Neither out of mana, nor what a dyslexic cow says, nor that your spectrum hobbit has fucking crashed again where helping me here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oom
iirc the easier to synthesize meth causes psychosis pretty quickly and makes it hard to help people recover.
It’s one thing to be able to persuade a heroin addict into recovery, it’s another to interact with someone fully psychotic.
That mixed with good weather and not as strict policy causes problems.
Around soma or tenderloin you’ll see lots of people doing the “dope lean” - I think that’s a fentanyl thing.
It was pretty much the polar opposite experience of walking down any major street in LA or SF. Of all the metro areas I've visited in Europe, Copenhagen had the least visible amount of junkies and homeless people. I've been in Oslo tons of times, and there you see them quite frequently (but compared to California they're pretty much non-existent)
For comparison, I've spent maybe a month in SF put together over the last few years:
- In 30 days, I met more than 30 mentally ill people in SF. 40 Years everywhere else, I saw one old lady with dementia once in Copenhagen. And a few randoms few and far between in London. By mentally ill I mean the kind of ill where you're shouting nonsense in public.
- Then there's the guy who is aggressively threatening his imaginary friends. Seems to be a SF creature, doesn't seem drunk or stoned, just nuts. Even these guys outnumber the drunk/stoned nutters I've met in Europe in the last few years. I ran into them often, trying to stay away since you know...
- SF seemed like you were never more than 2 minutes away from someone with lower level mental health problems. I sat down in a Starbucks and realised I was hearing Cantonese from somewhere. Turned around it was some middle aged woman swearing while having a conversation with herself. But she wasn't in the category above.
- Never saw any crime but I've seen the shoplifting videos. That would not pass in Zurich. Probably not most places though I wonder if Metropolitan Police would get their act together.
- Extreme distress behavior like stealing food, never saw it anywhere else. In SF someone ran in to grab my leftovers when I was done eating. Not the same as a safety issue, but you can see how people might feel unsafe with that kind of thing happening.
- Generally an extreme level of inequality in living conditions might make people feel unsafe. I mean there were people on the street with no shoes, walking around Nordstrom department store in town centre.
Of course it's a long way between safety stats and feeling safe. I would guess if you're living in Sweden right now, you are safe despite the rocketing murder rate, providing you're not involved in organised crime. You might not feel that way and yes there's going to be innocents caught up with it. But safe means a lot of things.