Yet I question whether we will see actual enforcement.
One might think there is a licensed medical doctor prescribing hard drugs without fear of prosecution, free from law enforcement.
Chinatown residents would certainly disagree whether it has been beneficial for them. Yaletown residents certainly disagree
Insite may not have been a 'de jure' decriminalization, but it was definitely a site where the government acknowledged the laws were not to be followed as written, and was a 'de facto' decriminalization.
Ain't that the real scary thing though? That's it didn't take decades but mere years for things to turn to shit?
To me real evilness is the supposedly compassionate ones, who not only refuse to see evil but also encourage it.
Tell what you object to or what you support and why and then you can have a conversation and possibly arrive at some solutions or at least some knowledge.
A cynical person would never push for (largely unpopular) compassionate/harm-reducing policies.
For the individual drug user things might be “better”, but for cities/society they are absolutely not.
"The theory of deterrence would suggest, for instance, that states with higher rates of drug imprisonment would experience lower rates of drug use among their residents... higher rates of drug imprisonment did not translate into lower rates of drug use, arrests, or overdose deaths."
[0]https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...
Perhaps if prisoners actually received the drug treatment they needed. "To be effective for this population, treatment must begin in prison and be sustained after release through participation in community treatment programs. By engaging in a continuing therapeutic process, people can learn how to avoid relapse and withdraw from a life of crime. However, only a small percentage of those who need treatment while behind bars actually receive it, and often the treatment provided is inadequate."
[1]https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/criminal-justice
But as things currently stand there appears to be "higher rates of substance use disorders in prisons and jails compared to the total population."
[2]https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/01/30/punishing-drug-...
Lack of affordable housing is the number one cause of homelessness and it's not even close (eg [1]). California, in particular, votes in measures to fund housing the homeless but it doesn't really get spent. Why? Because residents, developers and politicians do everything they can to resist building anything to house the homeless in any capacity.
We have decades of long-term incarceration for minor drug possession to show this is not an effective strategy. That's what led to drug decriminzation after the crime panic of the 1980s and 1990s. Decriminalizing drug use is good. If people don't want to see it (which I get), maybe they should do something to house such people, particularly because homelessness itself is a major cause of drug abuse as such people turn to self-medication.
[1]: https://caplinnews.fiu.edu/lack-of-affordable-housing-a-lead...
You want to build a building? Sorry, there's too many jobs in this area already, so you can't hire people to do that.
Seriously, please draft a law to enact this policy. It sounds hilarious.
Homelessness isn't a monolith. Treating someone who gets evicted after job loss the same as mentally ill drug addicts is making the problem worse. Homeless assistant programs are successful at helping people who accept the help.
The drug addicts you see on the streets are engaging in destructive antisocial behavior. Sadly the only effective remedy for this behavior is to be roughed up by police and thrown in jail.
But lack of affordable housing is still the number one cause.
We only claim someone's problems are entirely due to drug use when they hit skid row. We don't predict homelessness for millionaire rock stars who go to rehab repeatedly.
Drug use doesn't cause homelessness. Lack of housing causes homelessness.
The real solution is: We need to fix the housing crisis.
At that point, isn’t a moral judgement, just an effective use of limited resources (do we burn money trying to treat drug addicts who try to cook meth in the housing you give them, or do we spend $2k/month getting that non addict an apartment so they can get a job).
B. I would like to address the housing crisis per se as a first line of defense rather than wait until people are homeless and then try to decide who merits help and what the cost-benefit ratio is and etc.
For many people, if there was enough affordable housing, this whole argument about their merits and defects and etc wouldn't happen at all. There would, no doubt, be other arguments but my research indicates lack of affordable housing is the primary issue here.
The only debate right now is whether the first category mostly leads to the second category (and vice versa if the second mostly comes from the first). That is should we just treat the categories the same or not, then more affordable housing would help if most people in category two are coming from one. If the assumption is wrong, we will still see people on the streets even if housing is affordable.
The other part of the debate is whether these problems are local or national, which has implications in how homeless programs are funded and where the affordable housing should be built. If all of the country’s homeless decides to move to SF, Seattle, LA for their affordable housing, the program will obviously fail.
You: "Let's throw a bunch a people off a cliff and then assess who is worth saving afterwards!"
Me: "Let's stop throwing people off a cliff. If we stop doing that, we can stop arguing about who is too broken to save and whether or not it's a personal character defect that they ended up more broken than others who got thrown off the same cliff."
Lawmakers can’t magic up affordable housing, especially at the federal level. I get people have crazy ideas, but this is the craziest. We could do what Singapore or Austria does with a residency system, though, but progressives don’t like that either.
Me: "Thanks guys!"
I’d absolutely choose going all-in on affordable housing over a return to the war on drugs or doubling down on catastrophic decrim. But without limits on in-migration for social programs, the idea seems frustratingly doomed from the start.
The solution to this in-migration should be clear. These programs need to be offered in every single city in the entire country. People need to pay more taxes to fund social programs. I'm clearly not American ;)
But your point is valid. That said there's still probably enough friction in the system such that someone living in a certain place isn't just going to move to Santa Barbara. Moving is expensive and has uncertainties. People coming today to places like Portland or Vancouver, BC, are desperate. If they had some basic support where they're currently living they would be a lot less likely to take those risks.
I’m not sure if people would stay put in say great falls MT if the support was better. But even among the well to do housed, they often move from these towns because the economic opportunities are better in larger richer cities. People have freedom of movement in the USA and mostly use it across the economic spectrum.
