5 ms·

In Seattle, there’s lack of housing, but the bigger driver appears to be easy access to drugs like fentanyl and no consequences to anyone involved in using or s

by influx 3y ago

In Seattle, there’s lack of housing, but the bigger driver appears to be easy access to drugs like fentanyl and no consequences to anyone involved in using or selling them.

hathym 3y ago
[flagged]
- bombcar 3y ago
  ship homeless instead?
  - kridsdale1 3y ago
    Russia is already trying to ship all its “undesirables” over the Finn border as a soft form of warfare against Europe.
jplasmeier 3y ago
[flagged]
- jedilord 3y ago
  Love how facts are right-wing agitprop now. lol
  - jplasmeier 3y ago
    Fact is the recently elected City council made public drug use illegal: https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/09/seattle-city-council-passes-law-prosecute-drug-use-possession https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/09/seattle-city-council-p... Murdoch and co. will have you believe Seattle is a fentanyl-ridden wastleland. Property values say otherwise.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      In the spectrum of “things that have had an effect on Seattle’s homeless stats”, do you think this recently elected council’s recent decision has had time to have an effect? If not, doesn’t it seem likely that previous looking the other way has contributed to the current status?
    - achenet 3y ago
      while I agree that basically any news outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch is heavily untrustworthy, I'd like to point out that property values are not necessarily correlated with quality of life. Within a given city, yes, the nicer bits are more expensive. Between different cities, however, it is totally possible to find one city is both cheaper and nicer than another (with the possible caveat of being smaller, and perhaps if you can't WFH, not as many jobs). To use an example I know well, basically every city in France outside of Marseille is nicer to live in than Paris, but Paris has real estate prices that are 2-4x most other cites. I imagine you could find similar things in other countries as well - Amsterdam vs Eindhoven in the Netherlands, for example.
  - baby 3y ago
    Are you sure these are facts? I think it’s just bad engineering IMO. Send people to jail doesn’t solve any root issues.
  - confidantlake 3y ago
    I have no dog in this fight but saying "X" is a bigger driver than "Y" of some complex social phenomenon is not what I consider to be a "fact".
- achenet 3y ago
  there was an article on the front page of HN recently about the flaws in the current drug policy in, if I'm not mistaken Portland. Basically, not throwing junkies in jail doesn't actually help them sober up if there isn't a proper plan in place, so they're stopping that approach in favor of a more strict approach where doing drugs in public is a crime. Before you make assumptions about my person opinions, I'm very pro-legalization, I think prohibition of basically anything is very misguided. If I were in charge, everything, including heroin and fentanyl, would be legalized, taxed, and regulated.
  - coldbrewed 3y ago
    While not inaccurate, this point is tangential. The lack of affordable housing in Portland drives homelessness; and being homeless pushes people to use meth during the night to stay awake so they can protect themselves and fentanyl so they can feel joy while living in truly wretched conditions. Keeping people off the street by building affordable housing and preventing people from despairing avoids a raft of social ills. That said, per your point decriminalization of possession and public intoxication, measure 110 was a poorly written law that should have decriminalized drugs after harm reduction, substance abuse clinics, and housing options were in place first. The current situation wasn't guaranteed to happen; unfortunately city and county leadership like to wear their pants on their head instead of actually getting work done. This was as much if not more of a failure of governance to execute as it was a failure of policy.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    It wasn't so much about the flaws in the current drug policy in Portland, as flaws in implementation. Portland planned to decriminalize a lot of things and put a bunch of other measures and support systems in place. COVID and other things hit, and all that got enacted was decriminalization with none of the guard rails or help mechanisms, with predictable outcomes.
- justrealist 3y ago
  > easy access to drugs like fentanyl and no consequences to anyone involved in using or selling them. reply You can literally watch interviews with the homeless in SF and Seattle. They cite these facts straight-up as to why they live in SF and Seattle. You have to be actively lying to yourself to come to a different answer.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
There are tons of people doing hard drugs in Seattle that aren't being a menace to society. I'm not sure why you can't just criminalize the actual problem. I don't think we should be locking people up for years because they were minding their own business and being productive members of society and happened to run into the police at the wrong time. At the same time, it would be nice to do something with people who are fine to beg for money on the street, do nothing productive, and be high on drugs until they die. Most cities with these problems have resources for people who are willing to get help. Yet we let people refuse that because they'd rather continue doing drugs and not being productive and at the same time ruining all public spaces. Something needs to change. Hoping that those people will just change is a bad strategy. Leaving them be is an option - but it's growing less popular.
baby 3y ago
Putting people that need help in jail is the dumbest solution one can think of. You’re not solving ANYTHING. You’re just swiping what looks bad under the rug. The US prison system has already imploded.

