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Comment by general_ai | Hacker News Reader

As an adult, you have to make tradeoffs. Given that the supply of money is finite (unless you're Bernie Sanders who believes that money grows on trees), you have to decide whether to spend the money on this, or on, perhaps, kindergartens, schools, public transportation, and the like. TBH, I'd rather the junkies got a different kind of help: forced rehab. Got caught with heroin in your blood? Off to rehab you go. That'd be a good way to spend this money. Facilitating their addiction and making their death spiral "dignified" is a weird take on "help" in my opinion.

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I'm deeply curious about where you expect a city to find the money for "forced rehab" when you're belittling me about making "adult...tradeoffs."

Also, where do you think the money for emergency response to drug overdoses comes from, exactly? Do you expect that having a trained professional on hand to administer Naloxone in event of an OD would be more or less expensive than a 911 response?

Here's a great editorial from the Seattle Times's op-ed page, which isn't exactly known for being liberal: http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/bring-heroin-...

And a great quote:

    The [safe injection] model has worked in Vancouver, B.C.
    One study estimated the Insite facility in Vancouver’s
    Downtown Eastside prevented 83 HIV infections, saving
    the government at least $17 million. Others document a
    reduction in overdoses.

Lastly, the people who use the site need to be given the chance to get into treatment if they want it. Forced rehab, as you describe it, doesn't seem to have the effect that you'd like it to. I found this study from UCLA which indicates that the evidence in favor of legally mandated rehab programs is murky at best: https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/treat/consensus/anglin.pdf

Check out the Conclusions and Recommendations section for more. Here's a quote: "There is strong support for the role of internal motivation as a predictor of program retention and positive treatment outcomes."

I didn't say it'd necessarily be less expensive (although it might end up being that once you factor in the costs of crime needed to obtain expensive drugs in the first place). I said it'd be better for the addicts, which to me seems pretty certain. I know if I had something that was slowly killing me and I couldn't afford treatment, I'd want help at some point. And by help, I mean forced rehab, preferably without a felony charge which will make it impossible for me to find decent work afterwards.

I think safe injection sites are a short term solution. What you're proposing is a more long-term fix that addresses the root cause. I suspect (though I haven't spent much time thinking about this) that safe injection sites are cheaper to implement and test, before we go off and build rehab centers.

Except homeless people dying of aids in county hospitals is expensive.

Sure would help if they went through rehab to kick the addiction, and not get AIDS then.

Which is why programs like this are important. Keep them alive and healthy long enough to seek help...

Seek help from _where_?

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