The problem isn't simply housing costs. The problem is the lack of a social support structure. Shelters, access to (mental) health care of various forms, addiction treatment etc... Even in "socialist" (ha) Canada you're mostly on your own. BC used to have more money for those things and at some point in the early 2000's those budgets were cut with pretty immediate impact on the homelessness situation. That said housing should be part of the solution but it all boils down to the attitude that you don't need to take care of ($$$) your neighbor. Each to their own. Worse in the US ofcourse but still.
When I came to Vancouver ~23 years ago I was absolutely shocked by the homeless situation. I've never seen anything like that. It's much worse now. Again, boils down to are members of society willing to take care of each other- or is it each to their own and ignore the people who are down. House prices were 1/8th of what they are now but there was no shortage of drug addicts on the streets. North Americans seem to generally be ok with having a mix of worse than the 3rd world alongside middle class and well off. Nobody cares about what goes on in their city. I guess not trending on TikTok.
Houston for example simply throws your ass in jail if you’re doing drugs and houses you if you aren’t. They claim to have solved homelessness, and they have in that the actual folks you’re talking about end up housed or in shelters every night.
Being married to an immigrant who actually had to struggle in a third world country with almost no social or economic mobility has left me with almost no sympathy for the homeless in America. Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
> Folks in far shittier situations than them play their hands far better.
Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If these folks were screwed up from the beginning doesn't this mean they had no hand to play from the start?
There are many, many folks in third world countries that don't make it through life too well either. Life is pretty doomed for you if you're just born in Sudan right now for example. Yet some, very few, of them will succeed in extirpating themselves from the situation.
Statistically there will always be people who fare better than others, through a combination of sweat, blood, and luck. I don't know if it's fair to have "almost no sympathy" for the ones who were too stupid and unlucky to be winners.
Still I think you meant extricate.
Luckily, we have studies we can rely on rather than feelings or Youtuber anecdata eg [1]:
> In many instances, substance abuse is the result of the stress of homelessness, rather than the other way around. Many people begin using drugs or alcohol as a way of coping with the pressures of homelessness
[1]: https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/homeless
Every single one of them had a home when they started using the hard drugs, and many had a home through most of their addiction, and only became homeless after the addiction had progressed to severe levels.
If most people have personal experience like mine, then maybe there are issues with the research (people blaming their personal failings on things outside of their control, for example)
This seems anecdotal too. Very meta.
In any case, I'd rather trust actual research rather than a random HN user and what they feel most people's experiences are like.
Those aren't mutually exclusive, and furthermore, they likely have major overlap.
As clearly evidenced by decades of this very successful strategy.
Why can't the community do the same thing you do personally?
Many (most?) of the homeless you see around you are your community. They don't need to be invited into the city because it's their home too.
I live in SF and I know homeless people who have lived on the same street corner longer than some of my coworkers have lived in the city (or even the country). Many of the people who experience such misfortunes - even drug addicts who behave poorly - are long-time residents who once helped make the city the place it is. Sure their behave causes issues, and society needs to do something, but implying they don't have a claim to be helped in their own city is unfair.
The second one. Over and over again. And when they are adults and we've given them a few more chances, we should then cut our losses. Many families go through the heartbreak which is trying again and again and failing. I don't judge those families, and know a few of those personally. And this is people's blood relatives. Extrapolate from that what you will.
Someone's claim to live in a good community ends when they start actively destroying that community day after day. You get the community you work to build; you don't get to live in my wonderful community every day while you daily do horrifying things to ruin it.
This is the only way good communities can exist.
Plus, productive citizens need to share a society with the drug addicted homeless. That society is going to be more peaceful if the needs of those homeless are met.
maybe the people downvoting you have some kind of skin in the game and are benefiting from the housing shortage
[1]: https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to...
What there has been is decades of "maybe years in jail for drug use is excessive?", to which some places said "let's have less restrictions on drug use than we do on alcohol" which is absurd though I suspect less harmful in the long term, but many have doubled down on punishment.
That is ignoring the demonstrable bias in enforcement of drug crimes, that meant that even in heavily policed and restrictive areas the drug laws primarily act as a method to criminalize specific social groups (drugs used by the wealthy generally have lower penalties than those use by everyone else, enforcement of drug crimes means that despite every study on the topic showing little racial split in use, the overwhelming majority of people in prison for weed use in the US are black).
Treat drugs the same way we treat alcohol: taxed, regulated, age restricted, etc (and please get people to stop smoking joints at concerts. I don't understand why people who would never consider smoking a cigarette inside then light up a joint in a crowded hall.)
Which is why we have a massive network of treatment and diversion programs often initiated by courts directly. It's been a long time since we've had a true "black and white" enforcement regime.
> drugs used by the wealthy generally have lower penalties than those use by everyone else
Wealthy people smoke crack too. What they can afford is to insulate themselves from the risk by being several layers removed from the transactions.
> Treat drugs the same way we treat alcohol
There are dry counties. There are states with specific ABV prohibitions in certain products and with dispensing limits in establishments. Some states have state operated liquor stores. The way we treat alcohol is not homogenous.
Then we'd have to get into product safety, licensing and liability concerns. What process should a "herion shop" be required to submit to before opening?
Do you mind linking to some data on this?
If people want to shoot up at home that’s fine. But there’s no reason we need to have large meth/fentanyl encampments with violent and severely mentally ill people on the streets in addition to that.
If you have too many chaotic policies that build up on each other it’s gonna end poorly as we’ve seen