Seattle does not enforce laws against public drug use and recently vacated all gross misdemeanor charges, citing the "case load". This just incentivizes bad behavior and further increases the case load. Every time I take my weekly walk I find 2-5 of those "free" used syringes with uncapped needles on sidewalks. While some decriminalization is good, if it is accompanied by indulging people's addictions and lackadaisical enforcement of littering, loitering, and harassment laws it only makes the problem worse.

By making the decriminalization location-based, it would concentrate the problem and make providing services to those individuals much cheaper because of economies of scale.

I'd imagine if there was free heroin and needles inside, not many people would continue buying H and discarding syringes on the street.

Hopefully these facilities can consistently confront disagreeable and potentially unstable users and ensure they are discarding all needles that were used before leaving. Seattle's track record of enforcement in other areas makes me pessimistic, unfortunately.

One idea I've heard of is requiring more needles to be handed in before fresh needles are handed out as a means of incentivizing neighborhood cleanup.

> The lack of a policy for dealing with homeless addicts is a effectively just a policy of keeping them in the poorest neighborhoods.

No, becoming a drug addict will keep you in poorest neighborhoods. This is simple cause and effect. And why should drug addicts not live in poor neighborhoods? Why would you move the drug addicts out of poor neighborhoods, but not the non-addicts? You are suggesting policy that incentivizes addiction.

> This has not been attempted anywhere. What are you referring to?

If you don't live in San Francisco, I'd recommend checking out this recent video:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2018/12/14/san-francisco-opioi...

There are certain blocks of the city in the Tenderloin and SoMa where people are free to shoot up heroin in broad daylight. The city hands out 400,000 free needles to junkies every month. We spend $300 million a year on homeless programs with little oversight or accountability, and recently voted to double that to $600M+. And now they're proposing official safe injection sites in the middle of the city. Is this putting a dent in the addiction problem? No, the city is becoming a dystopian hellscape.

That's why you also need free heroin inside, and the price to leave is a clean piss test.

Concentrate the people creating the 'dystopian hellscape' so services can be provided to them more efficiently and cheaply. If they can't get clean, they can stay inside and get a daily lecture on why they should be sober before their fix.

I'm not saying that its "fair" that everyone else pays for this. I'm saying we're already paying more than this and it isn't working, so puritan notions that "Govt should never provide people with certain drugs" should be challenged if there is a strong economic benefit.