Imagine A World

Where the laws support criminal profit over safety of civilians

SALEM, Ore. (GLOB) - Turns out you don’t have to imagine. Oregon voters passed a law in November of 2020 decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamines, heroin, and the like. What was the thought process behind this? The untested belief that giving citations to drug users and pointing them to treatment, while funneling money into treatment centers, would reduce the use of illegal drugs.

Sadly, you can’t treat the dead.

People can leave their treatment centers, walk out the door, find their drug of choice quickly and easily, and die before you can say, “What were we thinking?”

Hyperbole?

The very morning he left a residential drug treatment program he successfully completed, a Douglas County man went straight to his former drug dealer and bought a pill.

Hours later, Chase Gill’s grandparents found the 25-year-old in a barn on their ranch in rural Drain, dead from acute fentanyl intoxication, according to his family, court records and testimony. Source

My immediate thought is, what the hell does “successfully completed” mean? Are drug rehab centers giving out participation ribbons?

In the article, a judge is quoted as saying the drug dealer was immoral.

Drug dealers, immoral - let’s pause for a reverential moment as we let this judge’s deep insight sink in. What a piercing revelation. That’s the problem! Drug dealers are immoral!

Just stop and think about that for a moment. And think some more. And then think about this:

In 2019, before the law was passed, there were 280 deaths by drug overdoses in Oregon. The final 2023 figures, still being compiled, are expected to number 1250. Which may be low since in June of last year the number was 628 alone, more than double the annual total in 2019.

One kid in a rehab center told the Lund Report that he didn't realize he was smoking fentanyl until his parents had him tested. He thought the pills he was buying were oxycodone.

Ponder that for a moment. “I didn’t think I was buying this illegal drug, I thought I was buying that illegal drug.” Oh, well, honest mistake.

Why is there a fentanyl crisis in Oregon?

Let’s see - highly addictive drug, unfathomable amounts of money to be made, and a buying public that is told, “Hey, it’s OK, just come to treatment.”

So, you are a businessman needing to expand your market, where do you go? You go where the complicit state has created an environment that makes doing business fun and profitable. Let’s do the math.

1. Fentanyl is cheap and easy to make

2. Fentanyl is highly addictive

3. Oregon has removed all barriers to trade

The only step Oregon missed was putting up billboards.

How is anyone surprised by this? To put a fine point to it, how are the voters in Oregon so criminally stupid.

Yes, I said stupid.

The state, having been mugged by reality¹, is reconsidering it’s position. Too late for many many kids. They will most likely criminalize the drug possessor. But, maybe they need to do more, like tax the drug dealers or something.

Or, they could arrest them and put them in jail.

If a kid can walk out and score a lethal overdose and be dead two hours after leaving rehab, then the drug dealers aren’t hard to find. Do something about them. Make your state hostile to this particular business enterprise. And if you can’t find politicians willing to do that, pull your collective heads out of your asses and elect people that aren’t profiting from the death of your kids.

1. I stole that phrase from somewhere. I wish I could cite it. It stuck with me because it is, I think, an accurate description of what it takes for people to stop being stupid. Although, no one is ever actually mugged by reality. What happens is that people realize there are consequences to actions. I mean, for example, you are not mugged by a candle flame if you stick your finger in it. The natural and predictable consequence is you get burned.

So, just maybe, people should spend some time thinking through the more obvious possible consequences before they jump up and do something because it sounds like it might work in their hazy fairy tale land where there are no objective truths.