4 ms·

This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as

This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as a whole acquires common sense

thepasswordis 4y ago
Parts of San Francisco have implemented these exact policies and they have made the problems a LOT worse.
- jack_pp 4y ago
  Unfortunately I don't know the exact specifics of the situation there as I don't live in the US. I know there's a large homeless problem but not the details. Maybe the policies I mentioned also need other policies to balance them out, policies like you're not allowed to camp on the street and you're not allowed to steal, at all. Maybe don't allow people to drive under the influence of any drug that's not a stimulant, or improve tests that measure the dose a person is on so we know if they're on normal dose adderal or high on huge doses of meth. I know law isn't easy to test and iterate but we need something like that in order to improve things, maybe invent temporary laws, specific to certain test cities, which require direct voting to enforce, have a maximum test period and require another vote to lengthen.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    Yeah, everything you laid out is perfectly logical and what they should be doing, but unfortunately, progressive politics in the US philosophically opposed to enforcing camping and theft laws. E.g., in San Francisco, it’s legal to steal under $900.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      No it's not, stop spreading misinformation. It's illegal as it always has been, and stop listening to police about why they do what they do. They are not honest about it and their incentives and motives are easy to decipher once you choose to. Homeless people aren't camping! That's where they live. If you want to make homelessness a crime you could prosecute landlords who evict people with nowhere to go. Why isn't that the crime? Just think for a minute please about the propaganda you've internalized and are now spreading with these positions. These are complex issues and the view of the police, and police-based solutions, are not the only or best approaches.
      - 082349872349872 4y ago
        > The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      So if I don’t have the money to pay rent, what should I do? Should I commit suicide? And the extremely high rents means in the US you don’t even need to be jobless to not be able to afford rent. The lowest 10-20% of paying jobs may not pay enough money for a person to live in the area the job exists. Homelessness in the US is a massive problem. But the homeless are not the cause of homelessness. They’re the victims. The U.S. has multiple failed policies which allows homelessness to exist in the richest country in the world. And there are solutions across the ideological spectrum. You can go left and have the government give them housing. This is cheap (way cheaper than shelters) and extremely effective. On the extreme right you can stop NIMBYs from allowing housing to be built, which will in itself drop costs and rent. The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But the US has chosen to simply ignore the solutions altogether. When the U.S. does pick a solution, it chooses to incarcerate them. Which is the worst possible solution because now you’ve led them to joining a gang and predictably becoming real criminals themselves who now learn know how to rob and steal and commit violence to satisfy their need for money. And it’s also ridiculously more expensive than all the other solutions above. (
      - jack_pp 4y ago
        Not everyone needs to concentrate in a couple big cities. You can't afford to rent in the city go somewhere else that's cheaper. There is an abundance of land in the US not being utilized. Why must people be subjected to witnessing others misery and self-destruction? If you care so little about their public camping would you also let someone camp in your yard? You seem to have no sympathy for shop owners that get robbed constantly, if someone robbed you on your way to the car from the grocery store would you also be ok with it?
        Tiktaalik 4y ago
        Even if rent is arguably cheaper outside of the big cities, the costs of living for the poor are more expensive as transportation costs increase, and economic opportunity plunges. Of course it makes sense for economically precarious people to move to the city. We should expect and applaud them for making this decision. It’s where all the jobs are.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Half-assed solutions lead to half-assed results. Decriminalization sounds nice to liberals, but when you continue to criminalize the production and sale of drugs you still get almost all of the same problems you had before decriminalization.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  San Francisco has 0 safe usage sites. I think the U.S. overall has low single digits. And even those exist in an extremely dubious legal space, requiring the cops to turn a blind eye to their existence.
  - alephnerd 4y ago
    SF de facto did. I used to live a couple blocks away from one. That said, they are now being shut down due to Federal liability reasons [0] [0] - https://missionlocal.org/2022/12/san-francisco-fentanyl-tenderloin-safe-injection-drugs-crackhouse-statute/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/12/san-francisco-fentanyl-tend...
  - avbanks 4y ago
    NYC does and the problem got worse :/
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      Any links for this? The evidence I saw a while ago showed that they had 0 deaths and the staff had in fact saved many people from ODs already.
overthemoon 4y ago
People keep saying this. I don't get it. What's the proposed cause/effect of decriminalization on drug overdoses specifically? Testing kits, sure. And I see the argument for much softer sentences for small amounts with regards to reducing the egregious number of people in the prison system, although that is also a tangential issue to overdoses.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  I think this sentiment usually comes from people who have no experience with the problem, and who are used to being contrarians, especially with regards to drugs like marijuana. The authority figure in their lives lied to them about marijjana, and now they think they they’re lying again about fentanyl. Fentanyl is a poison. It’s killing people. It is not like marijuana.
  - pfkurtz 4y ago
    Isn't the suggestion that if there were not police/criminals as an interface to getting high, there would be a) the ability to know whether the drug one is purchasing contains a Fentanyl OD (labeled contents from auditable sources) b) more access to resources for dealing with addiction, less dangerous circumstances, etc What has drug prohibition done to help the problem of addiction and violence in the United States?
  - mitchdoogle 4y ago
    I disagree. I think this sentiment comes from people who are very close to the problem. Users or former users, friends and family of users. People who have seen someone who needs medical help get treated with disdain and arrested instead. People who have a loved one who bought adulterated drugs and overdosed because they didn't know what they were taking. It is naive to think the war on drugs was ever about protecting people. If the protection of people is a goal, you don't treat the people who need the most help as criminals. Imagine if you discover your brother has a drinking problem and it's destroying his health and finances - is your first instinct to call the police and have him arrested? Most people I think would not even think about that - they would urge him to get help, somehow, through rehab, counseling, any number of things, but no one would say he needs to go to prison. The only actual criminals involved with drugs are organized crime cartels, gangs, etc that use violence in controlling their market. If you make their product legal and obtainable, they no longer have any incentive to sell it and you eliminate a big chunk of their profits. Legalizing drugs is about treating addiction as a medical issue instead of a criminal one and eliminating the illicit drug trade which contributes to violence and profits for organized crime.
thehappypm 4y ago
Oxy is legal and look how bad that situation is.
amanaplanacanal 4y ago
Nah. You need legalization and regulation so that people can buy known doses of known substances. Decriminalization is nice for keeping users out of jail, but as long as manufacture and sales are illegal the supply is still going to be fucked.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Absolutely. And decriminalization only further fuels black markets here and abroad, leading to more violence.
- avbanks 4y ago
  Doesn't regulation mean that something will be illegal? Are you just going let chemist create and sell and super addictive or dangerous drugs?
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
Drug abuse is a much smaller problem in east Asia where it is intensely criminalized. In Singapore drug trafficking is a capital offense. Drug abuse is a massive problem in those parts of the US where it is de-facto decriminalized on the west coast. I think the evidence is fairly clear on what would constitute a solution, rather the debate is on whether we’d be willing to pay the costs of that solution.
- stevespang 4y ago
- tstrimple 4y ago
  In what world is this a west coast issue? You know that these drugs are ravaging the rust belt area right? https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    I do not mean to say it is just a west coast issue. But I do know that in the places where I have seen people selling drugs without fear, the drug problem is very, very bad.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  I'll just leave this here: https://www.outlookindia.com/international/thai-temple-left-empty-after-all-monks-fail-drug-test-turn-out-to-be-meth-addicts-news-241150 https://www.outlookindia.com/international/thai-temple-left-...

