Reminds me of needle exchanges, and the harm they brought to neighborhoods that opened them out of the 'goodness' of their hearts, only to end up turning their neighborhood into the newest drug slum.

Or at least that's been my experience so far in any city I have lived in that has one near my current location. One place I even moved to and from again twice, and got to see the before and after through the decade essentially. It's like night and day. Absolutely no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise that these programs are a good idea, especially when the best idea is to just remove these people from urban centers by tossing them into rehab out in the country side where they can't get these drugs easily.

I've seen that work wonders by comparison; and it doesn't ruin neighborhoods which gives NIMBY's a legitimate excuse to do things like round up the homeless and put them in jails. Which I do not agree with, but understand their grief. The very act is a breach of their natural rights as a human being, and let's not get me started on my opinions about how housing should be a natural human right irrevocable by anyone or anything.

The yellow brick road is paved not by the demons among us, but those who think themselves angels.

> needle exchanges... end up turning their neighborhood into the newest drug slum.

How do you suppose that happened? Do you think there was a severely addicted population that could not get their fix due to concerns of transmittable diseases? So were forced to quit cold turkey, at the height of their despair, for lack of sanitary injection paraphernalia? You surely realize how absurd that sounds, right?

Since you seem to be a well reasoned and articulate person, I'm genuinely curious how could a needle exchange program cause neighborhoods to turn into "drug slums"? Perhaps you are seeing a correlation with drug use that does not reveal any causality? Perhaps needle exchange programs induce normalization of drug use in a certain area, making addicts fell less rejected and thus attracting them there? But surely such a visible concentration of addicts in a certain area is just a symptom a much larger invisible problem and condemning those those affected to AIDS or Hep-C does nothing to solve the root cause?

Well, I have no way to prove my experience through data, since it's not being taken by any reputable sources I know of, sadly...

But what I can say at least is that I would suspect that the 'drug slum' aspect occurs because the drug users flock towards those needle exchanges and congregate near them for convenience sake. I say that, because that's what seemed to be the case when I lived in those areas. People I never saw in those neighborhoods before, suddenly practically lived there. So I suspect that is the case.

Anyways, it's getting late and my patience is starting to wear thin, so I should probably go now before nicer folk like you start to think of me as less well reasoned and less articulate a person.

I'm sure that you blame ghettos on the people that live in them rather than the systems developed to have intentional concentrative effects. It's funny how intelligent people stop thinking the moment their emotions kick in.

Actually, I think it's a problem that can be blamed on the entirety of society. But thanks for your kind comment. And yes, I agree with you about emotions and intelligence. Quite the phenomenon.

Isn't what gp is doing the opposite, and is in fact blaming the system developed (needle stations) for abnormally concentrating drug users on an area?

I don't know why such an admittedly anecdotal observation has generated such response... Its not that hard to at least entertain the idea that clean drug-equipment stations might have side effects and impacts to the surrounding community that haven't been properly studied yet, etc.

More funny when emotional people refuse to see simple cause and effect

The end there reminds me of the CS Lewis quote:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

I just told the other fellow I'm logging off for the night, but I would hate to seem rude and as if I am ignoring your apt comment.

Yes, CS Lewis has a lot of good quotes. I don't remember them all by heart or anything, but I do find myself somehow paraphrasing things that he and others have said before in more eloquent words.

What a weird way to use this quote. Tyranny is when someone does something oppressive. Offering a free service that no one needs to use doesn’t fit the criteria.

I do not really want to comment on whether it is an appropriate use, but obviously the tormented peasants in the comment are implied to be the residents in the area.

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." - Mark Twain

It's been the opposite experience for me, but where I lived doctors just give the addicts drugs that are similar to their drugs of choice. Man has to eat, addicts has to use. When you ruin the market economy around drugs by making them essentially free the criminal aspects seem to disappear.

Fair enough, as far as opposite experience goes.

Up here, doctors are notoriously difficult to get any kind of opiate from now unless you REALLY need it. Which in turn I would say has led to people relying on the grey market more and more, which has in turn led to our fentanyl crisis.

So I don't entirely disagree with you here, but I still don't want government being able to tax these things. We need a better solution.

You might find this post interesting:

> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...

It is about what can go wrong when "doctors are notoriously difficult to get any kind of opiate from now unless you REALLY need it".

It is been a while since I read it, I don't remember whether it touches on homelessness.

The government doesn't tax them here. They're free, because the cost of the drugs is less than the cost of the crime prevented by just giving them out.

"When you ruin the market economy around drugs by making them essentially free the criminal aspects seem to disappear."

California has legalized marijuana for many years and there's still a strong cartel presence in marijuana trafficking. Cartels still find a way to profit from marijuana, other drugs, and immigration.

I find the notion that making fentanyl available at no cost being good for society by removing cartel involvement to be completely nonsensical. The end result is still the same. You still have a substance on the street that is fatal in incredibly small doses, and being used as fillers in party- and counterfeit drugs.

Legalizing fentanyl isn't going to alter that dynamic nor change the drug's lethality.

