We need to REPORT the ISSUE with the city - use the "311" phone number to report people behaving suspiciously or who obviously need support. This generates METRICS.
Then, the CITY can use the metrics to justify ACTION. Politicians can feel "safe" by responsibly spending $$ beaucoup bucks $$ without fear of voter reprisal come election-time.
The PEOPLE can use the metrics to justify SOCIAL CHANGE. Why does the US face this problem? Is it because of our "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality? How can the US adopt a holistic social approach, to accept and respond healthily to the fact that some people have harder times than others? There needs to be a change in attitudes.
Culturally I'm thinking about something which might not be what you were asking about -- the responsibility of the society to care for its disadvantaged or "ill fitting" citizens. US does have some programs to help but it's also famously still crushing large groups of its population.
I don't know what the solution would be.
But who are we kidding, it is not. A huge portion of them are too mentally ill to take proper care of them selves; A huge portion prefers the freedom and the drugs and another portion needs forced drug treatment.
But all we ever hear is more money is needed, never what that money should be spent on. Because we both know it won't be spend on more cops to arrest people who shit in public, to keep those arrested for drugs from the places they previously frequented, or to raize illegal homeless camps.
At the same time the citizens need to establish more holistic expectations around what their society is all about.
Materialism, identity defined by an individuals job, tribalism all help and hurt. I think we're missing a kind of consideration / a kind of subsystem in our societal system, resulting in the "unsolvable" situation we find ourselves in now. With a different perspective I think we could find new solutions.
This kind of selfish mentality needs to go away.
Drugs are already completely legal for the underclass - basically, any and all petty crimes are. Our judges dismiss the citations (~65K in one case!), our juries acquit them, our DA refuses to prosecute them, and our cops don't bother at all anymore.
Rich people get to use drugs all the time without even any worry of arrest.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jimdalrympleii/public-d... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/health/san-francisco-opio...
The issue with the legalization approach is lack of intervention infrastructure to help them.
it's not hard to figure out that whatever you're doing in the US is not working. I've been to SF and just walking past Tenderloin is not a preety sight.
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-dec... - https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/59eqqk/ungass-portugal-w...
I don't think any solution short of the government/pharmacies selling/giving clean drugs to people with addictions (As long as they are actively attending counselling programs, that aren't one-size-fits-all 12-step nonsense) is going to work.
[1] Also, a hospital bed to detox in is free, but good luck getting your shit together after you go through withdrawal.
There is no significant provided housing in the city and it's causing the problem to get much worse - decriminalizing drugs has helped quite a bit with street safety though.
Also, 'All the homeless people moving to Vancouver' is a problem, but only a part of it. Most of the non-locals are from small dying towns in the BC interior. They aren't really suited, financially, to dealing with the social problems[1] that result - yet Vancouver would rather close its eyes, and pretend that they don't exist.
Even so, if we sent everyone who isn't originally from Vancouver back to the towns they came from, there would still be a catastrophe of homelessness, overdose deaths, etc.
[1] Yes, it would be much cheaper to provide housing for homeless persons, within their communities, instead of in the most expensive city in Canada. Sadly, nobody in Victoria seems to be keen on fixing this, on a province-wide level. The Liberals didn't care, and the NDP care, but aren't doing anything.
I have never been through a 12-step process but I know a few people who have done it for alcohol and it works for them (I know, survivorship bias etc.)
For some people, it's fixing whatever drove them to a situation where shooting heroin into their arm is a better decision then not shooting heroin their your arm.
For other people, it's switching a dependency on a street drug to a dependency on a prescription drug.
Telling people that they have zero agency in their lives, and that only Jesus can magically cure them - definitely works for some people, but not for everyone.
AA has a success rate of, depending on which study you cite, between 5% and 25%, over doing nothing.
The evidence base for 12 step programmes isn't great.
Unfortunately the US has a load of wilderness-retreat style camps using some half-assed version of a 12 step program. They're very good at getting people's money and attention, but pretty poor at sucessful treatment.
Beth Macey has a good book about the Opioid Crisis and some of it is alarming.
https://www.amazon.com/Dopesick-Dealers-Doctors-Company-Addi...
In the general Portugal population, since the decriminalization, cannabis use is increased, heroin use decreased (thought much less than it decreased among the youth, which means that it likely increased in older groups), cocaine use is increased, amphetamine use is basically the same, LSD use is increased, ecstasy use is increased, and hallucinogenic mushroom use is increased.
If drug decriminalization in Portugal led to increased total drug use, and increased heroin use among people over 35, why exactly you believe that doing the same in the US would solve any problems here?
Gee, I wonder if this is the reason why people say drugs are terrible?
Increased use could be explained by increased availability that is independent of legality (eg: better smuggling routes or larger synthetic batches).
Anyways, reduced opiate use and increased use of the other drugs mentioned generally sounds like a win to me.
I’d also consider more widespread recreational use by previous non-users. I’m not sure if that’s a problem for the lower-dependence risk drugs mentioned.
Also note that it's significantly reduced opiate use among youth (15-34 y.o.): total opiate use only went down a little, which means that it likely has increased among people over 35.
Point is, even if overall drug problems decreased in Portugal (which is not clear to me at all, since total drug use increased), evidence that it's the decriminalization that helped, is flimsy at best.
Intuitively it seems to me like the opposite would be better, if you could not get heroin you couldn’t get addicted to it. But my minimal understanding is it’s too easy to make for enforcement to be practical.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...
Of course, this is in a controlled fashion, and doesn't require legalization.