The real reason is that you drinking a beer is easy to deal with at every level of escalation.
The homeless using drugs in the street are not.
The homeless using drugs in the street are not.
The older I get, the more I can empathize with Cypher from the first Matrix movie. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
This happened with me right after they reverted the pandemic decision to allow alcohol there and I didn't know. I was drinking in good faith like I did for several months when they allowed it during lockdown.
Still, it is very frustrating that the beer would warrant a couple of park rangers to approach and enforce, while just a few meters away someone was doing hard drugs visibly completely out of their minds and screaming at passer byes.