So no, the criminal aspects just don't disappear. They merely adapt.

Legalized with high taxes and inconvenient supply. If people already have a tax-free source, then they will continue to use that, especially if the business hours and location are more convenient.

And it's worth pointing out that cannabis culture and opiate culture are not one and the same: cannabis is far less addictive and far more commonly used, even in areas where it is still criminalized.

It also costs significantly less - on the order of beer money or fast food - to afford a cannabis supply, than it costs to afford an illegal opiate supply. On top of that, you can often get the cost of prescriptions (alternative to illegal opiates) significantly lowered, especially outside the US.

So switching your cannabis supply from illegal to legal costs you more, but switching your opiate supply to a legal prescription can save you money. It's a totally different dynamic.

If opiate users have a reliable and affordable source, then they will not be motivated to commit crime to fund their addictions. If they are getting their drugs from a pharmaceutical source, with regular visits to a prescribing physician, then they can significantly lower the risk of overdose.

So yes, criminal aspects will be affected. So will mortality.

Legal state level, illegal federal and global means that there is a high incentive for diversion to both other states and other countries. There's a difference between going to a medical facility every day to get a 1-3 day supply and a free-for-all with drugs being handed out for $5 on every corner.

Which cities? What city did you live in twice? What time period are you talking about?

Sorry Genghis, but I don't believe I need to answer these questions about where I lived, as they are personal information. I will however tell you they were all Canadian cities, and they were all between the years 2008 and now. The one that was twice was one of the prairie provinces cities.

Take that as you will.

> [1] NIDA-funded research has found that syringe services programs do not increase drug use. In fact, program participants in these studies were significantly more likely to enter substance use treatment and reduce or stop drug use.

As an aside, this is the second time on this site in a couple days I've seen someone post something along the lines of "Absolutely no one will be able to convince me otherwise no matter what."

So why are you posting here at all? You've already proudly announced that your opinions are impervious to any new information. That is the exact opposite purpose of this site.

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/syringe-services-progra...

Well, I said in my edit and some other comments I was going to sleep, but I decided to check here again for some reason... and here we are.

So I guess I will point out that (I am pretty sure) I never said it increased drug use. I said that it turned the neighborhoods that held these places into drug slums because of the increase in drug users that were now in those areas because of the needle exchange. To be fair to you though, that was elaborated on more so in another comment to another person.

And it is on that bit that I will not budge, because that is personal experience I have witnessed and secondary experience I have been told about by people I trust to not just make things up. It may not be the 'data' you want to see or hear, but it should matter just as much since what we see on a day to day is what influences us as a society.

So I think it's great that some of them are taking the chance provided to them to get clean. I love that. But again, I never said it increased drug use. I said it increased the number of drug users in the area. This is a glaringly different statement.

Now, I am actually off to bed now, and my computer is being turned off. You have a nice day/night. Thank you for the information.

Not trying to pile on you individually but this is an interesting line of thought in general, so continuing the thread here...

Let's say there are 10 nearby cities with drug addicts. Let's say 3 of them start running needle exchanges or other "drug friendly" policies.

By this logic, if those policies don't increase drug use, but do attract users, then maybe we just made 7 cities drug-free, and 3 cities into concentrated zones where social programs as well as law enforcement can be more targeted and more effective? If so, then very likely this will be a net-positive for the 10 cities as a whole, with neutral to slightly-worse outcomes for the target neighborhoods in the 3 cities running the programs.

Many programs/policies are not operated from a macro-enough perspective, or not optimizing for macro-level outcomes, or humans just aren't capable of macro-enough greater-good decision-making. If the 10-20 homeowners living directly next to the proposed needle exchange site can veto it, that might be better for them individually, but worse as a whole for the city/state/nation/world. See exhibit: NYC and proposals for new shelter sites.

On the other hand, seems like these sorts of debates always just end up becoming examples to prove out Churchill's "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried" claim.

Your comment reminds me of a topic from "What We Owe The Future"[0][1], in particular an idea in ethics that is aptly called the repugnant conclusion[2].

This is not a perfect parallel but both the RC and your comment touch on the idea of how or when it is justified to make X people's life worse to make Y people's life better.

I would strongly recommend not to take an axiomatic approach to this topic.

[0] https://whatweowethefuture.com/

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-what-we-ow...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_conclusion

> How is it fair to those people living in those 3 other cities? Why should they have to put up with it?

Why do I have to pay taxes for schools when I don't have any children?

If everyone thought like this, then we would all be worse off. Yeah, it sucks for you.

Another thought experiment: You are the head of a hospital and can determine how funding gets spent. There is a five year old with a disease that can be cured if you spend all of your budget to do it. This would effectively shut down the hospital for everyone else, but the kid would live. Is it ethical to spend the money on the kid?

> Why do I have to pay taxes for schools when I don't have any children?

This is not a comparable scenario. Presuming you wish to live in a given locale for the remainder of your years, having a civilized, educated, and literate workforce available to you is surely preferred to not having one.

