36 ms·

I lean heavily towards giving people the freedom to do what they want, but in 'private' and without burdening public life of others. If people want to light up

by gedy 7y ago

I lean heavily towards giving people the freedom to do what they want, but in 'private' and without burdening public life of others. If people want to light up or shoot up, so be it. But I think a community must have ways to discourage or push people out of the public sphere who practice unwelcome and unsocial behavior. The gov't fully feeding, clothing, and sheltering large groups of addicts is impractical and unviable in most/all places.

wil421 7y ago
If they aren’t going to charge you for drugs surely they could arrest you for public intoxicating or disorderly conduct. Drunk people get arrested frequently. Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine. If they want to get into some kind of treatment or non-profit home waive the fine. The goal is to provide incentives to get sober but not ruin someone’s job prospects forever for being addicted.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine. That is Hollywood, not reality. Tossing happy drunks into cells to sober up overnight is not a thing. (1) There are no happy drunks. The drunks cops arrest are loud and aggressive. Often the physical act of arresting them results in more violent behavior. (2) "Drunk" is not a thing for cops. They don't know if the person has had too many beers or had just taken LSD, or both. If they assume a person is simply drunk, and that person dies in the cell of an overdose, the cops will be responsible because they isolated that person. Cops are forced to treat intoxicated persons is more like patients than a 'drunks'. (3) Mental health problems can look like, or at least exacerbate, intoxication. Cops cannot casually lock people up under the assumption they are dunk when in all likelihood they may be a non-drunk person in the middle of an episode. So cops must test people, evaluate them to determine what is at play. That takes time/money. (4) Police cells are not happy places. They aren't private 8x4s with a soft cot. Spend a night in an LA lockup. You will not be getting much sleep. Casually throwing hundreds of drunk people into that mix will not help. Assuming this is just about happy drunks, businesses that get people drunk and let them loose on the streets share the responsibility. We cannot allow bars and liquor stores, and their patrons, to rely on a pleasant police force ready to keep drunk people safe after the bar closes. If a bar is going to serve someone to the point of arrest-worthy intoxication they must contribute to the cost of keeping that person safe. I saw a BBC doc yesterday about drinking in the UK. They have stores selling 3-liter bottles of 7.5% cider for four dollars. That is ridiculous. 3-liter bottles of dirt-cheap alcohol, cheaper than coke, are not bought by happy social drinkers. Any store selling those knows what it is doing.
  - wil421 7y ago
    People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie. I know at least 30 friends, family, fraternity brothers, and classmates who were arrested for being drunk in college or minor possession of alcohol for doing something stupid and being too young. I also know people who had drug habits when they were 18/19 and were arrested for drugs. Some quit college immediately because they knew their job prospects would be limited. Last time I went to a baseball game someone got arrested for having a thc vape. It’s a felony in my state.
    - Clubber 7y ago
      Unfortunately, at least in the US, the societal "cure" for drugs is most often far worse than damage from the actual drug.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - koolba 7y ago
      > People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie. Context and witnesses matter as well. There's a big difference between the police being called to handle drunks at a sports event and a passer by calling 911 to report someone intoxicated on the street. There's no context for the latter.
    - sandworm101 7y ago
      Music festivals, baseball games and college? Not everyone can afford baseball games and music festivals. That isn't the typical drunk arrest. Those are the polite cops. Back when I did this stuff I dealt with clients attested under bridges, while at work, on their porches, even in their own bedrooms. Permission to 'lock up drunks' is an open door for every police corruption and bias.
      - 7y ago
- smileysteve 7y ago
  > Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine Thats sounds great except 1. Accusing the police of questionable arrest tactics, mistreatment, death while in police custody (even from lack of treatment) is already a PR issue that has caused huge public outcry. 2. Overdosing and sobering up isn't strictly safe on alcohol or on opioids. Where drug overdoses are a top killer in society right now. 3. Homeless and drug addled people don't have the cash to pay a small cash fine. They just spent it on their last score, or the only cash they have is stolen or pan handled. And if they don't have the money to pay, you've just criminalized them more or put them further into a debt they will never pay. 4. Denial is the first sign of a problem. Sure, tell a stranger to go to rehab. Thanks to the undoing of forced institutionalizing, that's all you can offer.
aisenik 7y ago
