This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as a whole acquires common sense
Maybe don't allow people to drive under the influence of any drug that's not a stimulant, or improve tests that measure the dose a person is on so we know if they're on normal dose adderal or high on huge doses of meth.
I know law isn't easy to test and iterate but we need something like that in order to improve things, maybe invent temporary laws, specific to certain test cities, which require direct voting to enforce, have a maximum test period and require another vote to lengthen.
Homeless people aren't camping! That's where they live. If you want to make homelessness a crime you could prosecute landlords who evict people with nowhere to go. Why isn't that the crime?
Just think for a minute please about the propaganda you've internalized and are now spreading with these positions. These are complex issues and the view of the police, and police-based solutions, are not the only or best approaches.
Should I commit suicide?
And the extremely high rents means in the US you don’t even need to be jobless to not be able to afford rent. The lowest 10-20% of paying jobs may not pay enough money for a person to live in the area the job exists.
Homelessness in the US is a massive problem. But the homeless are not the cause of homelessness. They’re the victims. The U.S. has multiple failed policies which allows homelessness to exist in the richest country in the world.
And there are solutions across the ideological spectrum. You can go left and have the government give them housing. This is cheap (way cheaper than shelters) and extremely effective. On the extreme right you can stop NIMBYs from allowing housing to be built, which will in itself drop costs and rent.
The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But the US has chosen to simply ignore the solutions altogether.
When the U.S. does pick a solution, it chooses to incarcerate them. Which is the worst possible solution because now you’ve led them to joining a gang and predictably becoming real criminals themselves who now learn know how to rob and steal and commit violence to satisfy their need for money.
And it’s also ridiculously more expensive than all the other solutions above.
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Why must people be subjected to witnessing others misery and self-destruction? If you care so little about their public camping would you also let someone camp in your yard?
You seem to have no sympathy for shop owners that get robbed constantly, if someone robbed you on your way to the car from the grocery store would you also be ok with it?
Of course it makes sense for economically precarious people to move to the city. We should expect and applaud them for making this decision. It’s where all the jobs are.
I think the U.S. overall has low single digits. And even those exist in an extremely dubious legal space, requiring the cops to turn a blind eye to their existence.
[0] - https://missionlocal.org/2022/12/san-francisco-fentanyl-tend...
The authority figure in their lives lied to them about marijjana, and now they think they they’re lying again about fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a poison. It’s killing people. It is not like marijuana.
What has drug prohibition done to help the problem of addiction and violence in the United States?
It is naive to think the war on drugs was ever about protecting people. If the protection of people is a goal, you don't treat the people who need the most help as criminals. Imagine if you discover your brother has a drinking problem and it's destroying his health and finances - is your first instinct to call the police and have him arrested? Most people I think would not even think about that - they would urge him to get help, somehow, through rehab, counseling, any number of things, but no one would say he needs to go to prison.
The only actual criminals involved with drugs are organized crime cartels, gangs, etc that use violence in controlling their market. If you make their product legal and obtainable, they no longer have any incentive to sell it and you eliminate a big chunk of their profits.
Legalizing drugs is about treating addiction as a medical issue instead of a criminal one and eliminating the illicit drug trade which contributes to violence and profits for organized crime.
Drug abuse is a massive problem in those parts of the US where it is de-facto decriminalized on the west coast.
I think the evidence is fairly clear on what would constitute a solution, rather the debate is on whether we’d be willing to pay the costs of that solution.
https://www.outlookindia.com/international/thai-temple-left-...