Posted on 02/04/2024 8:32:49 PM PST by SeekAndFind
George Santayana famously wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Leftist policies daily show his wisdom. The latest leftist policy to go down in flames is Oregon’s experiment with legalizing all drugs. It turns out that when you give people license to sin, and also delete all moral constraints, they’ll sin themselves to death. Now, Oregon’s very leftist governor, Tina Kotek, is walking back the policy, having declared a state of emergency over fentanyl drug overdoses.
The Founding Fathers never forgot the past. Indeed, they were imbued with it. One example of that wisdom was James Madison, who pored over the history books to determine what form of government would best optimize human potential. The one thing he knew with certainty was that people needed some government in order to function: “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
But men aren’t angels, and they do need control over their conduct. In Western culture, it started with the Bible (the Noahide laws and the Ten Commandments), and the West continued with laws constraining man’s propensity toward dangerous vices…that is, personal behaviors that are likely to harm the actor or others. I happen to agree with R. Delderfield’s principle of “few rules but unbreakable,” but you still need rules.
That’s what Oregon is discovering when it comes to decriminalizing hard drugs. Humans respond to carrots and sticks, and if you’re imprisoned for using hard drugs, that’s a good stick and may serve as a deterrent to anyone even thinking about trying them. Another deterrent is morality, but that, too, has vanished from leftist enclaves.
Of course, it helps if you haven’t already traveled down the slippery slope of drug use. Several years ago, Oregon began the process of decriminalizing marijuana.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) declared a state of emergency in Portland due to the dire increase in fentanyl overdoses just a few years after the state decriminalized drug use.
The progressive state became the first to decriminalize drug use when the legislature passed Measure 110 in 2020, aiming to focus on recovery over incarceration for addicts.
Nearly 60 percent of voters approved of the measure at the time, but newer polls have found that they regret that move just three years later.
[snip]
The state has seen a continuous increase in overdose deaths since the measure passed in 2020. In 2022, the levels soared to nearly 1,000 fatal drug overdoses.
The 90-day state of emergency order issued by Gov. Kotek and Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler will “commit available resources to the unified response.”
This “unified response” will be something to see. I bet almost NOTHING will happen, bet some groups will get state money to “help”.
Leftists refuse to learn.
This goofball state was the first to legalize magic mushrooms. I always get a laugh from this. Mushrooms? Yeah. When in college we called them silly-si
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In 2020, Oregon became the first US state to legalize psilocybin for personal use for those over age 21. More than 1.2 million residents, or 55.7% of voters, voted in favor of legalizing it, with most of those opposed living in the rural eastern and southern parts of the state.
It’s legal to use psilocybin, or ‘magic mushrooms,’ in Oregon ... - C…
Same as when you legalize marijuana, you manufacture lots more marijuana smokers who will buy the cheaper illegal marijuana. That these greed head states are unable to tax.
When 90% of their reason to legalize pot was to reap a bonanza in taxes from it.
New York State legalized marijuana, so what happened? 1000 illegal pot stores sprung up in New York City that their stretched thin police cannot shut down. These stores are like 7-11 convenience stores, that also sell marijuana and other THC items such as gummies and THC for vaping. Yemeni Muslim immigrants run many of them.
Fixed it.
Legalizing drugs at all is asking for trouble, even in a moral environment.
“Legalizing drugs at all is asking for trouble, even in a moral environment.”
Because they are temptations that suck in the weak minded. No matter what the environment. Today church attendance is down, while drug attendance is up.
Their master degrees in 17th century European transgender poetry didn’t impart
Common sense.
For about 8 years, San Francisco legalized drugs de facto under district attorneys George Gascon and Chesa Boudin. Of course, fentanyl, crack, meth, heroin etc. were never “legal” in California as in Oregon, but when two San Francisco DAs in a row essentially declined to prosecute anyone for any sort of drug possession or dealing, the situation spun out of control and was a huge contributing factor to the “urban death spiral” of SF’s downtown core of which everyone has heard so much about.
Moral vacuum. Bet a leftist doesn’t understand the term
What is a hard drug? Is it different than a soft drug?
Coke used to have cocaine in it, and now its just a soft drink.
Now, I need a “hard drink.”
The shame is these pukes in office who made these mentally ill decisions because they are all mentally ill will never be held responsible for the destruction
Yes, indeed. Another rationalization given was that legalization would eliminate the black market, reduce crime, and no fewer people were smoking pot anyway. All of that was completely false - all of those things exploded. The central American cartels have also reaped fortunes off of “legalization” and wreaked all the more violence and havoc. Not to mention we have hoards of additional young men with permanent brain damage as a result and all of the money that is going to cost us and the human costs with destroying families and communities.
“The central American cartels have also reaped fortunes off of “legalization” and wreaked all the more violence and havoc.”
Yet we hear only silence from Marijuana’s cheerleaders...
Over 800 people died of fentanyl ODs alone in San Francisco last year. Drugs are effectively legal here. It’s deplorable.
If you are going to do drugs, then do them after age 25. Your frontal lobes are developing until that age. Though probably you are hurting your frontal lobes more at age 16-17 by smoking lots of marijuana. Than if you do this at age 22.
And these days you can vape THC which might really sneak up on damaging your brain. Due to not feeling much in your lungs. Which you do when you smoke weed.
“The central American cartels have also reaped fortunes off of “legalization” and wreaked all the more violence and havoc.”
I call BS. Have any evidence?
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