This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as a whole acquires common sense

thepasswordis 4y ago

Parts of San Francisco have implemented these exact policies and they have made the problems a LOT worse.

jack_pp 4y ago
Unfortunately I don't know the exact specifics of the situation there as I don't live in the US. I know there's a large homeless problem but not the details. Maybe the policies I mentioned also need other policies to balance them out, policies like you're not allowed to camp on the street and you're not allowed to steal, at all. Maybe don't allow people to drive under the influence of any drug that's not a stimulant, or improve tests that measure the dose a person is on so we know if they're on normal dose adderal or high on huge doses of meth. I know law isn't easy to test and iterate but we need something like that in order to improve things, maybe invent temporary laws, specific to certain test cities, which require direct voting to enforce, have a maximum test period and require another vote to lengthen.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  Yeah, everything you laid out is perfectly logical and what they should be doing, but unfortunately, progressive politics in the US philosophically opposed to enforcing camping and theft laws. E.g., in San Francisco, it’s legal to steal under $900.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    No it's not, stop spreading misinformation. It's illegal as it always has been, and stop listening to police about why they do what they do. They are not honest about it and their incentives and motives are easy to decipher once you choose to. Homeless people aren't camping! That's where they live. If you want to make homelessness a crime you could prosecute landlords who evict people with nowhere to go. Why isn't that the crime? Just think for a minute please about the propaganda you've internalized and are now spreading with these positions. These are complex issues and the view of the police, and police-based solutions, are not the only or best approaches.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      > The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    So if I don’t have the money to pay rent, what should I do? Should I commit suicide? And the extremely high rents means in the US you don’t even need to be jobless to not be able to afford rent. The lowest 10-20% of paying jobs may not pay enough money for a person to live in the area the job exists. Homelessness in the US is a massive problem. But the homeless are not the cause of homelessness. They’re the victims. The U.S. has multiple failed policies which allows homelessness to exist in the richest country in the world. And there are solutions across the ideological spectrum. You can go left and have the government give them housing. This is cheap (way cheaper than shelters) and extremely effective. On the extreme right you can stop NIMBYs from allowing housing to be built, which will in itself drop costs and rent. The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But the US has chosen to simply ignore the solutions altogether. When the U.S. does pick a solution, it chooses to incarcerate them. Which is the worst possible solution because now you’ve led them to joining a gang and predictably becoming real criminals themselves who now learn know how to rob and steal and commit violence to satisfy their need for money. And it’s also ridiculously more expensive than all the other solutions above. (
    - jack_pp 4y ago
      Not everyone needs to concentrate in a couple big cities. You can't afford to rent in the city go somewhere else that's cheaper. There is an abundance of land in the US not being utilized. Why must people be subjected to witnessing others misery and self-destruction? If you care so little about their public camping would you also let someone camp in your yard? You seem to have no sympathy for shop owners that get robbed constantly, if someone robbed you on your way to the car from the grocery store would you also be ok with it?
      - Tiktaalik 4y ago
        Even if rent is arguably cheaper outside of the big cities, the costs of living for the poor are more expensive as transportation costs increase, and economic opportunity plunges. Of course it makes sense for economically precarious people to move to the city. We should expect and applaud them for making this decision. It’s where all the jobs are.
standardUser 4y ago
Half-assed solutions lead to half-assed results. Decriminalization sounds nice to liberals, but when you continue to criminalize the production and sale of drugs you still get almost all of the same problems you had before decriminalization.
rhaway84773 4y ago
San Francisco has 0 safe usage sites. I think the U.S. overall has low single digits. And even those exist in an extremely dubious legal space, requiring the cops to turn a blind eye to their existence.
- alephnerd 4y ago
  SF de facto did. I used to live a couple blocks away from one. That said, they are now being shut down due to Federal liability reasons [0] [0] - https://missionlocal.org/2022/12/san-francisco-fentanyl-tenderloin-safe-injection-drugs-crackhouse-statute/ https://missionlocal.org/2022/12/san-francisco-fentanyl-tend...
- avbanks 4y ago
  NYC does and the problem got worse :/
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    Any links for this? The evidence I saw a while ago showed that they had 0 deaths and the staff had in fact saved many people from ODs already.