by influx 3y ago

In Seattle, there’s lack of housing, but the bigger driver appears to be easy access to drugs like fentanyl and no consequences to anyone involved in using or selling them.

hathym 3y ago

[flagged]

bombcar 3y ago
ship homeless instead?
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Russia is already trying to ship all its “undesirables” over the Finn border as a soft form of warfare against Europe.

jplasmeier 3y ago

[flagged]

jedilord 3y ago
Love how facts are right-wing agitprop now. lol
- jplasmeier 3y ago
  Fact is the recently elected City council made public drug use illegal: https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/09/seattle-city-council-passes-law-prosecute-drug-use-possession https://crosscut.com/politics/2023/09/seattle-city-council-p... Murdoch and co. will have you believe Seattle is a fentanyl-ridden wastleland. Property values say otherwise.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    In the spectrum of “things that have had an effect on Seattle’s homeless stats”, do you think this recently elected council’s recent decision has had time to have an effect? If not, doesn’t it seem likely that previous looking the other way has contributed to the current status?
  - achenet 3y ago
    while I agree that basically any news outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch is heavily untrustworthy, I'd like to point out that property values are not necessarily correlated with quality of life. Within a given city, yes, the nicer bits are more expensive. Between different cities, however, it is totally possible to find one city is both cheaper and nicer than another (with the possible caveat of being smaller, and perhaps if you can't WFH, not as many jobs). To use an example I know well, basically every city in France outside of Marseille is nicer to live in than Paris, but Paris has real estate prices that are 2-4x most other cites. I imagine you could find similar things in other countries as well - Amsterdam vs Eindhoven in the Netherlands, for example.
- baby 3y ago
  Are you sure these are facts? I think it’s just bad engineering IMO. Send people to jail doesn’t solve any root issues.
- confidantlake 3y ago
  I have no dog in this fight but saying "X" is a bigger driver than "Y" of some complex social phenomenon is not what I consider to be a "fact".
achenet 3y ago
there was an article on the front page of HN recently about the flaws in the current drug policy in, if I'm not mistaken Portland. Basically, not throwing junkies in jail doesn't actually help them sober up if there isn't a proper plan in place, so they're stopping that approach in favor of a more strict approach where doing drugs in public is a crime. Before you make assumptions about my person opinions, I'm very pro-legalization, I think prohibition of basically anything is very misguided. If I were in charge, everything, including heroin and fentanyl, would be legalized, taxed, and regulated.
- coldbrewed 3y ago
  While not inaccurate, this point is tangential. The lack of affordable housing in Portland drives homelessness; and being homeless pushes people to use meth during the night to stay awake so they can protect themselves and fentanyl so they can feel joy while living in truly wretched conditions. Keeping people off the street by building affordable housing and preventing people from despairing avoids a raft of social ills. That said, per your point decriminalization of possession and public intoxication, measure 110 was a poorly written law that should have decriminalized drugs after harm reduction, substance abuse clinics, and housing options were in place first. The current situation wasn't guaranteed to happen; unfortunately city and county leadership like to wear their pants on their head instead of actually getting work done. This was as much if not more of a failure of governance to execute as it was a failure of policy.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  It wasn't so much about the flaws in the current drug policy in Portland, as flaws in implementation. Portland planned to decriminalize a lot of things and put a bunch of other measures and support systems in place. COVID and other things hit, and all that got enacted was decriminalization with none of the guard rails or help mechanisms, with predictable outcomes.
justrealist 3y ago
> easy access to drugs like fentanyl and no consequences to anyone involved in using or selling them. reply You can literally watch interviews with the homeless in SF and Seattle. They cite these facts straight-up as to why they live in SF and Seattle. You have to be actively lying to yourself to come to a different answer.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

There are tons of people doing hard drugs in Seattle that aren't being a menace to society. I'm not sure why you can't just criminalize the actual problem. I don't think we should be locking people up for years because they were minding their own business and being productive members of society and happened to run into the police at the wrong time. At the same time, it would be nice to do something with people who are fine to beg for money on the street, do nothing productive, and be high on drugs until they die. Most cities with these problems have resources for people who are willing to get help. Yet we let people refuse that because they'd rather continue doing drugs and not being productive and at the same time ruining all public spaces. Something needs to change. Hoping that those people will just change is a bad strategy. Leaving them be is an option - but it's growing less popular.

baby 3y ago

Putting people that need help in jail is the dumbest solution one can think of. You’re not solving ANYTHING. You’re just swiping what looks bad under the rug. The US prison system has already imploded.