I'm a transgender woman. Applying your thought process seems to me, inevitably, to mean I can't live in society. I work downtown cooking for a bar (despite my deep involvement in tech as a child/teen and early work programming and some infrastructure stuff, life's challenges haven't enabled me access to significant wealth or appreciable social status). I've found survival, and I deal with drug addicts, mentally ill, the deeply traumatized and abandoned. The biggest thing anyone needs in these circumstances is love and acceptance. Coming from a place of privilege, your leaning to exclude the suffering from society is wildly antisocial and a leading cause of the rise in "eat the rich" mentalities.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I don't think you being transgender relates at all to what the parent post was saying. No one wants to watch someone shoot up heroin on the sidewalk (and potentially step on a dirty needle). No one wants to second hand smoke crack. It's a public safety issue to move some of these activities out of public spaces. I'm not even commenting on whether these things should be legal in private, but there are very good reasons they shouldn't be allowed in public.
  - aisenik 7y ago
    Okay, so, guys. People literally think i'm a child molester. People like my dad. People like the two guys who assaulted me for absolutely no reason, in public, while no bystanders did anything whatsoever (as a trans woman, i'm glad he police weren't called -- my friends have been arrested and charged in similar circumstances). Get out of your bubble.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      That’s an entirely separate issue to what this post is about though. This is about making drug use legal.
      - SkyBelow 7y ago
        Not really. The original post said the following. >But I think a community must have ways to discourage or push people out of the public sphere who practice unwelcome and unsocial behavior. The point is, in much of even modern day US, and even more so in the past, just existing as a transgender individual who doesn't attempt to pass is deemed by a significant portion of society as unwelcome and unsocial. When you tie discrimination to what is deemed unacceptable behavior, you encounter an issue when deal with a society that deems acceptable behavior as unacceptable.
shaki-dora 7y ago
The US has 500,000 homeless people. Let's say it would cost about $1,500 per month to provide them with basic lodging and basic needs. That's $9 billion per year, or about $30 per citizen. As a comparison: The F-35 fighter program is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 55 years. That's $27 billion per year, or about three times as much as it would cost to fix homelessness. Let's compare with what you're advocating, which appears to be the status quo. The existence of homeless people (not all of whom are drug addicts, by the way) shows that drug criminalisation doesn't work. Homeless people don't need more suffering to finally get their act together. Life on the streets is plenty uncomfortable and dangerous, and nobody operating according to your simplistic model of sticks & carrots would chose it. Further criminalising behaviour you don't like such as being badly dressed or prone to shouting random, schizophrenia-induced nonsense seems not just heartless, but rather close to dividing society into your kind and "subhumans" to be exterminated. Because if you don't think they deserve food or shelter, and you want to drive them out of cities (and, presumably, towns) where are they supposed to go? I want to be as charitable as possible here, but "push[ing] people out of the public sphere" seems to be a euphemism to bus them into the desert and not watch them die. Being slightly annoyed by homeless people is also the least you can do if you actually believe in the "public sphere" as a community of citizens, and not just the place to get cheap takeout. If others' suffering cuts into your bliss, either through its annoying smells and sounds or because there are remnants of empathy in play, that should be motivation to solve the problem. There are many countries poorer than the US that have far smaller homeless populations, so it is entirely possible.
- wang_li 7y ago
  > Let's say it would cost about $1,500 per month to provide them with basic lodging and basic needs. You can say that, but it's very, very incorrect. Seattle spends $1 billion on services, clean up, housing, and etc. for a homeless population of 12,000. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of-homelessness-seattle-king-county-costs.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of...
  - magduf 7y ago
    Then they're doing something wrong, because that comes out to $83k per person, which is much higher than the average yearly salary for Americans. They'd do better just giving these people $1500/month to live on, along with some counseling services to get them reintegrated into society.
MisterTea 7y ago
Possession and public use/display are two different things. Do not confuse the two. It's the same with alcohol, I can legally walk or drive around with a sealed container during transport. If I open that container in public and drink from it, I am breaking the law. I 100% agree that possession of any drug should not lead to automatic arrest. But public consumption should not go unpunished nor should it be encouraged. Though, what is a good compromise for punishing public consumption? I say confiscate the drugs and paraphernalia while offering help as a good start. Arresting them just wastes time and money as once released they will go right back to doing what got them there in the first place. Jail is useless, they need a complete reboot in life which is extraordinarily difficult. I have no solution for that as there is no one size fits all approach.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  why does public use have to be punished?
  - sdfsafsafas 7y ago