overthemoon 4y ago

People keep saying this. I don't get it. What's the proposed cause/effect of decriminalization on drug overdoses specifically? Testing kits, sure. And I see the argument for much softer sentences for small amounts with regards to reducing the egregious number of people in the prison system, although that is also a tangential issue to overdoses.

thepasswordis 4y ago
I think this sentiment usually comes from people who have no experience with the problem, and who are used to being contrarians, especially with regards to drugs like marijuana. The authority figure in their lives lied to them about marijjana, and now they think they they’re lying again about fentanyl. Fentanyl is a poison. It’s killing people. It is not like marijuana.
- pfkurtz 4y ago
  Isn't the suggestion that if there were not police/criminals as an interface to getting high, there would be a) the ability to know whether the drug one is purchasing contains a Fentanyl OD (labeled contents from auditable sources) b) more access to resources for dealing with addiction, less dangerous circumstances, etc What has drug prohibition done to help the problem of addiction and violence in the United States?
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
  I disagree. I think this sentiment comes from people who are very close to the problem. Users or former users, friends and family of users. People who have seen someone who needs medical help get treated with disdain and arrested instead. People who have a loved one who bought adulterated drugs and overdosed because they didn't know what they were taking. It is naive to think the war on drugs was ever about protecting people. If the protection of people is a goal, you don't treat the people who need the most help as criminals. Imagine if you discover your brother has a drinking problem and it's destroying his health and finances - is your first instinct to call the police and have him arrested? Most people I think would not even think about that - they would urge him to get help, somehow, through rehab, counseling, any number of things, but no one would say he needs to go to prison. The only actual criminals involved with drugs are organized crime cartels, gangs, etc that use violence in controlling their market. If you make their product legal and obtainable, they no longer have any incentive to sell it and you eliminate a big chunk of their profits. Legalizing drugs is about treating addiction as a medical issue instead of a criminal one and eliminating the illicit drug trade which contributes to violence and profits for organized crime.

thehappypm 4y ago

Oxy is legal and look how bad that situation is.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago

Nah. You need legalization and regulation so that people can buy known doses of known substances. Decriminalization is nice for keeping users out of jail, but as long as manufacture and sales are illegal the supply is still going to be fucked.

standardUser 4y ago
Absolutely. And decriminalization only further fuels black markets here and abroad, leading to more violence.
avbanks 4y ago
Doesn't regulation mean that something will be illegal? Are you just going let chemist create and sell and super addictive or dangerous drugs?

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

Drug abuse is a much smaller problem in east Asia where it is intensely criminalized. In Singapore drug trafficking is a capital offense. Drug abuse is a massive problem in those parts of the US where it is de-facto decriminalized on the west coast. I think the evidence is fairly clear on what would constitute a solution, rather the debate is on whether we’d be willing to pay the costs of that solution.

stevespang 4y ago
tstrimple 4y ago
In what world is this a west coast issue? You know that these drugs are ravaging the rust belt area right? https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I do not mean to say it is just a west coast issue. But I do know that in the places where I have seen people selling drugs without fear, the drug problem is very, very bad.
ROTMetro 4y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://www.outlookindia.com/international/thai-temple-left-empty-after-all-monks-fail-drug-test-turn-out-to-be-meth-addicts-news-241150 https://www.outlookindia.com/international/thai-temple-left-...