> Another thought experiment:

This is a waste of time thought experiment. Healthcare professionals triage all the time. Society prioritizes various goals all the time. The US could be spending the entire military budget to develop healthcare treatments, but it does not, for myriad reasons. In real life, the 5 year old has died in the past due to lack of sufficient resources, and will continue to die. It does not matter if it is ethical or unethical, politically, it will be unpopular to sacrifice a whole community’s access to healthcare so one 5 year old can live.

In any case, bringing up unrelated examples does not advance discussions.

I shall explain, if I must.

> Why do I have to pay taxes for schools when I don't have any children?

This is directly related because it is often brought up by people who argue similar things and used in the same way to say 'it doesn't affect me, so why should I pay the consequences'. Paying a tax that doesn't directly help you, and having to move or live in a neighborhood which has changed for the worse are directly comparable. You say "Presuming you wish to live in a given locale for the remainder of your years, having a civilized, educated, and literate workforce available to you is surely preferred to not having one", yet this is the very thing I am getting at. The person arguing 'why should they have to deal with it' is not taking in to account that everyone would have a worse quality of life because diseases like AIDS don't stop at junkies. Not having clean needles affects more than junkies.

> This is a waste of time thought experiment.

Really? You don't get how thinking about 'letting an innocent kid die so that many people can get helped' has anything to do with this? I really thought that one was self-evident.

If every single gas station the world over had syringe swap setups, nothing much would happen.

But if only certain locations have them, then things will congregate there.

Yep, I still wouldn't change my moral position from the other day you're complaining about. Posting my beliefs here doesn't mean I'm looking for someone to convince me to change my mind. I'm stating my beliefs!

To be frank, if you're shouting "Hey everyone, I'm so sure of my beliefs that nothing is going to change my mind", good for you, but nobody cares. There are plenty of other places where you can broadcast your obliviousness to new information. HN is not one of them, given that "curiosity" is highlighted as a prime motivator for this site.

Why state your beliefs? Are you hoping to convince someone else to change their mind? How arrogant.

Or are you simply shouting into the void? We are not the void, and we don't appreciate the shouting.

It was a discussion about culture and tradition. My statement was that I believe it's morally wrong to circumcise boys. 0 shouting. He's called me oblivious, and apparently I shouldn't have the right to comment if I'm not willing to change that belief.

There's a difference between "not increasing drug use" and concentrating drug use in specific areas, possibly in the open.

Want's to move drug users to "the country side". Doesn't like NIMBYs.

Not sure where you are located but one thing I’ve found is that people from the Bay Area are much more concerned about drugs amongst the homeless than in other locations. And rightly! It’s shocking as a visitor to encounter San Francisco’s version of homelessness.

As a Chicagoan though I’m much more concerned about mental health and access to short term housing. We’ve eliminated almost all of the short term housing that helps people move off the streets with the obvious side effect of homeless encampments. But you very rarely hear any talk of easing the restrictions on short term housing.

Any attempt to establish a short term housing prompts multiple questions. For example, do you allow drunk people in? If you don't, you leave a lot of people on the shore. If you do, you end up with drunk fights and vomit on the stairs.

Go figure.

Maybe it should be on categories: you get drunk, you move where the vomit and drunk violence is. You want to commit to stop drinkig you get out of there. But it’s more wishful thinking as nobody sane wants to monitor these. All solutions that are given seem to be half assed and barely work.

The perfect is the enemy of the good in lots of these cases, the old flophouses would have drunk tanks where they knew to throw the appropriate people, and hoseable floors.

But you can't build things like that anymore; you get shut down if you're not meeting all the "minimum requirements" and so the people who at least used to have a heated room out of the weather are now living rough.

There is an SRO less than a block from my house (one of very few left in the city). They have strict rules around intoxication outside of your room. It does have the impact of meaning people who can't control their abuse have to find other housing. We should have a place for those folks too, but I'd rather there be a place that doesn't solve all of the housing issues, but can get some people off the streets rather than wait for a solution that solves every issue.

As an aside, they are perfectly good neighbors. As is the studio apartment complex next to it, that is a single tier above the SRO. I have a lot more trouble from the fast food wing place on the other side of the block than I've ever had from my neighbors.

You should probably have both kind at the same time in different buildings.

> I’m much more concerned about mental health and access to short term housing

You should be more concerned about general restrictions on housing construction. Mental health is not magically better in Japan and yet we don't see this kind of vagrancy there. But they also don't have the kind of nimbyism that plagues American cities with "intractable" homelessness problems.

What does Japan do with its addicts and mentally unstable?

I grew up in the Bay Area. It's always been about mental health and housing from my perspective. Pushing symptoms like "drug use" out of public view has nothing to do with solving the causes like "economic precarity", "systematic discrimination", and "lack of affordable housing".

Saying "end" here acts like the current system ends the misery of the homeless people who are subjected to it. But the position they end up inside of a US prison is equally miserable. The only difference is that it is invisible to those in the outside world.

That's not the only difference, of course, given that the prisons get more money. Really, this is a call to privatize the misery. Still, it could be a net gain if it costs less than subsidizing emergency services and reclaims the streets.

Net gain for who?

