WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Oregon Says "NO!" to Drugs

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

This week we talk about Oregon's recent legislation that recriminalizes the possession of illicit drugs after their failed legislation to decriminalize them resulted in some major consequences for the state. Tune in to hear some nuanced thoughts and some should-have-stayed-in-the-drafts thoughts about drugs from two people who have literally never done them. 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. I'm Jeline Parks. And I'm Karen Gouldsby. And today we are talking about drugs. Drugs. Don't say it like you're excited. I'm not excited. We're talking about Oregon and drugs, which still doesn't do better for our case. But we are talking about the recriminalization of drugs in Oregon. Oregon. So we got there eventually. We're not just talking about drugs. So I guess either

don't be too excited or don't be too disappointed in us, depending on what kind of person you are. We get to decide that. Oregon, no, we don't get to decide, but Oregon can't seem to decide whether they're bad or not. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've already decided. Luckily, I decided when I was like 12 in a DARE program. And I was like, yeah, these are bad. I don't want them. I'm glad that you made that decision. Have you not? We're working on it. What, Garrett? Don't say that.

Obviously, there are a lot of drugs that are indeed bad, but I don't know. I was listening to this podcast about using shrooms, and not that I would ever do it, but it was convincing me that they might not be all bad. Garrett, this is, do you want this on the internet where people, your future employers can tune in? I can explain myself and what I mean, and it will make sense to any person, maybe. Any person, maybe. Okay. Anyways, this isn't about me and my views on drugs.

This is about Oregon and they're continually changing view on drugs. Yeah. Tell us what social media found, if anything. Yeah, there's stuff, but again, I'll talk about it. So, first of all, there's a lot of stuff on social media. You're done. There's a lot of stuff on social media about when drugs were, first decriminalized. So back in like, I don't know if it's 2021, 2021, 2020 in general,

but there was like a ton of content on Twitter and TikTok both of people being like, woo-mo-hoo, we're finally decriminalizing drugs. And it wasn't like decriminalizing marijuana. It was like decriminalizing hard drugs. So like fentanyl and heroin, like people who were found in with small, in possession of small doses of hard drugs were not penalized. It wasn't a crime. And the point that I guess Oregon lawmakers and people on social media were trying to make was that addiction is not a crime. Addiction is an illness and it needs to be treated accordingly.

And so you can't just throw people who do drugs in jail because you're not fixing the problem and rates of relapse are really high once people get out of jail. And you can't just like round up all the people in your in your state that are addicted to things and put them away like they don't exist, which that does make sense to me. That thought process specifically is compelling until we fast forward to present day. And that law has been really ineffective in doing what they were trying to do and like having worse consequences than they ever intended for it to have. So I think the original law was called like Oregon's drug addiction treatment and recovery act is what I came across. So yeah, three years later. So in 2021, I guess, is when that drug, that drug, that law was passed.

And now there's, I mean, shocker, heavy drug use out in public. And there's lots of like public overdosing happening. and the like death count for people that are overdosing is is raising exponentially in recent years. Somebody said, although this is social media, so obviously you can't take this at like, we won't know until Garrett comes and corrects me, but apparently it's more deaths by drug use than reported COVID deaths, which I don't know how many that is. That was just a stat that was given to me. I don't know how many COVID deaths.

I don't know how many drug-related deaths. but I know that it was a big deal that it was quite a few. Some people on the internet are understanding why this is happening. Some people on the internet are like, yeah, they should probably recriminalize it in some way. But a lot of people by and large are like, this is a step backwards. This is them going back to kind of reductionist thinking about we should be putting people who have addictions in jail rather than actually dealing with the root problem. The Cato Institute issued something last year.

The Cato Institute issued something last year that was like, we can't just revert to incarceration because it won't do anything to deter drug use. And they talk about the burden of taxpayers and stuff. So Cato Institute was anti-recriminalization, and most people are anti-recriminalization. There's this one tweet that reads, For social justice groups, the new bill represents a major setback. The Portland-based advocacy group Imagine Black said it felt like lawmakers prioritized the voices of the police over those communities of color. And that was the main conversation that I saw unfolding on social media was the police saying this is out of control and insane.

