Under the new law, possession of small amounts of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine will be as a misdemeanor and punishable by up to six months in jail.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed a bill Monday restoring criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of hard drugs, reversing a first-in-the-nation law that advocates had hoped would help quell a deepening addiction and overdose crisis.
Under the new law, the possession of small amounts of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine will be classified as a misdemeanor and punishable by up to six months in jail.
Drug treatment will be offered as an alternative to criminal penalties.
Neoliberalism is 2000’s Republican Party under Bush. It isn’t “liberal” like most people think of it. It’s rigid adherence to the idea that the “free market” will solve all our problems, in particular social ones, and grant us all the greatest amount of freedom.
Decriminalizing drugs and calling for the state to handle the health and social side is not neoliberalism. That’s democratic socialism if anything. Though I’m sure some would dispute it, which is fine. But it’s certainly not neoliberal, which is distinctly conservative and the ideology of the American Republican Party pre-Trump.
My point was that decriminalizing drugs and just…letting things sort themselves out, with maybe a few precariously-funded, arms-length organizations left to handle the fallout is very much a neoliberal approach to drug policy.
The bill wasn’t designed around free market solutions to the problem of drug addiction/mental health. It was specifically not that. We also can’t ignore that covid hit right when this went into effect.
Bad implementation =/= pushing a neoliberal policy.