Their main excuse? Police were never properly trained on how to handle possession and use cases so they now want to offer immunity for a misdemeanor if you take treatment instead. If not, you get a misdemeanor and the draconian shit starts all over again. Source
Because citizens stepped over hobo shit in front of their front door one too many times, went to their representatives and said “this shit has to stop!” and the representatives went “You’re right! There ought to be a law!”
It’s a State version of this:
https://youtu.be/SZ8psP4S6BQ
Ah yes. Shitting in the streets. Classically a problem caused by drugs and definitely not anything else.
Good news! Because drugs are illegal now we don’t have to build housing for the ever increasing homeless population!
I mean, it is sort of a common thing in areas where heroin use is prevalent due to its effect on the digestive system.
The thing is, the law provided for treatment options and other ways to help addicts, but it was never implemented, probably on purpose to get this exact outcome.
The point is that people are doing drugs on the street because the street is where they live.
If druggies have homes they do drugs at home.
Yeah, of course. But they were unwilling to fund that aspect of the decriminalisation.
That’s well said!
The problem with this entire argument is that this was occurring long before the ballot measure passed in 2020 when “using drugs gets you a trip to jail.” Putting people in jail once again is just wasting our tax dollars because it obviously didn’t work as a deterrent before and won’t work not.
After failing to fund any treatment centers like the law mandated, state Dems caved to Republican propaganda in order to do better in this year’s election.
Yeah, of course. Drug use has been going up in other states that didn’t go down this route. It’s a health issue, not a criminal issue, but there’s too many people that are profiting off throwing scores of people in prison.
Decriminalisation should go hand in hand with defunding police and funding housing, health and education, so of course the police isn’t going to be cooperative if you’re trying to do that.
The jailing has the street level appearance of fewer homeless on the street since they move to the jail for a bit. So while it’s going to cost the tax payer, the tax payer is going think “hey cool the homeless encampment is gone! Progress!”
Drug addiction and homelessness are really insidious problems.
Under 110 the choice was “Get treatment or get a $100 ticket that will never be enforced.”
Out of 16,000 people ticketed, less than 1% called the toll free number to ask for treatment.
Under the new rules it’s “Get treatment or go to jail.”
I wonder which will be more effective in getting people treatment?
Heard an interview from people trying to help with the program saying there were 1 hr hold times on the number to call for help. Which got you another time to call for an hour hold time. It was poorly done.