Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Saturday, August 8, 2026 15:24
VIEWED: 10377
PAGE 6 of 13
Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
It sure does - drug addiction is a BEAST. No easy answer.
I know someone who has been addicted to opioids for many years. A tale of great woe and frustration. Once they were hooked you could just see them circling the drain. Everything that was tried only bought them a little more time until that craving took over again. No kind of rehab has worked. No jail time has worked. Getting them jobs and support and they still lie and steal from family to get that high. A lot of people gave up including parents and family. The drug never gives up.
Totally agree, and that's my problem with any effort...for every 50 addicts maybe one or two come back off and stay off.
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Quote:If you're speaking for 'families' you absolutely don't know, couldn't mention a single name from, and wouldn't recognize on the street if they came up to you and said hello ... does that count as being from the 'Narcissist Playbook!' too?
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
Can't get through a single post without trying to speak "for everyone".
Quote:And there you are, speaking for people you don't even know. In fact, you know so little, you don't even know how many.
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
I'm sure the families of the two people who died would say they counted, but then again, YOU ARE A NARCISSIST so no one else counts in your world.
What do you have to say about a person who does that?
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Meanwhile - how dangerous is the drug marijuana? From 2019:
Quote:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marijuana-lethal-dose_n_58f4ec07e4b0b9e
9848d6297
There are no recorded instances of anyone dying from a fatal dose of marijuana alone.
Fatally overdosing on marijuana in its most commonly ingested forms is seemingly impossible. In 1988, a DEA judge argued in favor of rescheduling marijuana in part because of its low harm profile. In his ruling, he wrote that a user would have to ingest somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC contained in a single joint to approach lethal toxicity.
“That’s far more than most people will consume throughout their entire lifetime,” said Jahan Marcu, chief science officer at Americans for Safe Access, an organization that advocates for cannabis as medicine.
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As per Signy's comment about US 'freedom' considerations:
According to NPR, Portugal's program include MANDATORY treatment.
Quote:Wiki says the opposite, that the program focuses on 'harm reduction'; ie reducing STDs and HIV, overdoses, etc.; imposes non-jail penalties, and encourages but doesn't mandate treatment.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/18/524380027/in-portuga
l-drug-use-is-treated-as-a-medical-issue-not-a-crime
Under the 2001 decriminalization law, authored by Goulão, drug dealers are still sent to prison. But anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug — including heroin — gets MANDATORY medical treatment. No judge, no courtroom, no jail.
Quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
The committees have a broad range of sanctions available to them when ruling on the drug use offence. These include:
Fines, ranging from €25 to €150. These figures are based on the Portuguese minimum wage of about €485 (Banco de Portugal, 2001) and translate into hours of work lost.
Suspension of the right to practice if the user has a licensed profession (e.g. medical doctor, taxi driver) and may endanger another person or someone's possessions.
Ban on visiting certain places (e.g. specific clubbing venues).
Ban on associating with specific other persons.
Foreign travel ban.
Requirement to report periodically to the committee.
Withdrawal of the right to carry a gun.
Confiscation of personal possessions.
Cessation of subsidies or allowances that a person receives from a public agency.
If the person is addicted to drugs, they may be admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility or be given community service, if the dissuasion committee finds that this better serves the purpose of keeping the offender out of trouble. The committee cannot mandate compulsory treatment, although its orientation is to induce addicts to enter and remain in treatment. The committee has the explicit power to suspend sanctions conditional upon voluntary entry into treatment. If the offender is not addicted to drugs, or unwilling to submit to treatment or community service, he or she may be given a fine.
The US doesn't have a robust treatment system. In addition, the US has a highly fractured and dysfunctional society, high poverty rates, and a system of blame that places the burden of poverty strictly on the individual.
Finally, due to over-prescribing oxycontin (where medication users turn to heroin when their oxycontin gets too expensive or becomes unavailable), the US has a large base of pre-addicted people (starting with oxycontin) whose problems include both pain and addiction.
That makes the US problem I think different from Portugal's. So Seattle's program will be interesting to watch. Does it translate well to the US?
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
And there you are, speaking for people you don't even know. In fact, you know so little, you don't even know how many.
What do you have to say about a person who does that?
That I read an article and think it's sad when people die of allergic reactions???
Researchers said, however, that the drug was to blame in two isolated cases of two seemingly health people, one 23 years old and another 28. Autopsies found that younger had a serious undetected heart problem, suggesting that people with cardiological issues should be aware of marijuana risks, and the older had a history of alcohol and drug use.
https://time.com/10372/marijuana-deaths-german-study/
Yer just mad I don't think weed is safe, anyway.
Bugger off, loon.
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Quote:No, that's not what you said. You PRESUMED to speak for other people - people you know nothing about. Remember? These are YOUR WORDS:
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
That I read an article and think it's sad when people die of allergic reactions???
Quote:Why do you keep posting things you have to run away from?
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
I'm sure the families of the two people who died would say they counted, but then again, YOU ARE A NARCISSIST so no one else counts in your world.
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What WISHY "thought" she posted
Quote:
That I read an article and think it's sad when people die of allergic reactions??