And it's really made this an unlivable hellscape, the whole city of Portland specifically, but I'm guessing other areas of Oregon as well. And then people coming back and saying, like, why do you care about the police more than you care about people? But that seems kind of strange to me. It kind of feels like the conversations that are being had are like happening parallel to each other and they're not actually talking because the points that people are making are valid on I feel like both sides, but nobody's addressing anything the other person is saying. It's all just like, well, obviously you have to do something because the law that we passed to decriminalize just made this a worse problem.

And then the other side being like, you can't just throw people in jail. and you can't keep listening to the police like this. So it's like nobody's really saying anything and nobody's having a dialogue because nobody's engaging with each other by any means. One tweet just said, we must fight for a society where those who are suffering from addiction are not condemned or vilified, but treated as humans who deserve love, kindness, and respect, which sounds good in theory, but what does love, kindness, and respect do to somebody who's like really addicted to drugs. Like I don't know. I don't really think they even want those things at that

point. I feel like they want one thing and it's clear what they want. So there's lots to be said about this. And I'm curious to hear maybe if there's a more nuanced conversation besides what's being plastered on social media. Because a lot of, I mean, there's not a huge conversation happening on social media in general. It's all just kind of like, well, yelling at each other and stuff. But that's what I have. If you have questions for me, I can try to answer them. but social media, oh, this was the point I was actually going to make before I hand it over to you, Garrett, is that social media is really good at picking up stories when they start, is really good at picking up breaking news as it happens.

It's super bad at following it to the end. Unless it's like a presidential thing and you have like specific politicians and journalists who are following that race or that thing to the very end, people kind of just tweet or post a video when something breaks to be like, guys, guess what? And then people do not follow up on that. Like, people are not still talking about this. Like, all of the tweets and all of the videos that I either read or watched were all from the very beginning of March. And there is virtually no content being put out now. So I don't know the state of this case. I know that some tweets were saying that lawmakers passed this bill and that drugs are

recriminalized, or at least hard drugs in small doses. And then some people saying, like, we'll never know. We don't know what's going to happen. It's still rolling out. So I don't know where we're at currently if that was going to be one of your questions. For those of you who are just tuning in, this is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 1-1.1.7 FM. I'm Gillian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And we are talking about drugs.

Drugs. And it's time to get some facts, because that's what I'm here for. No, it sounds like overall you got. I mean, some things that sounded like you said were true. You mentioned a number of deaths. That seems like kind of a, I don't know, a big marker that people are talking about. Just for context, in 2019, so this is pre-decriminalization, pre-COVID. 280 people in the state of Oregon died of some kind of drug overdose. In 2022, post-de-criminalization, 956.

Whoa. And basically since they've been decriminalized, the trend has continued to sweep upward dramatically, not just in Oregon, but really all over the U.S., as other states start to look or have in the past started to look at partial decriminalization measures. So in 2020, 58% of voters in Oregon passed a bill to decriminalize possession of small amount. of illicit drugs. Basically, instead of going to prison for some small amount of time, these people would be either find $100 or they had to call a drug hotline, basically, an addiction hotline. And guess what? It didn't work at all. Why didn't it? Do you know why that didn't work? A couple reasons. One, for a lot of people, just paying the $100 wasn't that big a deal. So they would just pay the hundred and like just kind of carry out their,

carry on with their lives. So I think the number was only like one percent of people that were charged with some kind of drug, drug charge actually called the hotline. And then calling the hotline didn't actually necessarily lead to any meaningful like therapy or the idea was that the hotline would get people into therapy and recovering from their addiction. And that just didn't happen at all, pretty much. The goal was, you know, to get more and more people off the streets into therapy so that they would overcome their addiction and not overdose on drugs. And really all it did was just make it easier for people to get away with having small amounts of drugs. And like you said, we're talking about basically everything. Fentanyl is the big one.