    Because having junkies and drunks meandering about significantly decreases the liability of the public space to the majority of people. Life isn't like in college full of debauchery and little of how our actions affect others . The public space is a space where we all have the responsibility to ensure that our enjoyment doesn't trample on others. Including: - Not speeding on a street. (it's not a road, it's a street) - Cleaning up for yourself - Not making a nuisance of yourself - Not taking drugs/booze at the playground [0] - Ignoring the "dogs on a leash" or "no dogs allowed" sign [0] Don't worry. If you're intoxicated or doing drugs in my kids playground, I'm calling the police. Why does my kid have to dodge your drunk ass or your syringes to get to the slide?
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      it seems like your position is that Behavior A often leads to Behavior B. Behavior B can harm you or your kid, so make Behavior A illegal. there's a difference between a guy quietly enjoying a beer on a park bench and a drunk plowing through children on a playground. you don't need a blanket ban on public use just to have an excuse to arrest people who are actually harming others. unless you're arguing that the mere sight of people being on drugs/alcohol harms you. in that case I propose that we also make it illegal not to bathe. dirty people make public spaces "unliveable" for me.
foota 7y ago
It's really not though. It would probably cost a couple hundred million tops to do that for everyone in the Seattle area. We'd need to raise a tax to do it for sure, but it'd represent a fairly low burden.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Agreed, until word got out.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jdavis703 7y ago
Earlier this year I was hanging out at Dolores Park in San Francisco. There was a scantily-clad white guy who kept going up to various groups and obviously masturbating. Nearby was a POC smoking weed. When a cop came through guess who got a ticket? The guy smoking weed — and this is despite that weed is supposed to be the lowest priority crime in SF. When laws are enforced this arbitrarily it’s no wonder governments are taking enforcement away from beat cops.
- Tsubasachan 7y ago
  Its difficult. Everyone's in favour of arresting black people for smoking crack. But the law is supposed to be equal. You have to arrest college kids doing XTC or gays who snort cocaine too. And that will create massive public outrage and a waste of prosecution's time.
mises 7y ago
Here's the other important thing: if you want to allow private use and criminalize public abuse, fine. Do that. But don't stop enforcing the law, lest you set (or strengthen) the precedent that the law is bent for political expediency. Change the law, don't just "stop enforcing it". Besides, if the goal is to provide lasting change, it makes more sense: a different enforcer could make a different decision. It's a little more difficult to rebuild support for legislative action (to, say, re-criminalize something) than for an administrator to do it.
elamje 7y ago
Some of the discussion in this thread has brought to light some interesting things. 1) Where is the line for what is socially acceptable to do in public? 2) If a line exists, why does it exist where it does? 3) Should there be a standard that society must follow, so we don’t end up with drug litter, litter, and human waste on the streets and around us all of the time? Some commenters have brought up that maybe there should not be a standard that we strive to achieve with regards to public behavior and cleanliness. I am concerned that slowly we are becoming so individualistic(in the since of other people can do whatever they want), and liberal with standards of behavior, that the worst kinds of behavior will eventually be permitted because that is “their right” to act that way. I am curious if other people feel that we are not very far from being a society that keeps saying “everything is permissible, because anyone has the right to do as they please.” Or I might be extremely alone in this regard.
- NotAnEconomist 7y ago
  That situation devolves into violence against people. Visit Seattle: there's needles all over the city, trash strewn everywhere, and mounds of human feces. Society can't exist with feces on the street and strewn out junkies throwing trash around public spaces, because people are willing to use force to keep that away for their children and themselves. If leftists genuinely value the ability to help people, they need to check their toxic empathy, before the leftist desire to seize property "on behalf of others" brings them into armed conflict with people protecting their families.
rorykoehler 7y ago
Good policies can reduce the number of addicts to the minimum (there will always be a subset of the population that will fall into addiction but it can be low enough to not be a public health concern). Practically everything America does, from extreme inequality, normalised predatory capitalism, no public healthcare, rent seeking drugs companies who push opioids on vulnerable patients, terrible social policies and pathetic public schooling etc etc is counter productive to reducing the number junkies.
Tsubasachan 7y ago
In a healthy society very few people find the junkie lifestyle appealing so that's not really much of a problem.
TheOperator 7y ago
You can still charge people for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. This is just taking away charging people for having fentanyl in their purse. >The gov't fully feeding, clothing, and sheltering large groups of addicts is impractical and unviable in most/all places. It's completely viable it's just impractical. There are not THAT many homeless people. However there are diminishing returns for everything... Some people are on the street because they trash any home they're given access to. Also the better you take care of this population the more homeless people move to your progressive enlightened area. It's viable but nobody wants to pay for that shit when there are other social goods you could be doing.

