Living the Dream
The Left’s dream society manifests itself in San Francisco, where Safeway is installing security gates at self-checkout stations to thwart thieves. And in other cities, stores that once housed products on open shelving have encased shelves, also to prevent thieves from taking at will. Then there are the smash-and-grab mobs, and now, the Governor of Illinois rejoices over an as yet unproven consequence of eliminating cash bail. But the kicker comes from Oregon where Leftist policy and pipe dream utopian idealism have conjoined with disastrous effect.
But first, a little background.
Mithridates
In “Terrence This Is Stupid Stuff,” A. E. Housman tells the tale of Mithridates, the king who in fear of being poisoned, “gathered all that springs to birth/From the many-venomed earth;/First a little, thence to more,/He sampled all her killing store.” Mithridates' purpose lay in his desire for poison resistance lest someone poison his food. As the legend goes and Housman reports in the poem’s last line, “Mithridates, he died old.”
That intentional “first a little, thence to more,” isn’t the usual avenue of drug addiction. Rather, it’s “first a little without knowing that that little leads to more,” just as caffeine fills the brain's receptors for the drug, requiring more receptors that require more caffeine. I suppose nicotine and chocolate do the same. Once the sampling begins, it becomes a way of life, one into which the addict becomes driven by only partially-intentional habituation.
The partially-intentional process has occurred throughout the world and throughout history, and it accounts for such practices as chewing Betel (Areca) nuts wrapped in Betel leaves and both smoking and chewing tobacco leaves. Almost any plant-based substance can become an addiction. Try taking chocolate away from a chocoholic.
Coca Cola
Addiction begins simply enough. People discover a use for a plant, find its flavor enticing and its effects pleasing. Wintergreen flavors products from chewing gum to mouthwash, for example. Coca Cola began that way, containing cocaine from its inception into the twentieth century until the drug was recognized as an addictive substance. It took Coca Cola years to overcome the bad image of its flavorful ingredient, eventually doing so by releasing a statement that its cocaine wasn’t activated by some alkaline substance like calcium carbonate (lime). Without alkali processing, the cocaine is inert, the company argued, and, well, walla! Coke became so popular that one of its advertising jingles, written by Bill Backer, became a theme song of a generation seeking peace, love, and harmony. “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” made drinking the product a social statement. And thus it is with using certain drugs, such as the lines of cocaine sniffed at parties. And as for the so-called “gateway drugs,” one need only think of the smiling reception Clinton received when he said he didn’t inhale. No big deal, right? I suppose the smoke wafting past his nose was somehow rerouted and that no one else in the room smoked weed.
If you have paid attention during the last several years, you know that America, which has always had a drug problem, has entered into an Age of Overdose Deaths. The country slid into the Age on the slippery slope of gateway drugs” whose bottom runs into fully addictive drugs. But in sliding, America is no different from many other regions where such sliding has a long history, as those Betel chewers exemplify.
Oregon’s Grand Experiment with Human Life
Supposedly, Oregon’s decriminalization of drugs mimics Portugal’s decriminalization. That’s just a supposition when one considers some troubling data that the Left-leaning politicians seem not to have anticipated. In “Oregon Substance Use Disorder Services Inventory and Gap Analysis “ (2022), researchers discovered:
1. Oregon ranks 2nd in he nation for deaths due to drug use.
2. Oregon ranks 1st in the nation for percent of population needing but not receiving treatment of substance use disorders.
3. Oregon ranks 6th in the nation for deaths due to alcohol. *
Suffice it to say: Oregon has not solved its addiction problems by fiat. Just declaring a decriminalization hasn’t solved the state’s problems. And as is usual, that failure arose from putting the Ideal over the Real. There’s no substitute for hard work, for anticipating problems, and for revising. (Trust me on this; I’ve hastily published sentences that lacked scrutiny for typos I missed by wearing the wrong glasses) If the decriminalization law demands adequate rehabilitation facilities, it has not motivated Oregon to establish those facilities.
In fact, I should accuse Oregon politicians of myopic policy-making. They failed to SEE the ramifications of their poorly designed and inadequate funding of substance use disorder services. They appear to have believed a mere declaration makes the ideal into the real. And they did not anticipate the proliferation of drug addicts drawn to their state because of the decriminalization.
