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Comment by Cofike | Hacker News Reader

The individuals who are using these drugs already use them openly in the street. I see them daily on my way to work as I work in a popular area for vagrants/homeless.

If it prevents me from stepping on needles and seeing blood from people shooting up on the street, I am all for it. These individuals will use one way or another if they want to so giving them a place to do it safely off the street seems acceptable.

Of course, the ideal solution will be to eliminate heroin and other hard drug use but this is a start.

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> Of course, the ideal solution will be to eliminate heroin and other hard drug use but this is a start.

That's practically impossible. A much more realistic goal is to minimize hard drugs use, and to minimize the negative impact of that use which will stay on both the users and everybody else.

The problem of thinking about the "ideal solution", in this case, is that trying to reach it brings us to adopt policies that do the opposite of minimizing the negative impact of use, especially if you consider enriching and encouraging violent gangs and mobsters, corruptions, and ruined lives a negative impact.

> If it prevents me from stepping on needles and seeing blood from people shooting up on the street, I am all for it.

For that, all the addicts need to be aware that this center exists, be able to get there (while suffering from withdrawal and other maladies accompanying their addiction) and be motivated to get there as opposed to getting the high right here right now (opioid addicts aren't exactly known for their capacity in delaying immediate gratification). With proper information and enforcement it may happen, but given how the streets of SF look now, this also may not happen.

They mention Vancouver as an example. I've been in Vancouver a few years ago, and I must say, if we're talking about people living on the street and doing drugs there, SF has nothing on Vancouver. The site around where Insite is (according to it's Wikipedia article) was occupied by something that looks like a refugee camp in a disaster area, only with a lot of drugs. Maybe not Insite's fault, maybe they are placed there exactly because that's where people who need it are, but certainly it didn't fix it.

I mean, maybe this saves these people's lives and is worth it. Vancouver locals certainly think it's worth it. But if you expect not seeing people doing drugs or stepping on needless and other unappetizing stuff - nah, didn't happen.

Well of course people want to eliminate it, but how?

Is this not at least a step in the right direction?

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