by gedy 7y ago

wil421 7y ago

If they aren’t going to charge you for drugs surely they could arrest you for public intoxicating or disorderly conduct. Drunk people get arrested frequently. Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine. If they want to get into some kind of treatment or non-profit home waive the fine. The goal is to provide incentives to get sober but not ruin someone’s job prospects forever for being addicted.

sandworm101 7y ago
>> Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine. That is Hollywood, not reality. Tossing happy drunks into cells to sober up overnight is not a thing. (1) There are no happy drunks. The drunks cops arrest are loud and aggressive. Often the physical act of arresting them results in more violent behavior. (2) "Drunk" is not a thing for cops. They don't know if the person has had too many beers or had just taken LSD, or both. If they assume a person is simply drunk, and that person dies in the cell of an overdose, the cops will be responsible because they isolated that person. Cops are forced to treat intoxicated persons is more like patients than a 'drunks'. (3) Mental health problems can look like, or at least exacerbate, intoxication. Cops cannot casually lock people up under the assumption they are dunk when in all likelihood they may be a non-drunk person in the middle of an episode. So cops must test people, evaluate them to determine what is at play. That takes time/money. (4) Police cells are not happy places. They aren't private 8x4s with a soft cot. Spend a night in an LA lockup. You will not be getting much sleep. Casually throwing hundreds of drunk people into that mix will not help. Assuming this is just about happy drunks, businesses that get people drunk and let them loose on the streets share the responsibility. We cannot allow bars and liquor stores, and their patrons, to rely on a pleasant police force ready to keep drunk people safe after the bar closes. If a bar is going to serve someone to the point of arrest-worthy intoxication they must contribute to the cost of keeping that person safe. I saw a BBC doc yesterday about drinking in the UK. They have stores selling 3-liter bottles of 7.5% cider for four dollars. That is ridiculous. 3-liter bottles of dirt-cheap alcohol, cheaper than coke, are not bought by happy social drinkers. Any store selling those knows what it is doing.
- wil421 7y ago
  People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie. I know at least 30 friends, family, fraternity brothers, and classmates who were arrested for being drunk in college or minor possession of alcohol for doing something stupid and being too young. I also know people who had drug habits when they were 18/19 and were arrested for drugs. Some quit college immediately because they knew their job prospects would be limited. Last time I went to a baseball game someone got arrested for having a thc vape. It’s a felony in my state.
  - Clubber 7y ago
    Unfortunately, at least in the US, the societal "cure" for drugs is most often far worse than damage from the actual drug.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - koolba 7y ago
    > People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie. Context and witnesses matter as well. There's a big difference between the police being called to handle drunks at a sports event and a passer by calling 911 to report someone intoxicated on the street. There's no context for the latter.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Music festivals, baseball games and college? Not everyone can afford baseball games and music festivals. That isn't the typical drunk arrest. Those are the polite cops. Back when I did this stuff I dealt with clients attested under bridges, while at work, on their porches, even in their own bedrooms. Permission to 'lock up drunks' is an open door for every police corruption and bias.
    - 7y ago
smileysteve 7y ago
> Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine Thats sounds great except 1. Accusing the police of questionable arrest tactics, mistreatment, death while in police custody (even from lack of treatment) is already a PR issue that has caused huge public outcry. 2. Overdosing and sobering up isn't strictly safe on alcohol or on opioids. Where drug overdoses are a top killer in society right now. 3. Homeless and drug addled people don't have the cash to pay a small cash fine. They just spent it on their last score, or the only cash they have is stolen or pan handled. And if they don't have the money to pay, you've just criminalized them more or put them further into a debt they will never pay. 4. Denial is the first sign of a problem. Sure, tell a stranger to go to rehab. Thanks to the undoing of forced institutionalizing, that's all you can offer.

aisenik 7y ago

I'm a transgender woman. Applying your thought process seems to me, inevitably, to mean I can't live in society. I work downtown cooking for a bar (despite my deep involvement in tech as a child/teen and early work programming and some infrastructure stuff, life's challenges haven't enabled me access to significant wealth or appreciable social status). I've found survival, and I deal with drug addicts, mentally ill, the deeply traumatized and abandoned. The biggest thing anyone needs in these circumstances is love and acceptance. Coming from a place of privilege, your leaning to exclude the suffering from society is wildly antisocial and a leading cause of the rise in "eat the rich" mentalities.

