4 ms·

What is the nature of this “false compassion”?

• bifrost 5y ago
  Unclear. From what I can tell people seem to think that letting people languish/die on the street by choice is the right thing to do. I'd prefer that we look at addiction as a disease and a public health risk and that we get those people off the street - either into treatment or into the justice system because of the crimes they commit to maintain their addictions. If you look at what a lot of european countries do - they force people off the streets, while thats not very legal here, maybe that is what we should do.
• bifrost 5y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/san-francisco-drug-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/san-francisco-drug-cri... Here's a current article written by a local advocate, its unfortunately paywalled but you're probably aware of ways around that. Here's a snippet: I called Thomas Wolf, one of the loudest critics of the city’s policies, to run past him what I was hearing from professors and other experts who have spent their lives studying drug use. “Forgive me for saying this,” Mr. Wolf politely told me, “but those people who you said you talked to — the experts — they have never shot dope, man. They never stuck a needle in their neck. They never spent a night on the street.” Mr. Wolf has done all of those things, which makes him one of the most poignant voices in the debate over what San Francisco should do to address an epidemic that claimed 713 lives last year, more than twice as many as died from the coronavirus in the city in 2020. “You can study homelessness and addiction in a book all day long,” Mr. Wolf told me. “But until you have experienced the power of addiction and the things you thought you would never resort to, you don’t really understand.”