And a lot of people look at the failure of this law as due to the fact that fentanyl was introduced to the Oregon drug market about the same time. time that this law was passed. So it wasn't really a player in the drug market until about 2020. And then this law is passed and now people can have small amounts of it and suffer very little consequences. So in 20, let's kind of talk about US as a whole for a second. In 2018, prior to any states trying to decriminalize drug charges, there were 30,000 overdose deaths from opioid use in the U.S. And this past year, the number was 76,000.

Oh my gosh. It's so bad. In general, are up over 100,000. Okay, so let's talk about the new measure, since they've now recriminalized drugs, like what happens now? For a minor drug charge, criminals face up to six months in jail,

and they'll be heavily encouraged to go to treatment. And also, they are given a chance to wipe the charge from their record. if they attend treatment. And so that's a pretty, I think, attractive offer to a lot of people that are getting funneled into this system. Like I said, some people have argued that the reason why this is all ineffective to begin with is because of fentanyl, right?

That is, it seems to be the drug that has caused the most problems. And the number of overdoses from fentanyl in particular has gone up by 13 times. what it used to be. Nice. So huge upswing in this issue. Let's talk about kind of where this whole sentiment comes from. Why this, why do we try to decriminalize and why are we recriminalizing and kind of what's the discussion on both sides? So people have an issue with how often drug users get put in jail for possession of a minor amount of drugs because it happens all the time, especially in a place like Oregon. There are a lot of, you know, people that, you know, people that are dealing with addiction and frankly they get caught often and okay well what's going to happen

they're going to go to jail for some amount of time under under a non-decriminalized law and so basically what what citizens were saying is well why why would we want to pay for these people just to go to prison when we could pay for them to go to therapy like and actually overcome their problem that's a good sentiment but actually making that happen is very difficult these people are sick, they're addicted, they need help, right? So if we steer them toward the health care system instead of the justice system, the idea is that there would be fewer addicts. So lots of people are really attracted to this idea that they can pay for therapy instead

of prison. The problem with Oregon is that the system for getting people into treatment was basically voluntary. So the person who is addicted has to decide. within themselves, oh, I messed up, I can go to therapy now. That is an option available to me, or I can choose something else that is essentially just a fast track back onto the streets and back to whatever drug that is that they're hooked on.

So I think the problem with this line of thinking that we can assume people will choose to go to therapy and choose to get help is that it is relying on kind of people's better natures. It's relying on the fact that people will choose their own betterment when it's presented to them. So people that are making these laws are essentially arguing that the reason why these people aren't getting help is because help is not available to them. And if we make it easily available to them, they will get help, get over their drug problem, and everything will be happy. That's a really nice thought.

And actually, sometimes it's true. but it's not true very often. There have been some cases from this law that have occurred where an addict who has been strung out on drugs for years, totally ruined their lives, has been disconnected with their families and just thrown away everything, has gotten connected to therapy through this law, through getting funneled into the health care system instead of the criminal justice system and has turned their life around. And so when you hear a story like that, and oftentimes lawmakers that are advocating for these things,

we use testimonies of people that this has happened to, it's amazing because that's exactly what we want. Like ideal circumstances, that's what we're looking for. But the problem is that's like 1% of the 1% of people that even bother to try therapy. There's very few people that that works out for because so few people choose to do therapy to begin with. And on the other hand,

kind of something that people choose to ignore, but I came across several testimonies like this in my research of people that they went to, they went to prison. They suffered the criminal justice consequences and that actually wound up helping them. They spent time sobering up in prison. And unfortunately, you know, it's not a good environment. It's not a nice environment. But it also helps people sometimes.

