> Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline. Most of the people smoking fen

> Officer Jose Alvarez stopped arresting people for possession and began giving out tickets with the number for a rehab helpline. Most of the people smoking fentanyl or meth on this city’s streets balled them up and tossed them onto the ground. “Those tickets frankly seemed like a waste of time,” said Alvarez Maybe the drugs are fulfilling some need, so simply escaping the addiction is counter-productive to their lives. Maybe the rehab to escape the addiction needs to be packaged with other sorts of rehabs that help them obtain healthier alternatives to fulfill those needs that are being met by the drugs. Quick search online: > Addiction isn’t as simple a concept as it may seem on the surface. From an outside perspective, addiction can be seen as a simple propensity for substance abuse. However, on mental, physical and emotional levels, there’s a lot more to addiction. From a behavioral perspective, using drugs becomes a way of life. Most friends and social situations revolve around drugs, especially as drugs start to replace former social connections and hobbies. --- https://fherehab.com/learning/mind-motives-addicted-drugs/ https://fherehab.com/learning/mind-motives-addicted-drugs/ So, at least, rehab on building healthy social connections is also needed. Finding a better solution to the drug problem is unlikely to be as simple as just decriminalizing. I also wonder if the fact that decriminalization is done in a patch-work manner location-wise is also part of the problem. I wonder if it's easier or harder for homeless people to relocate to places where their activities aren't criminal. They likely have less material things tying them down to a location, but they may also rely more on the face-to-face social ties they already have.