As someone with no stake in this, I would rather have all of that decay in one place I can avoid rather than strewn about my city.
In all seriousness, watch The Wire. It gets you thinking and covers the topic well.
Knew someone was going to mention it :)
Now for the junkies, needs to be more than a safe haven to shoot up and definitely agree with your sentiments. I know they offer more than that, but some people just want that and that's the problem
I don't know if you've ever met a working-class person, but I think you have things the opposite way round. It tends to be the middle-class petit-bourgeois who advocate a tolerant approach to the victims of drug abuse. Working-class people despise junkies because they are on the front-line of the associated crime, decay, danger, filth, child-neglect, disease etc.
His mother works harder than any “working class person” I have ever met.
The real measure of success is how few people become junkies in the first place.
No, the real measure of success is how few peoples lives are ruined.
If a bunch of people end up addicted to heroin, but end up living fulfilling and productive lives regardless, that's a fairly good outcome. If implementing measures to reduce the number of addicts leads to the remaining ones living in poverty and overdosing, then that's not an improvement.
That doesn't happen though. Not because of existing drug policy, but because of the all consuming nature of addiction.