Some Blue Cities Are Finally Admitting To Themselves “I Have A Problem And I Need To Change.”

One of the left’s greatest blind spots is they think they can force people to improve themselves. Portland is learning it can’t.

I was reading a recent article from National Review on the decline of Portland. Before the George Floyd riots, Portland had its issues. Now it is crime ridden, the middle class is fleeing, and criminals do not fear the law. The liberal city council and mayor embraced the defund the police movement and decimalization of hard narcotics, but said it would fund treatment services to help addicts. Well, the liberal utopia has not exactly worked out as planned:

Oregonians Turning against Drug-Decriminalization ‘Mistake’ amid Record ODs, ‘Dystopian Nightmare’

Ben West was incensed. Oregon’s attempt at drug decriminalization has been “an unmitigated disaster,” he said. People are “dying on our streets.” Voters had been “bamboozled.”

West, a commissioner in Clackamas County, pushed his colleagues to do something about it during a June 7 board meeting. He acknowledged that Clackamas County couldn’t on its own turn back Measure 110, approved by nearly 60 percent of Oregon voters in 2020, but they weren’t helpless either. “We can advocate. We can go to our voters. We can use our bully pulpit,” he said. “We can bring other counties from local government to our side.”

His colleagues on the commission agreed with his concerns.

Measure 110 has turned Oregon into the “wild, wild west of drug abuse,” said commissioner Mark Shull. Board chair Tootie Smith said voters had been the victims of a “bait and switch” — they’d been promised an intense focus on treatment and recovery that has yet to be delivered… 

This quote on “treatment and recovery” made me think of something liberals never get. The left really believes humans can be perfected if the right people are in power, spending other people’s money on the right bureaucracies. When it doesn’t work, well, “we didn’t spend enough of your money on it.” The classic example arrogance , “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” But liberals just don’t get one thing, people with issues will not change until they the person wants to change themself.

I’ve known multiple people who have beaten addictions. Hard drugs like heroin and cocaine, nicotine (ask a former smoker how hard that habit is to break), and the greatest abused narcotic out there, alcohol. These people ending their addiction all started with then saying, “I have a problem and I need to change.”

A very close friend (unfortunately passed on) and his wife had an epiphany one Saturday. He told me, “Mike, we woke up in the living room around noon. We had no idea how we got home. We only knew we had started drinking the night before. We couldn’t recall where we were where or when we started drinking, or why. We didn’t know if it was an end of the week get together with work friends, just us, what. We didn’t recall what were drinking. We didn’t know how we got home, but the car was out front. Then we looked at each other and knew we had a problem and had to change.”

They joined Alcoholic’s Anonymous, were clean and sober in a few months, and (as far as I know) that way until he passed.

Back to Portland (and multiple other liberal Meccas), their concept is as flawed as it can get. You cannot make someone change if they don’t want to unless you infringe on their liberty.

Classic example, I was one of the first Houston Police officers trained as a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) member. We were instructed on how to handle people in mental crisis. A few years into the program, I was asked by one of the CIT managers how it was working, and I explained we were spinning our wheels.

“The problem, we get someone in crisis. We bring them to Ben Taub (the largest public hospital in Houston) or NPC (the NeuroPsychiatric Center), and they get them stable. The staff releases them with a thirty-day supply of drugs and says, ‘Come back in four weeks for a refill.’ The consumer takes their meds for three, four or five days, and then they stop. In a few days they are back in crisis, we put them back into a treatment facility, and they cycle begins again.”

Now, how can the government insure these people take their medications? With “an intense focus on treatment and recovery? No, by forcing them into a mandated impatient treatment facility (see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Otherwise, the consumer must be willing to take medications. I’ve known multiple people with mental illness like schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder who know they have an issue, take their medications and are functional.

But you have a heroin or cocaine addict, he will not stop unless he decides, “I need to stop.” He or she must hit rock bottom and decide he needs to change. And no program funded by a marijuana tax will make them change unless you force them into an institution (practically unconstitutional today, not that that inconvenience has stopped liberals before). Portland (and hopefully other liberal cities) that practically destroyed themselves in the Floyd riots of 2020 are starting realize they must walk (actually run) from the disastrous policies they put in place three years ago. Portland is finally realizing, “I have a problem, and I need to change.”

Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.

Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.

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