The solution is not criminalizing these people but giving them more support.
More bathrooms, not more prisoners.
Safe, clean places for addicts to use drugs, and ensuring that the drugs they get are pure and clearly labeled as to their dosage, which is the best way to minimize unintentional overdoses.
A stronger social safety net so that no one has to be homeless ever again.
More and better mental health services for everyone.
A diversion of wealth and resources from who have way more than enough for themselves and their families to those who have nothing.
That's what we should be doing, not imprisoning more people and ruining more lives.
That is unacceptable and therefore things will continue to get worse.
"Do what thou wilt" is not an ethical framework.
Except that the biggest harm reduction policy of them all, ending the War on Drugs, hasn't yet been tried.
Selling Fentanyl over the counter at Walgreens isn't going to get people off the streets.
It's going to put a lot more people on the streets.
This idea is DOA. Just laughably out of touch with the reality of addiction.
Here [1] are some stats from just a week ago from oh-so-liberal New York City:
"Police in New York City continued to arrest and issue summons to thousands of people over simple marijuana possession in the first quarter of 2021--which ended on the same day the governor signed a cannabis legalization bill into law.
Data from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) released late last week showed that police made 163 arrests and handed out 3,687 summons for marijuana possession in the city's final quarter of prohibition. And as has long been the trend both locally and nationally, those enforcement actions disproportionately impacted people of color.
Of the 3,687 possession-related summons issued from January through the end of March, for example, 2,374 were issued to Black people, 1,089 were for Hispanic people and just 102 were for white people. When it comes to arrests, 78 targeted Black people, 70 involved Hispanic people and just six white people were arrested for cannabis.
That's despite the fact that rates of consumption are comparable across those races.
Put another way, Black and Hispanic people accounted for 94 percent of the total marijuana summonses and 91 percent of cannabis arrests in New York City last quarter--a rate that is greatly disproportionate to the racial makeup of the city's population."
And here [2] is Forbes reporting that "An estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses".
That's not to mention all of the other schedule one drugs, which (unlike cannabis) are not legal almost anywhere in the US, and people are still getting arrested for them.
In addition lots of jobs still require passing drug tests, which I would consider persecution.
It completely doesn't matter to me whether the people persecuted or prosecuted are dealers or users. If their only crime is possession they should be free, because drug laws are unjust.
> so you must mean making the chemicals themselves legal to produce and sell.
I do, but not without regulation. Safety regulation and good manufacturing processes overseen by the FDA like every other medicine would save infinitely more lives than the War on Drugs ever did.
"Selling Fentanyl over the counter at Walgreens isn't going to get people off the streets."
Neither is the War on Drugs. That's been an abominable failure.
The real solution for getting people off the streets is to address the causes that they're on the streets for in the first place, which isn't drugs but the miserable environment they grew up in, their broken home lives (where many people's parents are in prison due to a racist, unjust legal system), lack of mental health care or a social safety net, and lack of opportunities and discrimination in their adult lives.
People aren't on the streets because they prefer it to living in a safe suburb with a home of their own. They're there because their life sucks, and they're shooting up because their life sucks. There's a hole in these people's lives which is not going to be filled by sending them to jail and further ruining their and their family's lives.
You could argue that it's not society's job to fill that hole, but it's exactly that thinking which has gotten us the cold-blooded society we're suffering through now.
Finally, I'll say that I am for full cognitive liberty among adults. It is your own business and no one else's what you feel, what you think, and what your mind state is, and no means of achieving your desired state of mind should be restricted unless it harms someone else, which using neither cannabis nor Fentanyl nor any other drug does.
[1] - https://filtermag.org/nypd-marijuana-arrests-black-hispanic-...
[2] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanoleck/2020/06/26/with-40000...
You are intentionally muddying the waters.
Enforce laws against theft.
Enforce laws against public indecency and disorderly conduct.
Enforce laws which will have the most positive impact on everyone's quality of life.
People being homeless isn't the problem. People being allowed to get away with all these other behaviors that reduce quality of life for everyone else is the problem.
So I hope you and people like you never move to where I live.
You think these people prefer to shit in public?
Lots of them are sick (mentally and physically) and drugs and alcohol can make one lose control of one's bowels or bladder.
When you have to go you have to go, and there are very few public toilets in SF, and many businesses just won't let homeless people or people who look poor use their bathrooms, especially not in places where there's a large homeless population, like the Tenderloin.
So where are these people supposed to go?
If SF residents really wanted to do something effective about all the shit and piss in the streets they'd build many, many more public bathrooms and lift people out of poverty. But they don't.
Yes I do. Shitting in a plastic bag is available to everyone. Peeing in privacy behind a dumpster is available to everyone. Taking any half assed steps towards public hygiene is available to everyone. I've seen a homeless drug addict stick the water fountain bubbler into his bunghole while he was washing his ass with it.
The same reason they aren't shitting into bags and throwing them in the trash, or peeing into storm drains, is the same reason they're homeless - addiction makes people into sociopaths.
Solve the most impactful problems first.
Obviously stealing cats or being a porch pirate is a better ROI with the side benefit that you get to be your own boss. But junkies don't do these things to anywhere near the same extent in other parts of the country because they can't get away with them to the same extent. Addiction is a powerful motivator. If stealing stuff to get your fix is likely to result in withdrawal in a holding cell people will find the next best way to get their fix.
People with severe mental health issues have trouble holding down jobs, so I'd be very surprised if the people the original article talks about who are running around screaming at invisible demons could manage to work installing roofing or doing anything else.
These people need help, not prisons.