If you assume the misery of the users is constant between the drug zones and the prisons, everyone.

The best way to solve the drug problem is legalizing all drugs (or at least decriminalizing them) so let's do that too.

There's high-quality precedent, and Portugal is the classic example. They decriminalized all drugs back in 2001 and went from one of the worst in the EU to one of the best in the EU along basically every major measure of drug harm. [1]

[edit] > The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015.

This was achieved in conjunction with some rehab social programs. The article is worth a read.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...

The paper I linked to had several case studies, I think the Zurich and Portugal model both have a lot to teach the USA.

But step one is to stop pretending that open drugs scenes are caused by homelessness. They're caused by open-air markets for drugs, and the US in fact does a fairly good job of caring for the unhoused except for the open drug scene problem. End those, the rest of the unhoused have enough available solutions, and it's easier to do more when more is needed.

There's no ending them without a health care policy for addiction, either. Treating drug addiction as a criminal matter just leads back to open drug scenes. Keeping them gone requires a different approach.

What, if any, approaches or policies are you actually advocating for when you talk about "ending" open drug scenes?

DEA raids and incarceration of the homeless? Universal healthcare and ending scheduling of drugs? State/federal bans on overly-restrictive local zoning and international building codes, which prevent the construction of affordable new housing?

Is it really too much to expect you to read the paper, which I've referenced, and pointed to two of the case studies as particularly valuable?

I'm not an expert, it doesn't make sense for me to do more than point to the expert opinions which I consider valuable here.

It's none of the things in your paragraph.

Open drug scenes are not caused by homelessness so housing the unhoused does not in itself solve the problem. It takes more than that.

One of the reasons I care about this is the evidence that housing-first policies fail if and when there are open drug scenes.

I've encountered OP before as a commenter. They use verbose diatribes to try to shuffle their own (quite radical) personal moral convictions past the HN crowd. For what reason, I do not know, but it is to me indistinguishable from a lack of real understanding. It reminds me of economists who grow up only reading Hayek, never having seen the inside of day-to-day business operations.

Unclear if "OP" is them or me...

Edit: I'm not entirely sure anymore, but I think my comment was made before the edit was made by arcticbull. Just saying so that if anyone wonders why it looks like I am disagreeing with someone who is making part of my own argument (now) ... that's why. I only remember there being legalization brought up.

-------Original Comment Below------

Sorry, but I cannot agree. Legalization just gives government reason to profit off the harm of the individual.

If you really want to remove the crime from drug use, go with decriminalization only. Just make it not a crime, that's all. I know this seems like its the same thing called a different thing to some, but after marijuana legalization and how that went in Canada, I think you all should really take note of why "legalization" is just a ploy by governments to get more tax dollars.

I have no issue with people doing what they want with their own body freely of their own choice; but I have much issue with giving government any form of power and/or profit over that choice.

So you won't be budging me on this.

Besides, there's really only like 3 or 4 drugs that deserve to be removed from criminality; the rest are so damn harmful to a person that if they are taking those drugs... they're already pretty much at the bottom of the pit of hell they dug for themselves. There won't be any helping them unless you are willing to ignore their rights as a human being and force them into some sort of rehab system that is removed from urban centers entirely; so they can't get easy access to those drugs anymore.

Might even have to swallow the bill as tax payers to have them housed for a few years as well afterwards, still outside of urban centers, so they can pick their life back up and stand on their own two feet again.

But that's just my opinion on the matter. It's a real shame none of you will actually listen to it.

What if we just had legalization without taxation?

Also if you think people get clean in the country side that would suggest to me you’ve never spent time outside of these urban areas whence you’re trying to banish addicts. Anecdotally, the loneliness of the country side, being away from loved ones and familiar social and cultural institutions, made my own struggles worse.

> What if we just had legalization without taxation?

I'm pretty sure that's what we generally refer to as decriminalization. (lol)

> Also if you think people get clean in the country side that would suggest to me you’ve never spent time outside of these urban areas... (rest of comment redacted)

Alright, so... yes I have actually. And we had one of the rehab centers near our town, and while there was still some heavy drug use by some people in said town, it was never anything close to similar as what would be found in more urban centers. Furthermore, those people had to go to the city to get those drugs, which was my entire point. If you can't even get the drugs, cause you can't even get to the city, then you have to somehow get friendly with those people that everyone knows you shouldn't be hanging out with.

My condolences for your struggles friend, but just because you struggled with a situation that many others find to be a center of peace and comfort for themselves doesn't mean that I am wrong. It just means that my approach wouldn't work for you, possibly. Sad as it may seem, sometimes loved ones are the problem. They can be quite enabling, when they should be disabling. And it's those familiar social and cultural circles you bring up that are also sometimes part of why the harm exists to begin with. For some at least.

So perhaps my solution doesn't work 100% for everyone, but you are not the rule here either. You are an exception to it, in my books.

