And even Oregon can regain a modicum of sanity.
On Monday, Oregon’s Democratic Governor Tina Kotek signed into law House Bill 4002, reverting the possession of small amounts of drugs back into a criminal offense and marking the end of a pioneering decriminalization experiment plagued by implementation challenges.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody with two functioning brain cells, when you legalize the use of drugs, you get more drug addicts. Unfortunately for the good parts of Oregon, Portlandia controls the state much like the Putrid Sound controls Washington. And as we can see from the past couple of decades, the people who inhabit Portlandia don’t have two brain cells. Actually, there might not be two brain cells to share for a majority of the population there.
The decriminalization of drugs in Oregon didn’t just leave Portland as a drug-soaked piss bucket. It also encouraged drug makers to move to the state. Farmland that once grew beans or grazed cattle was being turned into marijuana growing operations. And not from your nice local neighborhood farmer who wanted a new cash crop. No, the cartels moved in. And they don’t make good neighbors. They don’t care if their run-off of pesticides and garbage make it on to your property. They don’t care if you walked up and down your road every day for decades. They’ll trash the property, your property, shoot at you if you get to close to their operation, and generally act like…. well, act like a foreign criminal cartel. Because that’s what they are.
They’re doing the same thing in Northern California. In the National Forests. Where the fuck are the hippy-dippy eco-freaks now? Why aren’t they screaming about all the chemicals that the cartels are dumping into the National Forests? Oh, that’s right, the eco-freaks are just a bunch of anti-American communists who don’t actually give a shit about the ecology, they just use that movement to shut down American development.\
Anyways, back to Oregon. I guess the view of addicts overdosing in the street, pissing and shitting all over public property and the rampant crime that always accompanies large groups of addicts has caused Portlandia a fair amount of pain. Enough pain that the people there, finally pushed out of their comfortable drug-soaked hazy life, looked around and said “Like, woah man, is that dude dead? Hey, where did my favorite coffee shop go? Why did they close? Hey man, um…. *massive bong rip*cough*cough* Like, wow man, someone should do something, or something like that man!”
Lo and behold, cause enough pain and even Leftists can change their behavior. Even if they’re a few steps down from a flatworm.
2 comments
As a woman, I do understand the sentimentality that leads many to argue for decriminalization.
But, those people are wrong, for the reasons above. It’s sloppy thinking that decides that the problem with drugs is the crime status, not the activity itself. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to see the user rehabilitated. It just should be completely dependent on getting sober/straight.
No problem with someone having their record expunged, AFTER a suitable period of demonstrated sobriety/lack of further crimes. I’m a believer that people can change – I just want to be able to verify that change for myself.
A society in which “everybody does it” is one that will continue to have problems, until that point people decide that social acceptance of destructive activities is the core problem. And, that doesn’t just go for drugs, that also includes other reckless behavior, promiscuous sexual behavior, and acceptance of ‘petty crimes’ as a norm.
Dave, Linda: I’m going to do something cruel to you. I’m going to ask you a question that will trouble you deeply. It’s not a complex question. It’s an investigative question: specifically, it probes for the basis for a particular conviction. I hope you’re braced for it. Here it comes:
Can you imagine any kind of evidence, whether or not it’s currently available to you, that would make you doubt your conviction that recreational drugs must be outlawed?
Spend some time over it. Don’t bother to answer me; just live with it for a while. I’ll be addressing the drug problem in an essay to come.