What she REALLY posted
Quote:
I'm sure the families of the two people who died would say they counted, but then again, YOU ARE A NARCISSIST so no one else counts in your world.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:I don't understand your point. Seattle's WAR ON DRUGS isn't (wasn't) a "war on drugs" per se. As I have posted already, it was a pretty SELECTIVE war: Like most cities, the SPD didn't raid suburban homes and arrest kids smoking pot, or break down the doors of rich urbanites who were snorting cocaine thru $100 bills. Police departments quite often didn't even break down abandoned houses that served as "shooting galleries". The "war on drugs" was usually focused on poor people and public intoxication. It became a crisis with the crisis of HOMELESSNESS, when people's drug use was suddenly thrust into the public, along with their needles, feces, and threatening behavior.
It's funny because I saw three videos in a row about the homeless drug=addicted in Seattle, and the people that they interviewed were fed up with the petty crime, trash, feces, needles etc that the drug-addicted (and mentally ill) leave behind. One of the videos, the longest one, cites several people who have had dozens - and in one case over a HUNDRED - "encounters" with the SPD for things like petty theft, threatening passersby etc, only to be returned to/left on the street to do the same thing all over again the next hour, day, or week,
It seems to me that while "jail" per se is not a reasonable response, some sort of involuntary treatment is required, and possible "harm reduction" housing. We're so worried about the freedoms of the mentally ill and drug addicted that we forget about the freedom of everyone else to walk the streets and not be harrassed,or to live in their homes and not be buglarized.- SIGNY
I missed how locking people up for petty drug use equals, "we're so worried about the freedoms of the mentally ill and drug addicted." You'll have to explain that. - CC
If Seattle could suddenly find (involuntary) housing for all of the homeless people who're wobbling thru the streets of Seattle, the "war on drugs" would die down pronto. It's not addiction per se, it's the public nuisance that comes along with it. As long as the drug-addicted (and mentally ill) do what they do in private and stop shitting on the streets and harassing passersby and burglarizing homes, I don't think there would be much of a "war on drugs" at all because nobody would really complain about it
To me, there are a couple of things that need to be done short-term, and some long-term things that need to be done.
The first thing is that people who're living on the street must be housed, involuntarily if necessary, and medically detoxed - involuntarily if necessary. I'd start with the ones who are the biggest nuisance. Let them keep their "stuff" ... one of the biggest problems with housing the homeless is their strong attachment to their "stuff". Once they have been housed and detoxed and fed a month of decent meals with enough vitamins to reverse any deficiencies, then they can be evaluated for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, drug-induce brain damage or other brain damage, anxiety disorder, autism, low intellectual capacity ... any number of things that can cause a person to self-medicate or not to be able to function in society. Some people can be treated, some people have permanent conditions that can never be "fixed". I would also suggest getting in touch with their closest relatives. I worked with someone who had a schizophrenic niece who was homeless ... they were frantic to keep in touch, and would have helped her if they could, but because if this "free to be crazy on the streets, free to be raped, free to get addicted, free to get AIDS, and free to die" they only saw her when she got pregnant and turned up in some hospital ER somewhere on the west coast, and once she birthed her kid she took off again.
So yeah, that whole ruling about freedom ... it's not working.
LONG TERM, if you really want to reduce drug
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CC, I had a whole post on the sources and possible treatments for addiction, and it went into the ether.
But to recap: Some people are self-medicating for specific undiagnosed neurochemical problems like bipolar disorder, anhedonia, ADHD, depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD, autism, etc. Others were addicted via the medical route. Some people just have a lot more receptors for certain chemicals .. opioid or nicotine receptors etc which gives them an extra-powerful double-whammy addiction.
I believe the treatments should be as unique as the person, who may have more than one thing going on. The standard rehab ... detox and counseling ... may not work for everyone. I have heard of great success with things like ketamine and MDMA and psylocibin which may provide a "reset" not otherwise achievable thru standard treatment. But I think there will continue to be people who are unreachable. More research needs to be done.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:Here you have a drastic Logic Fail.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:Too bad for you a lot of the things you think should be punishable by prison time are being legalized, huh?
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:Many folk had heard rumor that the Prison System was designed for the purpose of Punishing miscreants who decided to violate the Laws with the known Punishment of incarceration.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I never said I had all the answers.
I am a firm believer that you should be able to do anything you want to do in a free country as long as you're not harming others or unnecessarily inconveniencing them. Though the non-violent offenders aren't doing the former, they're certainly doing the latter in Seattle.
What I do know is that the US Prison system is slave labor, and corporations make big profits off of it. It's not designed to rehabilitate anybody, and quite the contrary, it turns non-violent people who were just misguided into hardened criminals when they do get out. Most of them end up back inside.
Funny how that sounds like it makes sense. It punishes as it was intended to punish.
So, the giant secret of ending the War on Drugs is to.....STOP ENFORCING THE LAW!!!!
Funny, this sounds much like the Libtard solution of lawlessness - err, actually, it is the same!
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Things that should be punishable with prison are those which are against the law, and the law specifies that prison is the consequence.
If it is a legal activity, it is not against the law, the law does not specify a prison sentence for legal acts.
If an activity is legal, there is no need for prison consequence.
If an activity is prohibited by law, and the lawbreakers know the conserquence is prison, then when they commit the illegal act, they can expect to go to prison.
Your demonstration of superior pothead logic has yet again failed. Even if you have not been stoned for years, this still displays truobling long-term detriment to your cerebral functions.
Legal is legal.
Illegal is illegal.
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