Finally, the country side is only lonely if you are the type to never interact with other country bumpkins. If that's you, then I am sorry, but that's more of a you problem... Try hanging out with some random people once in a while? Go to a bar and shoot some pool and meet some folk? I dunno, but staying at home itself only will definitely drive anyone nuts. I only suggest it for the severely addicted at all, because they can't really help themselves in regard to not falling back into old bad habits.

But again, there are no 100% fix all solutions. There will always be caveats, like yourself.

> legalization without taxation is decriminalization

No, the latter refers to simply not charging people. You can still confiscate their drugs and subject them to assessments a la Portugal. Decimalization is kind of a dumb, dangerous (ie no constitutionally established recourse) messy term, so think of the other one like food sales: legalization without taxation.

> one must go to the city to source drugs

Cottagecore as a policy idea

> go to a bar to avoid falling back into your addictive habits

I never said what I struggled with. What if it was the world’s deadliest drug: alcohol?

>> > go to a bar to avoid falling back into your addictive habits

> I never said what I struggled with. What if it was the world’s deadliest drug: alcohol? -------------

I realize what you are trying to make a point of here, but note how I never said to drink while there. I said play some pool. Obviously it would be nice to have a drink, but legally they have to serve you water if you ask for it. Etc and so forth.

-------------

>> > one must go to the city to source drugs

> Cottagecore as a policy idea

Ironically, if I understand your terminology correctly; that's precisely what first nations do up here with their healing lodges where they send people instead of going to jail, etc.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inside-okimaw-oh...

-----------------

>> > legalization without taxation is decriminalization

> No, the latter refers to simply not charging people. You can still confiscate their drugs and subject them to assessments a la Portugal. Decimalization is kind of a dumb, dangerous (ie no constitutionally established recourse) messy term, so think of the other one like food sales: legalization without taxation.

SO in other words, it makes it 'not a crime anymore'. I'm fine with them confiscating many of the drugs out there, because a good large chunk of them are all things no one needs to be taking anyways. Literally, no one.

And besides, I already stated multiple times now why I don't like legalization. It's just like you state yourself, it's more like food sales; which governments also tax. (Unless it's real food, in which case it might depend on where you live. Heavily processed/packaged foods get taxed here in Canada, while 'real food' does not.) I am not in favor of allowing government to tax people for doing things that harm themselves and potentially others.

> never said drink

But you did acknowledge that the environment wherein addiction sprouts makes it easier for it to rebound, rhetorical courtesy of my enabling loved ones. The countryside bar still demands a steady supply of the same, easily exhausted resource that fighting vice under city pressures does: will power. Yet per your prescription, it would be under the duress of exile.

> healing lodges

The example you give seems to be a conflation of social rehabilitation for people who have committed crimes against other people (as exemplified in the opening of that article, describing a woman who killed a child) and medical (mental specifically) rehabilitation as I thought we were discussing in the context of addiction. Art and animal therapies are hardly unique to first nations or indigenous cultures, though tribal jurisdiction certainly allows these groups more latitude in trying to address their community's problematic members. This is one of the benefits of Portugal's decriminalization process in that addicts' individual circumstances and paths to recovery are theoretically (though I can't vouch for the practice) given greater consideration.

> no taxing people for things that harm themselves and/or others

That's an interesting stance. Mitigating externalities is one of the ideas behind, for example, taxing pollution. Addressing second hand smoke, needle waste, etc could be good allocations of such tax dollars, but generally, at least in the US, sin taxes go into funds paying for bridges or school text books, which ironically makes the abstemious life one of civil selfishness.

I would say that the NL model of decrimilisation without legalisation doesn't work. Largely because of it NL has a big gang problem, and one of the highest murder rates in Europe. Now fully legalise drugs, give them out for free for all that I care, that's the only way to kill the organised crime around it.

I would also be interested in which drugs you believe are worth decriminalising and which ones you deem to dangerous. There are generally a lot of misconceptions about the health effects of (especially hard) drugs in particular compared to some legalised ones (alcohol has extremely strong health effects).

Cigarette consumption in the US has been steadily declining for the last 50 years or so. This is while state governments are taxing tobacco products heavily. In fact a 1 pct point increase in tobacco taxes are related to a 0.5 pct point decrease in tobacco consumption. [1]

So I don't buy the argument that the government will encourage harm because they make money off of it.

[1] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/08/10/...

Okay, I'm going to reply to yours as well before calling it for the night. I keep trying to, but people keep on replying and I hate seeming to be rude by ignoring people. Especially when they seem to mean well. (But seriously, this is the last time, lol... I need to sleep.)

I accept the premise of your argument, since it makes sense on the simple side of things. But... I think you forget to include the fact that people just go to a new supplier if they find their smokes getting more and more expensive.

Up here in Canada (Can't speak on the states) people just buy smokes from the reserves instead. And since government and agencies that collect this sort of data are likely getting their numbers from legal sales, but not illegal ones or grey market at the very least; that means they are missing numbers that tell a different story.

Menthol cigs for example are technically not allowed here anymore; but people still manage to get them. From gangs, reserves, random people who managed to smuggle them across the border, etc.

Now, I keep saying I'm going to go to sleep here, but it's starting to feel like a run on joke now.

