4 ms·

There's a clear and obvious loop where people are addicted to drugs, needing money to satisfy that addiction, and pursuing dumpster diving and petty theft to co

There's a clear and obvious loop where people are addicted to drugs, needing money to satisfy that addiction, and pursuing dumpster diving and petty theft to cobble together enough money to buy drugs. Repeat every day. The only way to break the cycle is to have a safe supply of prescribed drugs, an alternative to (often literally toxic) street drugs. This would mean that persons don't need to raise money to buy street drugs, which should reduce the related petty theft, but this is not the status quo "war on drugs" approach so it remains politically challenging for weak politicians. The status quo continues where police pretty much don't have options other than to harass drug users and confiscate drugs, which only makes things worse as drug users with no money now have to raise more money yet again to buy more drugs, potentially stealing again. The "tough on crime" path is often advocated by people frustrated and wanting to see police knock some heads around, but it leads to the unsustainable and wildly expensive absurdities of like jailing people for stealing deoderant and such incredibly minor crimes.

yaroslavvb 5y ago
SF has programs that supplies methadone to homeless, ie, www.sfstreetmed.org. This doesn't fix underlying behavioral disorders.
zaptrem 5y ago
I wonder how people would react to literally drugging the population into submission…
swearwolf 5y ago
In the broad sense, a proposition like creating a safe supply of prescribed drugs makes sense. If I recall correctly, this is how the U.K. used to treat heroin addicts, until the war on drugs became a widespread practice. Vancouver, B.C. has also experimented with a vending machine approach to provide opioid addicts with a daily maintenance dose of legal drugs. However, I think there's a big catch: a policy like this needs to be implemented everywhere in a given country at once. Otherwise, the locations that do have it will become magnets for the entire country's population of addicts. A few years ago, Multnomah County and the City of Portland started a program to guarantee housing for all homeless families. It had to shut down, after becoming overwhelmed by people from across Oregon, it's neighboring states, and across the United States generally [1]: "More than 800 adults, representing about 500 families, answered the question. About 45 percent gave addresses in Portland or Multnomah County. Significant numbers said their last addresses had been in other cities in the Portland metro area that do not fund the shelter, including Vancouver, Beaverton and Oregon City. Smaller numbers said they’d come from communities across western Oregon, including Salem, Eugene, Medford and Seaside. And about one-third of the shelter residents reported their last permanent address wasn’t in Oregon. They came from dozens of states, including Alaska, Nevada, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia." I can't imagine that the results of implementing a locally based legal drugs harm reduction policy would be any different. The United States needs policies like this applied at the Federal level if they are going to work. [1] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-homeless-children-shelter-families/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-homeless-ch...
dolni 5y ago
There is a really great documentary on dealing with drug issues in Seattle. It's called "Seattle is Dying" and it's on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw The short of the video is that you need rehabilitation for these drug users AND you need accountability. When you pick up a drug user, you give them two options: rehab or jail. Fail out of rehab, go to jail. Unsurprisingly, most people pick rehab. In either case, the problem is solved for the rest of society. We give people the resources and help to solve their problem without letting them jerk the rest of us around. It seems like a fair compromise to me.
spfzero 5y ago
So, basically Free Drugs for Everyone is your plan? That doesn't seem to offer a solution to the waste of human potential. Why not include rehab and counseling to break the loop of drug addiction? Then you've helped the addict as well as the business owner.
- Tiktaalik 5y ago
  Counselling and rehab is required in the long term, but it's a process to get people into that. The advantage of prescribed safe supply is that drug users are now interacting with the medical system and this is a touch point where medical professionals can interact with drug users directly and divert people that are ready for counseling and rehab to those options.

yaroslavvb 5y ago

SF has programs that supplies methadone to homeless, ie, www.sfstreetmed.org. This doesn't fix underlying behavioral disorders.

zaptrem 5y ago

I wonder how people would react to literally drugging the population into submission…

swearwolf 5y ago

In the broad sense, a proposition like creating a safe supply of prescribed drugs makes sense. If I recall correctly, this is how the U.K. used to treat heroin addicts, until the war on drugs became a widespread practice. Vancouver, B.C. has also experimented with a vending machine approach to provide opioid addicts with a daily maintenance dose of legal drugs. However, I think there's a big catch: a policy like this needs to be implemented everywhere in a given country at once. Otherwise, the locations that do have it will become magnets for the entire country's population of addicts. A few years ago, Multnomah County and the City of Portland started a program to guarantee housing for all homeless families. It had to shut down, after becoming overwhelmed by people from across Oregon, it's neighboring states, and across the United States generally [1]: "More than 800 adults, representing about 500 families, answered the question. About 45 percent gave addresses in Portland or Multnomah County. Significant numbers said their last addresses had been in other cities in the Portland metro area that do not fund the shelter, including Vancouver, Beaverton and Oregon City. Smaller numbers said they’d come from communities across western Oregon, including Salem, Eugene, Medford and Seaside. And about one-third of the shelter residents reported their last permanent address wasn’t in Oregon. They came from dozens of states, including Alaska, Nevada, Louisiana, Texas and Virginia." I can't imagine that the results of implementing a locally based legal drugs harm reduction policy would be any different. The United States needs policies like this applied at the Federal level if they are going to work. [1] https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-homeless-children-shelter-families/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-homeless-ch...

dolni 5y ago

There is a really great documentary on dealing with drug issues in Seattle. It's called "Seattle is Dying" and it's on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw The short of the video is that you need rehabilitation for these drug users AND you need accountability. When you pick up a drug user, you give them two options: rehab or jail. Fail out of rehab, go to jail. Unsurprisingly, most people pick rehab. In either case, the problem is solved for the rest of society. We give people the resources and help to solve their problem without letting them jerk the rest of us around. It seems like a fair compromise to me.

spfzero 5y ago

So, basically Free Drugs for Everyone is your plan? That doesn't seem to offer a solution to the waste of human potential. Why not include rehab and counseling to break the loop of drug addiction? Then you've helped the addict as well as the business owner.

Tiktaalik 5y ago
Counselling and rehab is required in the long term, but it's a process to get people into that. The advantage of prescribed safe supply is that drug users are now interacting with the medical system and this is a touch point where medical professionals can interact with drug users directly and divert people that are ready for counseling and rehab to those options.