Comment by jdenning

I agree that decriminalization in Oregon didn't go well, but it's more complicated that "decriminalization doesn't work". I lived in Portland at the time (and yes, I voted for decriminalization). What I observed:

  - The rehab programs were never properly available
  
  - The general culture in Portland made it very difficult for the city to form any coherent response to homelessness. Most people in Portland really want to be "compassionate" to the homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill, so there was strong pushback on any effort to clear homeless encampments (literally to the point that people were advocating for changes in building code that would force commercial buildings to *enable* homeless people to sleep in front of them by building sleeping platforms.)
  
  - This time period overlaps the BLM protests (which were absolutely massive in Portland), with all the "Defund the Police" / "ACAB". Indeed, the majority of Portland has been very anti-police since the late '90s. The police, obviously, didn't like this. From anec-data, it seemed to me that the street cops just stopped even bothering arresting people. (Here's an anecdote - a friend of mine was riding mass transit, with homeless men both behind him and in front of him, who got in to a conflict that resulted in one man brandishing a knife. The police were called and showed up at the next stop, no arrests were made.)
 To make the point abundantly clear, the brandishing of knives in public was never decriminalized, but the police absolutely stopped enforcing *any* laws on the homeless.

  - Oregon is generally terrible at implementing anything, even well-supported, popular programs fail to achieve even basic milestones of success. There's also a general lack of funding for most everything.

  - COVID

  - Fenatnyl use rose massively, nationwide, in spite of local drug policy. The negative effects have definitely been more pronounced in far-left cities, but it's disingenuous to assume that decriminalization increased usage.

Don't get me wrong, things got bad. They still are - it's why my wife and I moved after living there for decades. But let's not declare decriminalization as a universally bad policy; the drug war has also been extremely bad too, and it's had a lot more time to work. IMO, the very existince of fentanyl and carafentanyl are direct results of the drug war.