Sure, government might not always tax things that are harmful; but it also depends on who's running that government. And my experience thus far has been that they will tax harm, if they can get away with it. (I wish I could italicize that last part.)

Now, good night. Maybe... I keep trying to listen to tunes first, and maybe that's the mistake.

Moreover there are increasingly strict restrictions on where it is permissible to smoke. To mirror rhetoric elsewhere in the thread: in many areas the state and local government is successfully cracking down on "open nicotine scenes".

Drug use is rampant in rural areas too, so the "urban centers" thing doesn't come across that well.

If a person is addicted to drugs and needs to be removed from society "for their own good," this can be done without criminalization. Criminalization of drug usage seems entirely ineffective and even counterproductive.

In response to the edit I must have missed.

1. Crime rates reduced: I mean, of course they did. It was not longer a crime to be using those drugs, so there was no reason to be arresting people for possessing them. I don't know about you, but that seems pretty simple to me.

2. HIV rates reduced: I remember reading something once upon a time ago that made mention about how HIV rates plummeted all around the world (except in Africa) during that same time frame. Yet the rest of the world definitely hasn't decrimed/legalized all drugs. Might be worth looking into that more and see if maybe Portugal just had a happy coincidence.

>> Link: Not what I read, but shows some of the same or similar data I remember. https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-glob....

3. Overdose deaths: Strangely enough with humans, once something is no longer illicit, they want it less. They are also less likely to overdose on said drugs because they aren't having to risk a bad batch from a bad dealer as much, that sort of thing. So this is a win for legalization, I must admit; but it's a pretty loose one, since the whole "can't have it, thus want it" effect is pretty strong with humanity. Not having it anymore cause they can have it could be part of this reduction. Needs more looking into. (I would hope that before downvoting, people would look into things like the reduction of marijuana use among some people because it was no longer against the law, thus 'cool' to be a user of marijuana here in Canada and I think some American states as well. This applies to basically any drug due to how human psychology operates.)

4. I think most of those reductions are going to have more to do with happy coincidences, and the conjunction of rehab use, since the use of said drugs isn't as socially stigmatized anymore, thus neither is rehab.

(Edit: Look, folks. I get it, some of you really don't like what I have to say here. That's fine. But please, give me a break. I'm a new person here, and I'm just trying to add context to the conversation. Thanks for understanding, hopefully.)

2. good counterpoint

1, 3, and 4: you're making very good points in favor of legalization, but your tone seems to indicate it's reluctant, as if those don't count somehow. If I got it right, could you expand on why they don't count? On the face of it, of course all of the following are great upsides of legalization: 1. less arrests 3. one less incentive to seek drugs 4. more willingness to seek rehab when needed.

Well, at risk of being banned for saying things people don't like... lol...

To answer your question, the reluctance is because I would rather we just take the criminal element out of it all by just decriminalizing it. I would much rather we not give governments any sort of incentive to introduce more 'sin taxes' essentially.

Decriminalization gives us all those benefits you bring up, without enabling our governments to be worse than they already are. I have already witnessed this on a lower level because of marijuana legalization in Canada. Hence why I bring it up at all. Paul Martin was going to decriminalize it, but it got squashed, and the more popular opinion that I am aware of is that the other powers that be didn't like they wouldn't be able to profit off of it as easily. Not like how they can now, with enacting arbitrary rules like "can only grow 4 plants per household" etc, etc.

If your argument is about legalization vs. decriminalization, then you should say so. You've been all over the comments arguing, but this is the first time I've seen you mention it.

In a group conversation, you can count on people remembering what you were talking about, but the structure of comments isn't like that. We can only expect people to know what's written in the parent comments of the tree. Remembering that can help us talk to each other instead of past each other.

With all due respect, I would think that with the amount of times I have differentiated the terminology of legalization and decriminalization, that it should have been obvious at this point.

I guess not. Anyways, thanks for the input. I'll keep it in mind to be more precise on what I am saying.

P.S If you look carefully, you'll see that I was merely replying mostly to people who replied to me. At least after the first few comments to others. Not sure why you needed to portray it as "arguing with people all over the place", but I wanted to make that precisely clear.

Maybe you did somewhere else in the thread, but not here. That's entirely my point.

Look at all the parent comments from this one, and you will see what you have and haven't said.

Picture this: you are at a party, and told someone something on one side of the room, and expected the rest of us to have heard it. It just doesn't work that way.

Anyone with 500 karma has the right.

Downvoting comments you disagree with is allowed in the guidelines.

Complaining about downvotes will reliably get you downvoted.

Welcome to Hacker News.

Fair enough I suppose. I don't agree that anyone has the right to downvote something just because they disagree with it; as I would hope they would instead provide a reason for that disagreement, but it's not my site, so not my rules.

But I still don't agree with the idea that they have the right just because they managed to get 500 karma on some webpage. That's technically easily done by just saying 'just the right thing' and getting all the updoots. At that point, it's really not worth much.

But thanks for explaining.

As my father used to say "Just because you've got the right, doesn't make it right".

