This is irrelevant. When it comes to using drugs, all that matters is the user's own perception of their life. The fact that we have a mental health crisis among young people clearly indicates that, despite any measurable increase to their material quality of life, these young people are increasingly likely to perceive their lot as being dismal. Look at the article and see how many of these kids thought they were taking Xanax, which is an anti-anxiety medication. They weren't even trying to get high, they were seeking something to help them make it through the day. Finding and addressing the cause of this anxiety is, alas, more complicated than just beheading anyone who gets caught popping a pill.

There's also not a lot of evidence in favor of the death penalty as a deterrent. The most likely outcome of this policy is we just start executing hundreds of young men, mostly minorities.

Maybe the news paints it as a bunch of cowboys trying to restrict abortions. But look at California, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc laws. They have become so liberal that it has become a meme. Drugs are almost completely decriminalized, you can buy/sell and consume drugs openly on the street, police will not investigate property crimes under $1000 at all anymore, eviction is almost completely impossible even if the tenant hasn’t paid rent in a year. California is about to spend 800 BILLION dollars giving money to black people even though slavery never existed there.

It’s legitimately a struggle to think up ways coastal cities in the US could be more liberal.

Regardless of the merits of each argument (I am doubtful if you can easily transfer examples from one country to another) we obviously have people arguing with each other here based on completely different definitions of key terms in the discussion.

This isn't actually happening.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-are-the-next-steps-...

It seems like it's happening to me..

That's just cops being lazy and not doing their job. They like to say "the D.A. will just throw it out!" or "they'll just be back on the street due to overcrowding!" as if either of those has anything to do with the cops' job of enforcing laws and arresting perpetrators.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...

Just walk the street on any given day in SF, you are guaranteed to see at least one broken car window. Smash and grabs are rampant.

The only policies I've heard of are either police department policies -- which is just codified laziness and refusal to do their job -- or district attorney policy which, as I said, shouldn't be relevant to whether or not police make arrests. It's their job to arrest people for crimes, not to solely arrest people for crimes for which they think they can get a conviction.

They successfully restricted those abortions. They are trying to criminalize traveling to other states for abortions. And by abortions here we mean also medically necessary abortions.

> Drugs are almost completely decriminalized

This is simply not true. Like ... I dont think it is liberal media lying issue here. Maybe the specific subset of media you read is lying to you - which is way more likely to be conservative.

Sort of, yes. They are not restricted in any coastal cities though, the vast majority of Americans still have access to abortion.

The states I mentioned (CA, OR, WA, NY, and most other states too) have not restricted it. It's a few states in the south. These states/cities I mentioned are where most Americans actually live.

>This is simply not true.

I mean, have you driven through LA, SF, Seattle, or NY? You can watch people consuming and selling drugs 7 days a week in broad daylight. I am not relying on any news source for that information, I have lived it. Have you been assaulted or screamed at by someone high out of their mind on the street in SF? I have.

The drugs in USA were not decriminalized. You lied.

Is it? From what I hear living costs are higher and higher, real wages are flat or declining especially for the bottom 20%, and while more people might "have" "health insurance" it doesn't seem to have reduced the costs or rate of bankruptcies.

Real income over time: (about 10% higher today than in 2000): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881600A

Bottom quintile over time (about 20% higher today than in 2000): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXU900000LB0102M

The CPI for rent is more than double what it was in 2000: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEHA

(I’ve now edited my post to call that out.)

I do find it interesting that housing and living costs seem more unaffordable than the CPI data implies. I came across some Statista data that indicates that real hourly earnings fell for non-managerial workers from a high in 1964 and took nearly 60 years to recover in 2019[0]:

> On average, workers in the United States in nonsupervisory positions got paid $23.38 an hour last month. Denominated in constant 1982-1984 dollars, that amounts to real average hourly earnings of $9.40, the highest amount on record since 1964.

I could be wrong but I imagine that many of these workers were probably hit harder by the pandemic and current inflation than those lucky enough to be able to work through it.

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-unite...

I agree with you that things "feel worse" than the data suggests. I asked an old friend a while ago about this, observing "I never worried about how much going out to eat cost 20 years ago, and I was making a lot less money then. Now, it seems so expensive."

"You have a house, kids, and family to think about now" was his answer.

That's a 2.5x - 3x increase since 1975, which is huge given that it is the single most expensive thing that anybody buys in their life. If you take housing out of the equation, most people I know wouldn't need to worry about money.

That's a fair point from an individual perspective. Although, it's concerning that society as a whole appears to be experiencing the same shift.

> Part of the spread in feeling vs CPI is likely that CPI represents reported purchases. If people want steak and buy ground beef, CPI reports on the ground beef while you and I in daily life might be noticing our desire for the steak.

That's true. I also suspect that people that were struggling before have been impacted much more severely by price rises. In my country, prices in budget supermarkets have increased by a much greater percentage[0]. Own brand products seem to have been affected even more[0]:

> we found other Tesco products, including Hearty Food Co Two Garlic Chicken Kievs (260g), Grower's Harvest Orange Juice (3 x 200ml) and Rosedene Farms Small Pear Pack (550g), all soaring by more than 60% in price.

> At Asda, two versions of its Free From cream cheese products – its Soft Cheese Alternative (170g) and its Garlic & Herb Soft Cheese Alternative (170g) – went up from 93p to £2.12, an increase of 128%.

[0] https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/supermarket-budget-and-...

well it sure seems that way, don't it?

perhaps the issue is because Americans spend their time alone staring at screens, getting mad about politics and depressed while the Bangladeshi are toiling outside in well integrated communities...

or maybe it's just a supply issue. Then again, wouldn't alcohol and Afghan opium be relatively easy to acquire in Bangladesh?

further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park (although it has't been well replicated, from what I gather)

https://o-meditation.com/2012/06/12/the-attraction-for-drugs...

Lack of housing and the subsequent high cost of housing is a serious issue. Taking steps to avoid people becoming homeless in the first place is extremely important. And has certainly become much, much worse. It is a large factor in the amount of addiction and street drug use.