The Counterargument
In voting for decriminalizing drugs, Oregonians probably made the argument that Nixon’s “war on drugs” has not minimized America’s drug problem. Its failure is especially evident under the avalanche of fentanyl that has cascaded into the country during the past three years. And maybe young voters, much like Coca Cola drinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had already incorporated drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and crack cocaine into their party life. Besides, tens of thousands of overdose deaths indicate that the 1970s drug war has been lost. The drug cartels have won. So, why spend money and manpower on policing what obviously cannot be policed, especially in an age when defund the police has decreased their numbers? Just decriminalize drugs, even hard drugs. That’s the simple argument. And it “kinda makes sense.”
But the Devil Is in the Details
In some ways, the effort to decriminalize drugs mirrors the illegal immigrant problems that New York City’s Mayor Adams is now facing.
After border state governors and the Federal Government sent illegal immigrants into cities like New York, the formerly-quiet-on-the-subject Adams has housed the immigrants in schools and hotels. He saw no need to establish an immigrant housing authority until he saw a need to establish one. “Let them all in or be condemned as a racist and xenophobe drawing the ire of the insulated elite in the media” probably sums up his and other New Yorker’s attitude.
But illegal immigration is an actual problem with actual consequences, as any victim of crime by illegals can verify. One just can’t by fiat say there is no problem. One just can’t say, “We’ll handle it down the road.” Now, as immigrants crowd into hotels that once housed tourists ready to spend money in the city’s economy, the major finds himself having to fund the immigrants’ hotel rooms. And in the meantime as videos have revealed, the immigrants treat those hotels like Third World slums, havens of drug users and pushers, and even sites where drunk minors have been observed. And all because of no thorough anticipation.
That’s Oregon. They made inadequate preparations for their burgeoning druggie population. The ideal has met the real.
When will the Left learn to anticipate the consequences of their utopian dreams? Remember one of my little sayings: What we anticipate is rarely a problem. I wish I could have said that to Oregon policy-makers and voters before they decriminalized drugs and failed to construct and staff the buildings they might need to service possibly as many as 600,000 drug users.**
The addicts need help. Decriminalizing drugs without adequate rehab facilities doesn’t seem to have produced that help.
* Lenahan, Katie, Sara Rainer, Robin Baker, and Elizabeth Needham Waddel. Online at https://www.thelundreport.org/sites/default/files/OHSU%20-%20Oregon%20Gap%20Analysis%20and%20Inventory%20Report.pdf
** Could the same be said for the proponents of “defund the police”? No evidence can be obtained that shows the decline in police funding has made anyone safer—unless one considers the criminals.
The Left’s dream society manifests itself in San Francisco, where Safeway is installing security gates at self-checkout stations to thwart thieves. And in other cities, stores that once housed products on open shelving have encased shelves, also to prevent thieves from taking at will. Then there are the smash-and-grab mobs, and now, the Governor of Illinois rejoices over an as yet unproven consequence of eliminating cash bail. But the kicker comes from Oregon where Leftist policy and pipe dream utopian idealism have conjoined with disastrous effect.
But first, a little background.
Mithridates
In “Terrence This Is Stupid Stuff,” A. E. Housman tells the tale of Mithridates, the king who in fear of being poisoned, “gathered all that springs to birth/From the many-venomed earth;/First a little, thence to more,/He sampled all her killing store.” Mithridates' purpose lay in his desire for poison resistance lest someone poison his food. As the legend goes and Housman reports in the poem’s last line, “Mithridates, he died old.”
That intentional “first a little, thence to more,” isn’t the usual avenue of drug addiction. Rather, it’s “first a little without knowing that that little leads to more,” just as caffeine fills the brain's receptors for the drug, requiring more receptors that require more caffeine. I suppose nicotine and chocolate do the same. Once the sampling begins, it becomes a way of life, one into which the addict becomes driven by only partially-intentional habituation.
The partially-intentional process has occurred throughout the world and throughout history, and it accounts for such practices as chewing Betel (Areca) nuts wrapped in Betel leaves and both smoking and chewing tobacco leaves. Almost any plant-based substance can become an addiction. Try taking chocolate away from a chocoholic.
Coca Cola
Addiction begins simply enough. People discover a use for a plant, find its flavor enticing and its effects pleasing. Wintergreen flavors products from chewing gum to mouthwash, for example. Coca Cola began that way, containing cocaine from its inception into the twentieth century until the drug was recognized as an addictive substance. It took Coca Cola years to overcome the bad image of its flavorful ingredient, eventually doing so by releasing a statement that its cocaine wasn’t activated by some alkaline substance like calcium carbonate (lime). Without alkali processing, the cocaine is inert, the company argued, and, well, walla! Coke became so popular that one of its advertising jingles, written by Bill Backer, became a theme song of a generation seeking peace, love, and harmony. “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” made drinking the product a social statement. And thus it is with using certain drugs, such as the lines of cocaine sniffed at parties. And as for the so-called “gateway drugs,” one need only think of the smiling reception Clinton received when he said he didn’t inhale. No big deal, right? I suppose the smoke wafting past his nose was somehow rerouted and that no one else in the room smoked weed.
