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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I think too many people equate spending money to doing good, and everything is measured against today's prior projected spending levels. To put this in context:

FY 2012: The SAMHSA budget authority was $3,386,903,000

FY 2024: The President's Budget Request was $10.8 billion, an increase of $3.3 billion from the 2023 Enacted level.

That's about 9% increase every year. These programs didn't always exist and they have grown considerably over time while addiction and mental health have both gotten considerably worse during that period. I think it's worth re-evaluating to see if these programs are doing anything.

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The the thing is, I agree, but I don't think that decision should be made unilaterally by a branch of government that has no constitutional authority to do so, under questionable circumstances, without expert input, in the middle of funding.

This is basically breaking a financial contract that was put in place by the branch of government that is constitutionally in control of financial contracts.

As I said elsewhere, it also is legally and conceptually at odds with declaring a National Emergency over drug traffic.

It's getting rolled up into another agency, kind of like when the when SAMHSA replaced the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA), consolidating treatment functions previously managed by the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Again, these programs didn't always exist. Things shouldn't be talked about in relative terms, but absolute. We should spend X on a problem and based on that spending we should see Y. If we don't we should reevaluate. That's how normal accountable programs work and government should not be exempt

You honestly think anyone in the US wants to evaluate just why Americans turning to drugs? Nobody wants to open up that can of worms.

After binge watching hundreds of hours of police videos and journalists that ride with police I would lean towards prescription pain killers being the root cause. Doctors prescribe a powerful drug. The prescription expires. They turn to street alternatives Fentanyl at the moment. They are now zombies. Getting off of Fent is near impossible for most so they are run through the system. It takes 6 months of being in treatment to get 89% of people off that drug. Keeping people in treatment that long is challenging to put it mildly. According to law enforcement the only things making a difference are NARCAN and blocking Fentanyl from entering the country.

and what branch has the constitutionally to throw my money at these issues?

Congress is the right answer to the question I think

The problem here is that the same can be said to spending trillions of dollars _after_ COVID was gone.

It's quite common for goverments that cut spending aggressively getting hated (I have seen in other country where I was born and raised), but that's the only way to do it.

Politicians know that they usually don't get reelected after cutting spending, that's why they usually put in a temporary prime minister for that job.

Your premise here seems to be that these programs are somehow meant to "solve" addiction, when in reality they're mostly critically underfunded, understaffed, attempts to paper over multiple sucking chest wounds.

The opioid crisis created a LOT of addicts, the rise of fentanyl is killing a lot of people, and combined with the mental health problems you tend to find in and around addict populations, this is a genuinely huge problem. Without a suitable mental health infrastructure, all you have left are the prisons, streets, and programs like this.

I agree that this is an inefficient way to address the problem and that a major re-evaluation is required, but probably in quite the opposite way you mean it.

No. The government's war on drugs created the opioid crisis.

I don't think it created it, but it exasperated it to extreme levels.

I'm pretty sure that the Sackler family and Oxy did that.

It's the same when you hear about how they built 100 tiny homes in LA and find out the programs budget was in the billions. Where is the money really going?

Where did this claim come from?

This is a monstrous twisting of the facts.

The plan to attack homelessness was a billion dollars.

The tiny home program is $80M.

They've build 100 homes so far of a planned 500, and are in the process of acquiring land.

In fact there will be 1200 homes built for that $80M, about $70,000 each.

I can't see any way you can know enough about this program that it exists, and yet spin this so horribly. "Billions to build 100 tiny homes in LA". If you knew of the 100 homes, you also know that about 500 have been constructed so far. But hey.

"Where is the money really going?"

That's what DOGE should lay out in a clear manner. But they don't.

The US Congress has budgeting authority. Says so in the constitution. The only fair way to do this sort of thing is hammer it out in Congress. Otherwise, it's just an exercise in deploying power, and people get upset. It's the other side of "no taxation without representation".

If the executive branch just up and does this as an exercise im dominance, it gives everyone whose metaphorical ox got hired the idea that they, too, can exercise dominance and get what they want.

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