Re:To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
by sneakerblack on Monday December 11, 2023 @11:40PM
(#38609589)
I'm not too familiar with the situation in Portland, but I have heard that programs which decriminalize drugs and provide care centers are not effective without existing social nets such as solid unemployment programmes and public health programmes that treated addicts can use to get themselves out of the socio-economic hole they got themselves into
Maybe the US is lacking in those programmes and is why the drug legalization programme is not effective in Portland?
Re:To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
by iteratethis on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:52AM
(#38612895)
I didn't suggest it's a country-wide problem.
The size of a country isn't an excuse for any of this. You won't find this phenomenon in other large developed countries either, not with these specifics.
This is about laying down the law in a very basic way.
FYI, most American cities aren't like this.
The article describes Portland for a reason: They're one of a small number of cities that experimenting with decriminalization (combined, theoretically, with treatment programs) under the theory that it would improve the situation. It has not improved the situation.
I think you might be viewing America through the lens of whatever stories make the news headlines, which is an aggregate of all the worst situations in the country. It's not representative of the entire country.
The US has about 200X more land than the Netherlands. It's huge and more diverse than you might be used to if you're imagining it as a parallel to where you lived.