malvosenior 7y ago
I don't think you being transgender relates at all to what the parent post was saying. No one wants to watch someone shoot up heroin on the sidewalk (and potentially step on a dirty needle). No one wants to second hand smoke crack. It's a public safety issue to move some of these activities out of public spaces. I'm not even commenting on whether these things should be legal in private, but there are very good reasons they shouldn't be allowed in public.
- aisenik 7y ago
  Okay, so, guys. People literally think i'm a child molester. People like my dad. People like the two guys who assaulted me for absolutely no reason, in public, while no bystanders did anything whatsoever (as a trans woman, i'm glad he police weren't called -- my friends have been arrested and charged in similar circumstances). Get out of your bubble.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    That’s an entirely separate issue to what this post is about though. This is about making drug use legal.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      Not really. The original post said the following. >But I think a community must have ways to discourage or push people out of the public sphere who practice unwelcome and unsocial behavior. The point is, in much of even modern day US, and even more so in the past, just existing as a transgender individual who doesn't attempt to pass is deemed by a significant portion of society as unwelcome and unsocial. When you tie discrimination to what is deemed unacceptable behavior, you encounter an issue when deal with a society that deems acceptable behavior as unacceptable.

shaki-dora 7y ago

The US has 500,000 homeless people. Let's say it would cost about $1,500 per month to provide them with basic lodging and basic needs. That's $9 billion per year, or about $30 per citizen. As a comparison: The F-35 fighter program is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 55 years. That's $27 billion per year, or about three times as much as it would cost to fix homelessness. Let's compare with what you're advocating, which appears to be the status quo. The existence of homeless people (not all of whom are drug addicts, by the way) shows that drug criminalisation doesn't work. Homeless people don't need more suffering to finally get their act together. Life on the streets is plenty uncomfortable and dangerous, and nobody operating according to your simplistic model of sticks & carrots would chose it. Further criminalising behaviour you don't like such as being badly dressed or prone to shouting random, schizophrenia-induced nonsense seems not just heartless, but rather close to dividing society into your kind and "subhumans" to be exterminated. Because if you don't think they deserve food or shelter, and you want to drive them out of cities (and, presumably, towns) where are they supposed to go? I want to be as charitable as possible here, but "push[ing] people out of the public sphere" seems to be a euphemism to bus them into the desert and not watch them die. Being slightly annoyed by homeless people is also the least you can do if you actually believe in the "public sphere" as a community of citizens, and not just the place to get cheap takeout. If others' suffering cuts into your bliss, either through its annoying smells and sounds or because there are remnants of empathy in play, that should be motivation to solve the problem. There are many countries poorer than the US that have far smaller homeless populations, so it is entirely possible.

wang_li 7y ago
> Let's say it would cost about $1,500 per month to provide them with basic lodging and basic needs. You can say that, but it's very, very incorrect. Seattle spends $1 billion on services, clean up, housing, and etc. for a homeless population of 12,000. https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of-homelessness-seattle-king-county-costs.html https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2017/11/16/price-of...
- magduf 7y ago
  Then they're doing something wrong, because that comes out to $83k per person, which is much higher than the average yearly salary for Americans. They'd do better just giving these people $1500/month to live on, along with some counseling services to get them reintegrated into society.

MisterTea 7y ago

Possession and public use/display are two different things. Do not confuse the two. It's the same with alcohol, I can legally walk or drive around with a sealed container during transport. If I open that container in public and drink from it, I am breaking the law. I 100% agree that possession of any drug should not lead to automatic arrest. But public consumption should not go unpunished nor should it be encouraged. Though, what is a good compromise for punishing public consumption? I say confiscate the drugs and paraphernalia while offering help as a good start. Arresting them just wastes time and money as once released they will go right back to doing what got them there in the first place. Jail is useless, they need a complete reboot in life which is extraordinarily difficult. I have no solution for that as there is no one size fits all approach.

