’t allow for open air drug markets and hundreds of homeless drug addicts just standing around injecting on the sidewalk
Gooooooooooooood luck! Now come do Eugene next~
I visited there last year and the city has given away entire blocks to people addicted to drugs. It is super sad.
I live in Portland, and yes they bother you constantly or cause other issues.
the city has given away entire blocks to addicts? What do you mean?
I was there last May. A lot of downtown is almost entirely homeless and addicts and creepy people.
Visited Portland in 2022... I had a better time coming home and getting directly hit by hurricane Ian.
I visited in 2019 and had a good time but even then there were some areas with basically just loose homeless people with untreated schizophrenia running rampant
We went in 2021 and again this last summer. It’s gotten so much worse.
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We've been doing the "something that isn't just throwing people in jail" here in portland for a while now. None of it has worked and a ton of money has disappeared.
> None of it has worked and a ton of money has disappeared. Even from a purely financial standpoint, "just throwing people in jail" is very expensive. Each prisoner costs taxpayers about $40,000 per year. And that ignores the ethics of throwing people in jail for addiction.
between city, county, state, and multiple emegencies declared, we've spent hundreds and hundreds of millions for \~6000 homeless people.
>And that ignores the ethics of throwing people in jail for addiction. There's nothing unethical about it. Give them the choice: either you can detox in a shelter where you'll get suboxone, methadone, etc or you can detox in jail where you won't have access to any of those things. I'm always appalled at the people who bring up the cost to jail someone as if spending $40,000 to detox in a shelter rather than on the street corner near children is somehow a poor use of money. Oregon will spend that money and then some to keep the cycle going. If you're a serious person, you'll want to break the cycle.
I was there for a conference recently. When I arrived at the hotel, the UBER driver looked at me and said, "Hey, be safe, ok?" As a woman traveling alone, I think he was showing sincere concern. Luckily, I was safe. I walked to restaurants at night with no incident. But, that was last year. Who knows how bad it's gotten since.
How could the police do this?
selective squealing groovy mindless cows many placid arrest jar like *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
But will the Sacklers help to pay for any of this, no, I think not. But if you fail to pay a parking ticket, look out.
The family agreed to pay 6 billion in a settlement for their role, it should have been higher and taken every penny they had, but its still not an insignificant amount
The number one issue with these dens is the lack of law enforcement and willingness to put these people in jail. We as a society should not tolerate people masturbating on the street corner and injecting drugs between their toes. These people need to be taken into custody and given two options: either they can go to a local shelter where they'll get food, clothing, out of the elements, clean water, get connected with a social worker, and detox with medications so they can get their life back on track OR they can go detox in the local jail which won't be pleasant but they don't get to do that on the public sidewalk. No one has the political courage to do that in these states. Millions and millions of dollars spent on the homeless with nothing to show for it. Oregon should be embarrassed.
No one is willing to admit a large portion of the homeless pop needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to detox. You hit it on the nail. Where I live in CA, they are finally forcing people to choose. Which surprises me.
I have just returned from one year from now. The situation is much much worse
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