I have been in the same boat while living in SF.

I don’t believe addicts and even to extension a lot of dealers should be locked up. I agree generally that nonviolent crimes probably don’t net benefit the community by locking people up. Assuming we are talking about our existing prison system.

For addicts unfortunately I don’t know what else is possible beyond locking them up in mental health institutions. Perhaps we need to try out new types of addiction centers that we can enroll people into? I don’t know what the answer is and I am not sure if we have the help of history. We certainly had drugs in the past but most of the time it sounds like people were drunks. Now we have a crisis of addicts using drugs that are unstoppable.

I wish I had a better idea but everything so far has not worked. There is probably a cutoff. You have the individuals that are not possible to bring back and the ones that could maybe become recovering addicts. The ones that are not coming back just need to go to state institutions.

We used to have a system in the uk where the addicts were prescribed drugs by government sponsored medics. It actually worked quite well, and you can give them a bonus if they get a productive job. Sadly that sort of stuff while effective at helping drug addicts tends to be an easy target for politicians wanting to be 'tough on drugs'. As well as getting addicts off the street and not killed it means less money for drug dealers so the whole thing dwindles.

Addiction counseling works on some people. But you have to address root cause. The drugs are the symptom. For some they just like to get messed up. For some they use it to tune out. For some they just do not want to feel sick. For some the like the idea that they live the way they want to. Sometimes a pause in being messed up lets people see they have hit the bottom. But there is always more bottom which can cause more of the cycle.

But some people actually do prefer to rot on the street on their own terms, than rot in some asylum cell locked up.

Still, I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed, so I don't see an easy, clean solution solving everything at once. But banning public drug use, is very fine with me.

Of course some people prefer a to b. It doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to it.

I could build myself a really cool James Bond-style tent house in Central Park and live there in the summers for basically free. I'd like that.

I'm not entitled to it.

Voters can easily decide that the sidewalk is no longer a place for people to rot on.

Yeah, I agree and that is what I said ..

"I think other people have a right to walk the streets undisturbed"

And when you ban public drug use and enforce it, you automatically remove all junkies from public spaces.

> And when you ban public drug use and enforce it, you automatically remove all junkies from public spaces.

Depends on your definition of "use".

I can do a bunch of meth somewhere discreet, and then party on the streets without actively "using" drugs for hours - days even!

I think the legal definition is, if you have drugs in your blood, for which there are simple tests for.

And people bothering other people on the streets is not alright and should be stopped any way, drugs in their blood or not.

In one comment thread you've gone from "some people may need to be forced to accept treatment" to "anyone taking drugs on the street should be arrested" to "anyone doing anything that bothers anyone else in a public space, or who has done something in the recent past that bothers someone now near them, should be arrested."

"some people may need to be forced to accept treatment"

I did not say that, you probably confused my comment with someone else.

Ah right, technically you just proposed locking them up without treatment ("banning public drug use, is very fine with me"). Sorry, you're even more sociopathic than I first claimed!

Like I said in another comment. There are lots of other ways to ban something in a area, than locking up.

Fine them and take their drugs would be a simple one.

Fine them? They don't have money, and won't pay. What do you do when they won't pay? Garnish their wages? Don't have any.

Take their drugs? Oh no. They'll just get more, eventually. It's not like they have a lifetime supply stashed away. They generally do the drugs shortly after getting them. They're unlikely to have any to take.

You act as if the police are complete morons and totally incompetent and haven't thought of any or tried any alternatives - anywhere in the world.

Yeah, they don't have much. So if you take what little they have, if they go bother people in the public, they will avoid those places. You just have to enforce it consequently. Most junkies don't want stress and just get high (and they hate having to let go of their next high). Only if you tolerate them in public spaces with 0 consequences - then they will stay with their drugs.

"You act as if the police are complete morons and totally incompetent and haven't thought of any or tried any alternatives - anywhere in the world"

That's the thing. Addicts on the streets in europe for example, are a rare thing. And I know many other places on the world, with no junkies on the streets either. And also with a way lower prisoner to population ratio. So maybe there are other ways, besides just jailing everyone. (Which is pretty expensive btw.)

> Addicts on the streets in europe for example, are a rare thing.

This is because most of Europe has better social safety nets and didn't have an opioid crisis (also partly because of its safety nets), not because they "banned" anything. Drugs and active drug users are in the end still pretty easy to find in central areas in major cities if you look; and if the police do get involved you definitely go to jail.

"and if the police do get involved you definitely go to jail."

Have you been to europe? I was born and live here and have been to allmost every other EU state and people going to jail for drugs is allmost not existent to my knowledge - unless people are dealing big quantities. (Or doing other crimes while drugged, but then they go for the other crimes and not the drugs)

"Drugs and active drug users are in the end still pretty easy to find in central areas in major cities if you look"

You can also find many drunk people, if you go to the pubs - but I don't remember the last time, I saw junkies in the streets. Of course, seeing people who likely do drugs regular, sure, but minding their own buisness and going somewhere, not occuping the streets and scaring normal people, which I thought is what we are talking about here.

Check out this guy, he solved the whole war on drugs in an HN comment! "Don't arrest them, just ban it."

Total idiocy.

In the US, it's generally only possession (not use) that's a crime. The main exception is while operating a vehicle, which is just about the only time the police will do blood testing. Hospitals will do a tox screen if they're taken in for some medical reason, but it becomes exactly that: a medical issue, not a legal one.

absolutely not that's what they do in Zero Tolerance places like the Gulf States

When does James Bond live in a tent house?

The house at the beginning of No Time to Die is roughly a tent house like those in the Four Seasons in Chiang Rai.