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| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in. Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that
by dpeck 7y ago
| Parks exist in most urban areas and are perfect for kids to play in.
Minus the used needles and other debris that litter many of them. It’s a sad state that that’s the best place people with drug problems can go, but it seems they don’t have anywhere else to go.
It’s just not where I want to bring my kid to hangout.
- flukus 7y agoNeedle disposal boxes and injecting clinics are pretty good at cleaning that up. Not to mention modern needles that kids can't accidentally prick themselves on make it a much lesser issue than decades ago. Not to mention having a lot of other responsible adults around keeping an eye out for stuff like this.
- dmitrygr 7y agoSingapore solved this problem, and we should probably follow their example > Singapore's top diplomat in the UK, Michael Teo, defended Singapore's harsh drug laws by pointing to the country's lower rates for drug use. "8.2% of the UK population are cannabis abusers; in Singapore, it is 0.005%. For ecstasy, the figures are 1.8% for the UK and 0.003% for Singapore; and for opiates—such as heroin, opium, and morphine - 0.9% for the UK and 0.005% for Singapore," claimed Teo. "We do not have traffickers pushing drugs openly in the streets, nor do we need to run needle exchange centers." https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780 https://www.tripsavvy.com/drug-laws-in-singapore-1629780
- refurb 7y agoSolved by extremely harsh penalties including execution. Not exactly aligned with Western countries of human rights.
- dmitrygr 7y agoIf you find a country with fewer needles on the streets and fewer people using drugs, we are happy to listen to their policies and how they accomplished it
- gwm83 7y agoSingapore is tiny, not much more than a city-state. Rates of drug use is also a matter of honest reporting. And wow are you really advocating execution of people with addiction and mental health issues that use drugs?
- dhdidhdu 7y agoJapan is not tiny, and has a fraction of our drug use. They’re also brutal with drug crime. I wouldn’t execute drug addicts. But their pushers? Line-em right up!
- dunnevens 7y agoJust curious: would you advocate lining up liquor store owners? Bartenders?
- xyzzyz 7y agoIf alcohol was as illegal as the drugs are today, sure. Even during prohibition the actual laws against alcohol were much more lenient than today’s laws against opiates.
- dhdidhdu 7y agoAlcohol consumption has purposes other than mere intoxication. Likewise I wouldn’t execute a pharmacists who sells opium for legitimate reasons. But sure, if you have an alcohol executive cutting their wine with methanol, pushing it to middle school kids and breaking interstate laws shipping laws to evade enforcement, like you did in prohibition... screw him.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y agoYou realise that most/many addicts will sell small amounts to other addicts?' Do you advocate the death sentence for drug company executives as well?
- 7y ago
- velp 7y agoSo did Portugal [0], except they didn't resort to draconian rule-of-law policies and instead took a more compassionate approach. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...
- rayiner 7y agoPortugal didn’t solve the drug problem. Portugal has stratospherically high rates of drug use before it’s change in policy. At one point fully 1% of the population was addicted to heroin. That has come down, but drug use rates are still much higher than in China, Japan, and Singapore.
- xyzzyz 7y agoIn fact, heroin use was the only drug the use of which went down in Portugal after the decriminalization. Use of other drugs went up, especially MDMA. At the same time, heroin use also went down in other European countries in which no decriminalization happened. It blows my mind that some people believe that change in Portugal’s policies was some kind of a huge success.
- hahamrfunnyguy 7y agoWhere do you live that you're seeing "used needles littering many of them"? This was something that I often heard talked about by teachers and parents, but I only ever recall seeing ONE used needle laying around when I was a kid and it wasn't at a park - it was on the campus of an Ivy League college! The vast majority of the parks I've been to in the US have been clean and well kept up, even ones in the higher-crime areas of town.
- nitrogen 7y agoProbably SF. Used needles are not an uncommon sight.
- madhadron 7y agoThis is something I hear about a lot. And yet when I walk through places reputed to be full of them, like Denny Park in Seattle, which I walked through today on my way from my office to the library, the worst that I saw was a candy wrapper on the ground.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 7y agoIf it was legalized and sold retail (out of liquor stores), all these problems would go away. Junkies would get little red sharps disposal containers, and bring it back those back in for the deposit refund. They'd stop doing it on the streets (for the most part), for the same reason you don't see raging alcoholics crowding the alleys drinking moonshine. Drug criminalization/prohibition creates all of the problems that most people associate with drug use/addiction.