leetcrew 7y ago
why does public use have to be punished?
- sdfsafsafas 7y ago
  Because having junkies and drunks meandering about significantly decreases the liability of the public space to the majority of people. Life isn't like in college full of debauchery and little of how our actions affect others . The public space is a space where we all have the responsibility to ensure that our enjoyment doesn't trample on others. Including: - Not speeding on a street. (it's not a road, it's a street) - Cleaning up for yourself - Not making a nuisance of yourself - Not taking drugs/booze at the playground [0] - Ignoring the "dogs on a leash" or "no dogs allowed" sign [0] Don't worry. If you're intoxicated or doing drugs in my kids playground, I'm calling the police. Why does my kid have to dodge your drunk ass or your syringes to get to the slide?
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    it seems like your position is that Behavior A often leads to Behavior B. Behavior B can harm you or your kid, so make Behavior A illegal. there's a difference between a guy quietly enjoying a beer on a park bench and a drunk plowing through children on a playground. you don't need a blanket ban on public use just to have an excuse to arrest people who are actually harming others. unless you're arguing that the mere sight of people being on drugs/alcohol harms you. in that case I propose that we also make it illegal not to bathe. dirty people make public spaces "unliveable" for me.

foota 7y ago

It's really not though. It would probably cost a couple hundred million tops to do that for everyone in the Seattle area. We'd need to raise a tax to do it for sure, but it'd represent a fairly low burden.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
Agreed, until word got out.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jdavis703 7y ago

Earlier this year I was hanging out at Dolores Park in San Francisco. There was a scantily-clad white guy who kept going up to various groups and obviously masturbating. Nearby was a POC smoking weed. When a cop came through guess who got a ticket? The guy smoking weed — and this is despite that weed is supposed to be the lowest priority crime in SF. When laws are enforced this arbitrarily it’s no wonder governments are taking enforcement away from beat cops.

Tsubasachan 7y ago
Its difficult. Everyone's in favour of arresting black people for smoking crack. But the law is supposed to be equal. You have to arrest college kids doing XTC or gays who snort cocaine too. And that will create massive public outrage and a waste of prosecution's time.

mises 7y ago

Here's the other important thing: if you want to allow private use and criminalize public abuse, fine. Do that. But don't stop enforcing the law, lest you set (or strengthen) the precedent that the law is bent for political expediency. Change the law, don't just "stop enforcing it". Besides, if the goal is to provide lasting change, it makes more sense: a different enforcer could make a different decision. It's a little more difficult to rebuild support for legislative action (to, say, re-criminalize something) than for an administrator to do it.

elamje 7y ago

Some of the discussion in this thread has brought to light some interesting things. 1) Where is the line for what is socially acceptable to do in public? 2) If a line exists, why does it exist where it does? 3) Should there be a standard that society must follow, so we don’t end up with drug litter, litter, and human waste on the streets and around us all of the time? Some commenters have brought up that maybe there should not be a standard that we strive to achieve with regards to public behavior and cleanliness. I am concerned that slowly we are becoming so individualistic(in the since of other people can do whatever they want), and liberal with standards of behavior, that the worst kinds of behavior will eventually be permitted because that is “their right” to act that way. I am curious if other people feel that we are not very far from being a society that keeps saying “everything is permissible, because anyone has the right to do as they please.” Or I might be extremely alone in this regard.

NotAnEconomist 7y ago
That situation devolves into violence against people. Visit Seattle: there's needles all over the city, trash strewn everywhere, and mounds of human feces. Society can't exist with feces on the street and strewn out junkies throwing trash around public spaces, because people are willing to use force to keep that away for their children and themselves. If leftists genuinely value the ability to help people, they need to check their toxic empathy, before the leftist desire to seize property "on behalf of others" brings them into armed conflict with people protecting their families.

rorykoehler 7y ago

Good policies can reduce the number of addicts to the minimum (there will always be a subset of the population that will fall into addiction but it can be low enough to not be a public health concern). Practically everything America does, from extreme inequality, normalised predatory capitalism, no public healthcare, rent seeking drugs companies who push opioids on vulnerable patients, terrible social policies and pathetic public schooling etc etc is counter productive to reducing the number junkies.

Tsubasachan 7y ago

In a healthy society very few people find the junkie lifestyle appealing so that's not really much of a problem.

TheOperator 7y ago

You can still charge people for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. This is just taking away charging people for having fentanyl in their purse. >The gov't fully feeding, clothing, and sheltering large groups of addicts is impractical and unviable in most/all places. It's completely viable it's just impractical. There are not THAT many homeless people. However there are diminishing returns for everything... Some people are on the street because they trash any home they're given access to. Also the better you take care of this population the more homeless people move to your progressive enlightened area. It's viable but nobody wants to pay for that shit when there are other social goods you could be doing.