> Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP paym

> Should we make drugs illegal again and force people into rehab? Should we require drug tests for homeless people to receive government help like SF CAAP payments? I think this is dealing with the problem far too late for it to be effective. Rehab treats the drug as though it's the problem. The drug is not the problem. The person using the drug is trying to manage some sort of stress or situation that they otherwise can't deal with. If you get a person off drugs but don't address their health, home-security, childhood trauma, abusive relationships, etc. At best they're simply going to shift to dealing with that issue through some other way: Food addiction, sex addiction, video games, abusing a loved-one, etc. And if it's not obvious, this is a repeating cycle. We need to do a better job of taking care of people in our communities. Before they end up using drugs (or other types of dangerous coping mechanisms). If we can't get to them before, we need to pick them up and start taking care of them. The trouble is (at least in the US), our approach to community support is contrary to our sense of individual freedoms - we don't want the government to support struggling individuals at the cost of individual freedoms (see healthcare, food and housing subsidy, etc)