If you have paid attention during the last several years, you know that America, which has always had a drug problem, has entered into an Age of Overdose Deaths. The country slid into the Age on the slippery slope of gateway drugs” whose bottom runs into fully addictive drugs. But in sliding, America is no different from many other regions where such sliding has a long history, as those Betel chewers exemplify.
Oregon’s Grand Experiment with Human Life
Supposedly, Oregon’s decriminalization of drugs mimics Portugal’s decriminalization. That’s just a supposition when one considers some troubling data that the Left-leaning politicians seem not to have anticipated. In “Oregon Substance Use Disorder Services Inventory and Gap Analysis “ (2022), researchers discovered:
1. Oregon ranks 2nd in he nation for deaths due to drug use.
2. Oregon ranks 1st in the nation for percent of population needing but not receiving treatment of substance use disorders.
3. Oregon ranks 6th in the nation for deaths due to alcohol. *
Suffice it to say: Oregon has not solved its addiction problems by fiat. Just declaring a decriminalization hasn’t solved the state’s problems. And as is usual, that failure arose from putting the Ideal over the Real. There’s no substitute for hard work, for anticipating problems, and for revising. (Trust me on this; I’ve hastily published sentences that lacked scrutiny for typos I missed by wearing the wrong glasses) If the decriminalization law demands adequate rehabilitation facilities, it has not motivated Oregon to establish those facilities.
In fact, I should accuse Oregon politicians of myopic policy-making. They failed to SEE the ramifications of their poorly designed and inadequate funding of substance use disorder services. They appear to have believed a mere declaration makes the ideal into the real. And they did not anticipate the proliferation of drug addicts drawn to their state because of the decriminalization.
The Counterargument
In voting for decriminalizing drugs, Oregonians probably made the argument that Nixon’s “war on drugs” has not minimized America’s drug problem. Its failure is especially evident under the avalanche of fentanyl that has cascaded into the country during the past three years. And maybe young voters, much like Coca Cola drinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had already incorporated drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and crack cocaine into their party life. Besides, tens of thousands of overdose deaths indicate that the 1970s drug war has been lost. The drug cartels have won. So, why spend money and manpower on policing what obviously cannot be policed, especially in an age when defund the police has decreased their numbers? Just decriminalize drugs, even hard drugs. That’s the simple argument. And it “kinda makes sense.”
But the Devil Is in the Details
In some ways, the effort to decriminalize drugs mirrors the illegal immigrant problems that New York City’s Mayor Adams is now facing.
After border state governors and the Federal Government sent illegal immigrants into cities like New York, the formerly-quiet-on-the-subject Adams has housed the immigrants in schools and hotels. He saw no need to establish an immigrant housing authority until he saw a need to establish one. “Let them all in or be condemned as a racist and xenophobe drawing the ire of the insulated elite in the media” probably sums up his and other New Yorker’s attitude.
But illegal immigration is an actual problem with actual consequences, as any victim of crime by illegals can verify. One just can’t by fiat say there is no problem. One just can’t say, “We’ll handle it down the road.” Now, as immigrants crowd into hotels that once housed tourists ready to spend money in the city’s economy, the major finds himself having to fund the immigrants’ hotel rooms. And in the meantime as videos have revealed, the immigrants treat those hotels like Third World slums, havens of drug users and pushers, and even sites where drunk minors have been observed. And all because of no thorough anticipation.
That’s Oregon. They made inadequate preparations for their burgeoning druggie population. The ideal has met the real.
When will the Left learn to anticipate the consequences of their utopian dreams? Remember one of my little sayings: What we anticipate is rarely a problem. I wish I could have said that to Oregon policy-makers and voters before they decriminalized drugs and failed to construct and staff the buildings they might need to service possibly as many as 600,000 drug users.**
The addicts need help. Decriminalizing drugs without adequate rehab facilities doesn’t seem to have produced that help.
* Lenahan, Katie, Sara Rainer, Robin Baker, and Elizabeth Needham Waddel. Online at https://www.thelundreport.org/sites/default/files/OHSU%20-%20Oregon%20Gap%20Analysis%20and%20Inventory%20Report.pdf
** Could the same be said for the proponents of “defund the police”? No evidence can be obtained that shows the decline in police funding has made anyone safer—unless one considers the criminals.
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