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Decriminalizing Drug Possession Doesn't Lead to More Fatal Overdoses (time.com)

submitted 10 months ago by BeautifulMind@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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“There's always the hope that states function as laboratories of democracy, and when one state does something that makes sense and seems to work, that other states will adopt it,” says Davis. “Arrests went way down, overdoses didn’t change: To me, that’s an improvement over the previously existing system.”

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Measure 110, the citizen initiative that removed serious legal penalties for all illicit drug possession and directed millions of dollars of state resources toward harm-reduction and treatment programs, has been painted by local and national media as insufficient at best and destructive at worst since its implementation in 2021.

News stories this summer portrayed Portland as afflicted by rising opioid overdose rates and suggested that Measure 110 played a role in their increase.

Spruha Joshi, an assistant professor in epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and co-lead author of the study, acknowledges the difficulty of capturing a comprehensive look at the public-health impacts of Measure 110 and Washington’s analog.

Aside from decriminalization, Measure 110 allocated more than $260 million in tax dollars from Oregon’s legal cannabis industry to harm-reduction and treatment centers for substance users statewide, but “most of that money didn't start flowing until almost the end of our study period,” says Davis.

An ongoing study has found widespread opposition among the state’s police officers, and in mid-September, a group of business and political leaders filed voter initiatives to walk back decriminalization, including making any amount of methamphetamine, fentanyl, and heroin illegal to possess.

Advocates of decriminalization see these pushes as attempts to kill a new strategy before it’s even had a chance to work, and say that complaints about increased drug activity throughout the state should prompt lawmakers to build upon Measure 110 rather than abandon it.

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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023

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