As long as the demand exists, the supply will come.
If you want to fix this, you have to get the users into the medical system to get them off the drugs.
But, you see, that takes money--real money. And nobody actually cares about the drug users--they just want them out of sight.
So, the charade will continue. And so it goes.
As productivity goes up in some areas of the economy, the relative cost of dealing with social problems goes up. Doctors, nurses, social workers, police - these professions are not scalable and feel "more expensive" (their time more scarce and valuable) every year.
"A failing mental health system leaves this mother pleading: Keep him in jail"
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-12/one-moms...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/...
“They know what’s going on, but I don’t know. If they want to clean it, they can clean it,” the dealer said. “Sometimes they do the job, but it’s like, just for the news, like, ‘Oh, we did the job good.’ If they wanted to clean it good, they could do that.”
The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”"
So the police seem to just let this happen without caring about its impact on the citizens that pay their salaries? Got it.