Right. So essentially we are, as we often are in a situation where there's not a good, easy answer. And people aren't one kind of way. what's going to help one person might not help another person. There are some people that probably would not be helped by a year of therapy, even if they went all year. And there are other people that that could be life-changing for them. The problem is we don't know who those people are. We don't know how to find those people. And we don't know how to make them choose to go to therapy to begin with. So I think this law comes down to and what the debate about the law, what's often implicit in the

debate is the kind of assumption you're making about how people will act when left up to their own devices. You have one side, the criminal justice favoring side, assuming that people are going, they're going to choose the quick and easy and probably wrong decision. And so they need to go to prison, you know, sober up and to have time out of society. And that will make them safer. That will keep them from overdosing. And then there's the other side who, and a lot of people like this view because it sounds nice, they want to view people as choosing what is best for themselves

when presented with the option. And so the government needs to provide them with the option so that they can choose to better their lives. And unfortunately, it kind of winds up going either way sometimes, depending on the person. Some people do choose for their betterment and other people don't. Yeah.

And unfortunately, Unfortunately, when this debate makes its way over to social media, like you find people in one of two camps, one camp being where they completely lack any empathy whatsoever, whether it's just like these people are ruining our city, these people are ruining our country, these people are so selfish. Like, that is the way that they're viewing addiction and therefore these people deserve to be in prison, these poor police officers. Put them away so we don't have to deal with them, which is one side that's pretty popular

on social media. And then there's the other side that lacks a little bit of that common sense that says, well, if you just give them this option, then obviously they're going to choose it and everything's going to be fine and dandy. And if you decriminalize drugs, then people won't want them anymore. Like that is, it's very reductionist on both sides. And it's pretty devastating, actually, just to scroll through any sort of conversation because there's no room for nuance. It's not like Twitter allows you to like actually explicate a nuanced, thoughtful argument. You only have a couple characters. And so people have to just put their opinion out there in as few words as possible. But it just creates this really like shallow, thin conversation that doesn't actually get anywhere. And I'm glad that there are conversations obviously happening outside of social media that are more genuinely in charge of this. Because if we left it up to social media discord, we'd be in serious trouble. Do we think that we are ready to bestow a grade upon this topic today, Garrett? I think so.

Okay. I mean, I'm also ready. three, two, one. D. C minus. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Media has not been doing super well lately.

They suck. It's just so embarrassing because every time I come over and I'm like, I just don't know. I don't know what's going on. Or even where I can use my common sense to fill in the gaps, it doesn't matter. I'm not given like concrete information. I'm just given opinions and then sometimes false information and then some size, sometimes some slivers of the truth. but they're not really helpful amid a really, I don't know,

this one was a particularly reductionist day of scrolling and looking. I think one of the unique challenges of social media is that there's a very specific demographic that makes the most use of it. You don't have all age ranges of people using this. And especially in this issue, the age and demographics of the people that are talking about this problem matters a lot. Like the people that really want recriminalization, I cannot say recriminalization. There we go.

Wow. You see that really. Yeah. I still didn't even really succeed there. Wow. I should get voted off the island for that. But the people that really want that to happen, they are often parents who have kids that are worried about these drug addicts being around their kids and being in public.

And so they come down really, really harshly on these people who are still people. But it's hard for them to look at it that way. And the people that don't have kids are like, how could you not see it? They need help, help these people. Please. It's hard to get both sides of that discussion sincerely had on a social media platform, I think. Yeah, you're preaching to the choir here. It's pretty exhausting.

I think I'll just stick to not thinking about it and numbing my brain with other things. Does that sound good? Oh, I think that's what people that do drugs say. Whoa, that's so meta. I was sort of joking. I was mostly, maybe mostly joking. I don't really know. I haven't figured it out yet.

Hopefully my employers won't make it this far in the episode if they're going to employ me one day. Hopefully I'm safe and you're the one who is on the chopping block for this one. Sound good? Okay, awesome. Thanks so much for tuning into the social mediators this week. I'm Jillian Parks. And I'm Gary Gouldsby.

I'll talk to you next week.