500 karma means a user can downvote: that's ability. No one can punish a user for downvoting either: if someone can do something, and no one can stop them from doing it or punish them after, that means they've got the right.

Then what are rights for?

what?

You're clearly arguing in good faith and very polite. Just ignore the downvoters, since this is a sensitive subject. Later on people will come back and see your greyed out comment and upvote it just to offset the people overreacting

I would say that we could go one step further. The government can issue drug tests. If someone demonstrates addiction through these tests, they get a tapering supply of their drug in pharmaceutical grade at zero cost.

Drug dealers can't compete with free, and the government's supply tapers to zero, so street supply and addiction should plummet.

You can prevent diversion of the government supply to the street by tagging it. Test positive on the government supply and you get nothing. Tighten or loosen policy as needed if street dealing returns.

This assumes people want to end their drug abuse. Even having the will, ending severe addiction with a tapering supply is extremely difficult, and painful. Like slowly peeling off a band-aid for months, or even years.

Odds are that proposed solution would help some people, but would fail in the majority of cases and cost an absolute fortune.

There's no way that some pills and vials and tracking will cost more than an entire drug war. If free is too expensive, just make it cheaper than the street.

And I don't think that the users have to want much. They are addicted, addiction is expensive, enter a free alternative that they will have to accept eventually when their drug dealers can't make ends meet and quit the game.

The taper comes after the drug dealers have all found something else to do. Give it some time for all their drug routes and contacts to go cold. And be prepared to ramp supply back up if they come back. It will be a multi-round game, but it's one that the drug dealers just can't win, for simple economic reasons.

I don't think it is a good idea to reduce the supply over time. It may make sense in some cases, but some addicts are better of by having a constant supply. Pharmaceutical grade opioids are pretty safe. Far safer than legal drugs like tobacco or alcohol.

Also fine, and probably more practical. There is a certain moralizing part of society that has to have the taper on the horizon.

Article and definition of open drug scenes is paywalled

Don't bury the lede. "Open Drug Scenes" (never heard this phrase before) are merely a symptom of homelessness, a problem that has proven to be simple, if not easy, to solve.

So you're saying that people are addicted drugs because they are homeless, they are not homeless because they are addicted to drugs?

You can have both, and they can create a feedback loop that guarantees someone will never be able to get out.

A more general example of this is scarcity mindset where the condition of not having enough of something causes someone to be poor at managing that resource [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity:_Why_Having_Too_Littl...

There's an alternate conclusion (which seems a more sympathetic and obvious read to me) that people who would do drugs and have nowhere private they are allowed to be end up doing drugs in public.

I'm sure the cause/effect between homelessness and drug addiction is somewhat more complicated (and two-way; I'm confident that I'd be more likely to be an addict if I were homeless).

> people who would do drugs and have nowhere private they are allowed to be end up doing drugs in public

I think there is delineation between public drug use and open drug scenes. The latter is concentrated.

I don't understand how what you just said isn't painfully obvious to all.

Both are probably true, some people get homeless due to addiction, and lack of a home keeps them relapsing, while also creating a social environment where other types of homeless persons - the mentally or physically disabled, elders, evacuees etc. - can get into drugs.

For a dealer, a dense community of chronic addicts is a cashcow, a market they can serve with much lower risk vs. catering to suburban teenage parties.

No, and this is such a weird and bad logical jump, and really shows the limitations of strict logical thinking and lack appreciated second-order type stuff.

Rich or middle class addicts still have houses to get high in.

It's anecdotal, but I've definitely had rich friends get high in the open. Even when not homeless, there are a lot of reasons to hide an addiction from the people in your home and instead seek out locations where you can get high.

Agreed.

In my moderately sized southern city of 200k, we logged/censused 576 homeless a few months ago. Of course these individuals were the ones able to be counted; there's likely more. So roughly a quarter of a percent per captia.

As with most US cities of this size and economic demographic we have a few areas where those without housing tend to congregate. Pains me and I wish I could help more than I do. And from what I have seen in my many decades of living here, these areas are totally devoid of this "open air drug market" characteristic. Not to say transactions don't happen they most certainly do, but that's true of every square foot of any US city, and the people in these places shield their behaviors from public eyes as well as anyone else that procures such things. My city is experiencing a staggering increase in violence this past year at a seemingly disproportionately faster rate than other nearby metro areas if my napkin math holds true and yet none of that violence is noted as occurring at these areas I'm describing. I think that's worth noting too.

The interplay of homelessness, mental health, drug dependency, economic struggle and societal rejection is a very complicated and interwoven problem. It's disappointing to hear that there are individuals who feel so self assured in the sources of these problems when it's evident that the qualities of these problems widely differ from place to place.

It's just if you're not homeless, your drug scenes won't be open.

Lol, it's LITERALLY just this. There is 100% nothing else to see here. This whole conversation is so wild to me.

Both are true to different extents and in different cases.

Say you're living on the streets, mentally ill or just unhappy due to circumstances. Are drugs, a way to temporarily escape your current pain, going to be more or less tempting?

