4 ms·

I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services. I would much rather the police be focused on stopping v

I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services. I would much rather the police be focused on stopping violent crime rather than these victimless crimes. Legitimizing drugs/prostitution makes is easier to regulate and ultimately make safer. Shoving this stuff into a black/gray market is what ultimately creates violent crime.

rib3ye 2y ago
> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services. We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.
- cogman10 2y ago
  > Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Why is this an either or? SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with. > Not to mention the tents. Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them? [1] https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-06-27-sf-board-education-adopts-plan-and-budget-2024-25-school-year https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/... [2] https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-increase-to-harm-reduction-contract-but-raise-questions-on-outcomes/ https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-i...
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    SF spends nearly $1B on the homeless.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Homeless and drug addicts are not the same. Letting the homeless block streets with tents is not the same as caring for them, or rehabilitating them.
      - daseiner1 2y ago
        correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      Dollars spent is a poor metric for effectiveness. If you were to become homeless in SF tonight, is there shelter available for you to sleep in?
- culi 2y ago
  While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community. E.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/
  - rib3ye 2y ago
    It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic. By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.
    - kcrwfrd_ 2y ago
      I think a confounding variable is that SF also significantly reduced jail sentencing and prosecution of other types of crime during the pandemic.
- raverbashing 2y ago
  Honestly, it's because SF didn't actually do anything Having harm reduction sites doesn't mean you get to shoot whenever and whatever SF's governance is delirious honestly
- miningape 2y ago
  Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users. Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    The decline in Portugal may have been temporary. https://archive.is/3iXlM https://archive.is/3iXlM
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open. Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).
LAC-Tech 2y ago
Those won't stop the problem at the root, right? The inflow/manufacture of narcotics won't be affected at all. You'll still have a constant new influx of junkies, and it you'll essentially by funding this widescale and expensive solution forever. Much better to simple make drug trafficing and manufacture a capital offense. It's been extremely effective in a lot of jurisdictions. Even if you're squeamish about the death penalty, a back of the envelope calculations will tell you you're saving a lot more lives than you spend due to decreased overdoses, drug wars etc,
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  Where has that strategy been effective? Do you have any numbers? Does it have any side effects?
  - lifty 2y ago
    I think he’s referring to Singapore. Don’t have any numbers but it does look like it’s working.
    - MacsHeadroom 2y ago
      It's a tiny island nation with a single sea port, single bridge, and single airport. Meanwhile western nations are so porous they can't keep millions of undocumented people out.
    - idunnoman1222 2y ago
      Having garbage bins in my neighborhood, keeps garbage from being put on the ground. There are other neighbourhoods where the garbage bins don’t help at all
- stickfigure 2y ago
  Next up: The final solution for littering. And traffic violations. And adultery. Utopia awaits the bold!
floydnoel 2y ago
no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
- echoangle 2y ago
  How does that make any sense? So you could never pass a law to reduce risk because in most cases, breaking it won’t create a victim? Speed limits are done to reduce the risk of you killing someone. Do you really think you should be able to drive however you want and until you actually have an accident, it’s fine?
  - butlike 2y ago
    It's how you do it in Germany in the left lane
  - floydnoel 2y ago
    if you cause no harm, how could it be a crime? an infraction, sure. a rule violation, sure. but calling a small rule violation which never causes any harm to anyone the same thing as rape, murder, assault, carjacking, etc, is just pure degeneracy of language.
    - echoangle 2y ago
      The crime is increasing the risk to other people. Why does that not make it a crime in your opinion? If I try to shoot someone but miss and they never even notice, is that fine because there’s no actual victim? Edit: To be more precise, the crime doesn’t even need you to increase the risk to anyone. Just thinking that you’ll increase the risk is already a crime, even if you’re wrong. If you buy a prop gun but think it’s real and try to shoot someone, that would still be attempted murder, even if it couldn’t even have worked. But you’re punished for trying to kill someone, it doesn’t matter wether you’re incompetent at it (well you get a bit less for the attempt compared to the actual successful act but it’s still a crime). And another edit because coming up with weird hypotheticals is fun: Imagine planting a bomb with a one hour timer on a marketplace and when it goes off, the marketplace was empty of people by chance. Does that mean that the worst punishment you should expect should be for property damage because someone needs to clean up the ground? Obviously you committed a crime, even if there’s no specific victim this time.
azinman2 2y ago
Portland tried this. It was a resounding failure.

