Michael Ramirez for April 12, 2024

My first thought, how are the people here that suffer from Trump bipolar disorder are going to blame him for what Oregon did to itself. This is totally a Democratic mistake. Anyone with any brains at all could have told Oregon that the decriminalization of drugs was going to attract druggies, and dealers from all over the country. What must really hack off the Democrats in Oregon is all of the cash money in the drug business they could not tax.

It’s not like criminalizing drug use was working. The main reason Oregon’s decriminalization plan failed is because they did not provide for expanding treatment & rehab centers for drug users.

See “Drug treatment in Oregon still hitting a bottleneck at inpatient care” at the KGW News site.

Americans refuse to do anything correctly.

It appears that the only to stop people from doing drugs is take away their ability to buy or steal it?

Substance abuse treatment programs are gigantic waste of time and money. During my long career in the Veterans Health Care division. We had extensive outreach programs for homeless veterans, and for drug and ETOH abuse treatment. The MSM accused us of ignoring homeless Vet’s. This totally wrong, The Veteran had to ask for help we could not force them into our homeless programs. I always carried cards that when I spotted a homeless person I would ask them if they were a veteran. If They said yes, and most did, I gave them a card to go to the VA hospital and they would be directed to the homeless director. At the very least they got a hot meal for their trouble. With Substance abuse the success rate is tiny percentage of the total number. We could always tell the person that was going to have success, because they had a sold reason, a family, and wife, etc. Most had no reason. They mostly came, either on death’s door, or for 3 hots-and-a-cot for the length of the inpatient treatment program. Finally the VA gave up on inpatient treatment as being a waste of time. The homeless program was, and is well funded but The Vet has to make the first move. The ACL really screwed things up when they made it virtually impossible to involuntarily commit someone to inpatient treatment. This is coming from somebody who had these people sitting on the other side of my desk. The best thing to do is make is very hard to get the drugs, and hit the problem at the very beginning. As for alcoholism we are about 10,000 years too late to do anything about that, beer was invented about this time.

There is a drug that hardly anyone outside of real ETOH treatment programs has heard of, Antabuse (Disulfiram). This is a drug that blocks the breakdown of alcohol in the body. If you drink anything with alcohol you get violently sick. It is call aversion therapy. A person that agrees to use it is one the the indications the person is dead serious about his treatment.

True, some states are changing the laws to be more forceful. I forget if it was Oregon or Washington.

Every Democrat ran city is filthy.

don’t try and make the bed until you have a bed to make.

Very powerful people, the political elites, control the drug market. More drugs, more money. Like the opium wars.

Ramirez has it right on the button.

Seems to work in Canada though. The problem is not drugs, it’s american people and companies. The country is addicted on legal opioids already which are much more lethal than marijuana, so if you intend to criminalize drug abuse, do it seriously, don’t be hypocrites.

Stupid democrats. The whole country saw this end result coming except the knuckleheads in ultra-liberal Oregon. Democrats’ motto – “Don’t judge us on our results. Judge us on our intentions”. US – “No”.

In Wyoming being homeless is difficult, it gets really cold. During my career we had 2 totally plastered Vet’s come in. The needed to be admitted to be detoxed and in a warm bed. They refused and we found them later dead of exposure out on the campus in the trees. Had we been able to involuntarily admit them the might actually still be alive. It took the social workers almost a month the find the next of kin for one of them. The family had not heard from him in over 10 years they didn’t think he was still alive.

There was one phone call I received that to this day is hard to think about. I got a call from a lady looking for her son. It so happened he was inpatient. When I confirmed he was here to totally lost it on the phone. She had been calling all of the VA hospitals trying to find him. I transferred her call down to one of our social workers.

This is the sort of thing that enrages me when you see a well fed holier than thou activist that uses this issue for political gain.

There is one organization that does the good work, The Salvation Army. I have nothing but respect for this organization. They don’t deal with rehabilitation. But they deal with the person, with an uplifting Christian message, a hot meal, and warm place to sleep. I have personally witnessed their success rate and it beats anything a Godless politically motivated politician has done.

Now THAT’S truth!

Drugs are not a door you want to open. Short time thrill, long time problem.

Go figure. A state run by hippies and their descendants.

Interesting to read all the profound opinions of people who have never worked in addiction research, have no idea of what drives people to drug use ( and, FYI, that includes ethyl alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, just for starters) and are clueless about the roles of neural receptors in humans. I have worked in all these areas, and I am generally finding that the rest of you have darn little concept of any of this.

I don’t think you could cst a stone and not hit anyone not on drugs, especially politicians.

The drug treatment center concept relies on druggies actually wanting treament

My home town. So sad. I’m permanently remaining in Arizona and leaving that looney tune place for good.