In what way are open drug scenes simple to solve? The research I've scene on cities that have had large ones is that "simple" draconian and "abstinence based" policies rarely have a positive effect and most places saw the best results from complex, multiprong approaches that are implemented with an understanding that it will take years to see results.

While open drug scenes are comorbid with housing crises, they are not the same thing. There is also overlap between the strategies for addressing them, but that overlap is not complete.

What's simple to solve is homelessness.

You give them a home. Then they are no longer homeless.

The fact that this is also demonstrably (in several different jurisdictions now) less costly than either imprisoning them or dealing with the other consequences of a significant homeless population should make it a no-brainer.

But too many people have internalized the idea that no one should ever have anything they haven't "earned", including the basics necessary for survival (food, shelter, clothing, clean water, etc), so there's always angry opposition to this. (Plus, of course, the racism angle, which is fairly significant, if often unspoken.)

For those that talk about giving people things they "have not earned", I note what we've taken from those same people -- the ability for them fend for themselves and live off the land.

With regard to the mechanism of "compensating for the lease of the part of our living planet they should be entitled by birth", I think any means tested or regulated approach is problematic. Instead provide to them rent checks for the slice of the world society has taken from them, and provided to others for private ownership / exploitation.

Let a market economy sort the development and allocation of resources.

Ugh. Stop with the "theories."

We've already run the real life experiments, as suggested above. No need to try to delve into minds and motivation and life goals and other such nonsense (nonsense not in the sense that it's not true, but nonsense in that it doesn't bring any helpful ideas to the policy decisions that should be made.)

Housing first approaches are very effective, but simply providing housing isn't anywhere near a complete solution.

Drug addiction and the development of open drug spaces is not just a symptom of homelessness. If you solved housing and it became a human right, you would probably reduce the development of open drug spaces, but it certainly wouldn't be eliminated.

I'm not burying the lede, I am vigorously disagreeing with the point of view, and providing a citation.

As always happens in HN when you post the legal source of a paper, a helpful commenter has posted a link to a grey-market copy. I suggest you read it, then we can have an informed conversation about what you're claiming here, presuming it doesn't change your mind.

What is an “open drug scene”?

"Open drug scenes are gatherings of drug users who publicly consume and deal drugs."

I hadn't heard it either, and the PDF didn't load for me.

it's defined in the paper but of course that's behind a paywall. Considering how many times the OP used the term, it would have been helpful for it to be defined.

Here is the full paper: https://sci-hub.se/10.1159/000259053

Lol right? If you're gonna say something 20 times, clearly economy of words is not your priority, so might as well define the damn thing.

It’s the new “you’re siding with the terrorists”

This is a long documentary so I am sure there are better videos that get right to the point but this street is one of the more famous examples in America that you will hear brought up repeatedly in places like reddit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXyXYJg9SyY

You get a good sense at 21:00 in the video.

I had a feeling this was going to be Kensington before I even clicked the link.

It's when people who don't have a house to live in gather to do drugs.

When people who do have a house to live in gather to do drugs, we call it the suburbs.

I'm a bit confused what point your are trying to make. You don't ever define open drug scenes and the you link to an abstract for a paywalled article is similarly lacking. Based on some searching I found a paper that provides the following definition: "Open drug scenes are gatherings of drug users who publicly consume and deal drugs." But also acknowledges it is generally a fairly loosely defined term.

You repeatedly say "don't support open drug scenes" but never explain what you mean beyond a vague assertion that advocates for the unhoused support open drug scenes. You make absolutely no concrete comments on specific policy approaches, you just dismiss an entire group in a very general fashion.

Homelessness and open drug scenes are entwined, but different issues. Not all people at an open drug scene are unhoused. Many unhoused people are not drug addicts, though they tend to be less noticeable than the ones who are.

All of this seems to be a red herring since the article we are discussing brings up specific laws. Those are not laws focused in any way on addressing open drug scenes, but rather laws that target vagrancy in general. These laws are being pushed forward by groups funded by private prison owners.

Thus your assertion that this is somehow not true with a deflection onto "open drug scenes" is not convincing.

Drug problems are always symptoms of bigger problems. There's nothing wrong with drug use as long as it's properly regulated.

There are many harm reduction measures that are better than criminalization. If you don't want people using drugs on the sidewalk, give them a better place to do it. Countries like Denmark and Switzerland have had enormous success with government run heroin clinics. Supplying free, clean drugs in a safe environment reduces overdoses, prevents drug users from going into debt and almost completely eliminates drug related crime.

In general, the solution to problems like homelessness and drug addiction is to give people the support they need. Direct cash transfers are by far the most effective way of supporting people, but this is unpopular because the public doesn't trust the poor. People tend to think homeless people are irrational and will waste any money they are given on drugs, even though that's been proven false. The biggest challenge is combating prejudice and changing public opinion.

I don't know what this "Open Drug Scene"

What is it ? What is the best way to describe it ?

Can it be summarized as Hamsterdam (from HBOs' The Wire) ?

I think he's thinking of East Hastings in Vancouver or Kensington in Philadelphia. YouTube will likely shock you if you're not familiar with this subculture.