Oregon’s legislature voted, by large margins, to roll back its move toward full decriminalization of drug possession, public consumption, and selling drugs.
Now, San Francisco voters approve a ballot measure allowing drug testing recipients of public assistance and making assistance contingent on participation in treatment. And, it wasn’t close.
One way to think about responses to alcohol and other drug problems is “hands-on” or “hands-off.”
We can think of the move to decriminalization and no-threshold financial support as a move toward a hands-off approach.
We can think of the move toward some re-criminalization, and testing contingencies for financial assistance as a move toward a hands-on approach.
The bottom line is that there is a large universe of options between approaches that involve mass incarceration and abusive control and approaches that involve passive bystanding and first aid without expectations and systems of adequate follow-up treatment.
Considering all those options in between is particularly important because alcohol and other drug problems adversely impact not only the user, but also the people around them and the community. (And, some of these hands-off experiments make it clear that those negative externalities are not simply a consequence of criminalization.)
Recovery Review 