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Comment by huytersd | Hacker News Reader

Solution is easy. If you’re visibly publicly intoxicated with hard drugs, you go to a special rehab that’s essentially prison without the violent criminals. If you’re already a violent criminal, you get put into a segregated area. You then get forcibly treated. If youv’e stayed clean for a set number of months, you get to leave. None of this shows up on any permanent/criminal record.

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Christ, I’ve been visibly publicly intoxicated with hard drugs on a number of occasions (many years ago) while holding down a respectable middle class professional job (and being good at it!). If I’d been forced into months(!!) of rehab I’d have lost my job and had to move cities and/or change industries (it’s a small world and people talk).

And the scariest thing (for me personally) is that even if I knew that was a potential outcome, I don’t think it would have stopped me. And I wasn’t a junkie or hopeless addict by any means.

You can probably make the same argument for someone with an alcohol DUI but we still deal with that issue severely. We need more of that here.

Agreed. I will add that we’ve come full circle on psychiatric hospitals, which is essentially what you’re describing in different words. Budget cuts and deinstitutionalization meant many of those were closed down 50 years ago.

In no small part because psychiatric hospitals were wildly, wildly abused. Basically you could lock people up indefinitely with no conviction of anything because someone said they’re a danger to themselves/society/whatever. Basically used like an on-shore Guantanamo.

Simple solution; require convictions. The problem wasn't with locking up junkies, the problems was doing it without due process.

Create laws against public drug use, then enforce them.

Set them up again but increase inspections and have maximum times you can keep a person there.

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