rib3ye 2y ago

> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services. We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.

cogman10 2y ago
> Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Why is this an either or? SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with. > Not to mention the tents. Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them? [1] https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/2024-06-27-sf-board-education-adopts-plan-and-budget-2024-25-school-year https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/... [2] https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-increase-to-harm-reduction-contract-but-raise-questions-on-outcomes/ https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-i...
- daseiner1 2y ago
  SF spends nearly $1B on the homeless.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Homeless and drug addicts are not the same. Letting the homeless block streets with tents is not the same as caring for them, or rehabilitating them.
    - daseiner1 2y ago
      correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Dollars spent is a poor metric for effectiveness. If you were to become homeless in SF tonight, is there shelter available for you to sleep in?
culi 2y ago
While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community. E.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/
- rib3ye 2y ago
  It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic. By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.
  - kcrwfrd_ 2y ago
    I think a confounding variable is that SF also significantly reduced jail sentencing and prosecution of other types of crime during the pandemic.
raverbashing 2y ago
Honestly, it's because SF didn't actually do anything Having harm reduction sites doesn't mean you get to shoot whenever and whatever SF's governance is delirious honestly
miningape 2y ago
Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users. Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  The decline in Portugal may have been temporary. https://archive.is/3iXlM https://archive.is/3iXlM
etc-hosts 2y ago
I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open. Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).

LAC-Tech 2y ago

Those won't stop the problem at the root, right? The inflow/manufacture of narcotics won't be affected at all. You'll still have a constant new influx of junkies, and it you'll essentially by funding this widescale and expensive solution forever. Much better to simple make drug trafficing and manufacture a capital offense. It's been extremely effective in a lot of jurisdictions. Even if you're squeamish about the death penalty, a back of the envelope calculations will tell you you're saving a lot more lives than you spend due to decreased overdoses, drug wars etc,

Eisenstein 2y ago
Where has that strategy been effective? Do you have any numbers? Does it have any side effects?
- lifty 2y ago
  I think he’s referring to Singapore. Don’t have any numbers but it does look like it’s working.
  - MacsHeadroom 2y ago
    It's a tiny island nation with a single sea port, single bridge, and single airport. Meanwhile western nations are so porous they can't keep millions of undocumented people out.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    Having garbage bins in my neighborhood, keeps garbage from being put on the ground. There are other neighbourhoods where the garbage bins don’t help at all
stickfigure 2y ago
Next up: The final solution for littering. And traffic violations. And adultery. Utopia awaits the bold!

floydnoel 2y ago

no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.

echoangle 2y ago
How does that make any sense? So you could never pass a law to reduce risk because in most cases, breaking it won’t create a victim? Speed limits are done to reduce the risk of you killing someone. Do you really think you should be able to drive however you want and until you actually have an accident, it’s fine?
- butlike 2y ago
  It's how you do it in Germany in the left lane
- floydnoel 2y ago
  if you cause no harm, how could it be a crime? an infraction, sure. a rule violation, sure. but calling a small rule violation which never causes any harm to anyone the same thing as rape, murder, assault, carjacking, etc, is just pure degeneracy of language.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    The crime is increasing the risk to other people. Why does that not make it a crime in your opinion? If I try to shoot someone but miss and they never even notice, is that fine because there’s no actual victim? Edit: To be more precise, the crime doesn’t even need you to increase the risk to anyone. Just thinking that you’ll increase the risk is already a crime, even if you’re wrong. If you buy a prop gun but think it’s real and try to shoot someone, that would still be attempted murder, even if it couldn’t even have worked. But you’re punished for trying to kill someone, it doesn’t matter wether you’re incompetent at it (well you get a bit less for the attempt compared to the actual successful act but it’s still a crime). And another edit because coming up with weird hypotheticals is fun: Imagine planting a bomb with a one hour timer on a marketplace and when it goes off, the marketplace was empty of people by chance. Does that mean that the worst punishment you should expect should be for property damage because someone needs to clean up the ground? Obviously you committed a crime, even if there’s no specific victim this time.

azinman2 2y ago

Portland tried this. It was a resounding failure.