I still believe treatment centers would be preferable, I just dont think its reasonable to expect that to happen. Requiring sobriety tests helps, I would suppose, the people that are actually interested in getting better, though many homeless allegedly avoid shelters because of the requirements.

I can speculate on a few things that would reduce the rate of homelessness, economy, civil society, religion, but incarceration (where treatment is refused) seems like the only way to stop the cities from bleeding; open air drug use wouldnt be tolerated on private property (and where it is, fine, be my guest, I smoke, at home), it shouldnt be tolerated on public property either, dont be a menace.

I don't have the details behind these numbers, but I wonder if the conclusion is sound? Like, a lot of people who die of sickness die in a hospital. I don't think that means that they are doing a poor job.

We could legalize all drugs so people can have access to clean drugs of a known potency.

Right, because homeless people totally wouldn't go for the cheapest fix, even if it comes from a back alley dealer.

you're right, we should make all drugs cheap too!

Good, so let's do that first before making an already terribly exploitative system even worse.

This where I think criminalization actually serves to increase exploitation and increase the incentives for exploitation.

I heavily disagree with that. Most legally available drugs are already out of reach for most of the homeless people (even more so in the US). These people are primarily defined by their financial status, if nothing else.

Maybe we are talking about different things. I mean that criminalizing drugs tends to make their use more risky as there are fewer quality controls and no legal recourse for drug users who get low quality or downright poisonous products. Vulnerable populations, like the homeless, who are already easy to exploit, become victims of this culturally and legally defined demarcation.

The only way that I can see that happening is when the price would drop significantly enough so homeless people would prefer it over black-market dealers.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of legal practices, or legally obtainable things, that still have a large black market. Its been historically proven again and again that people will gladly take risks or a loss in quality over affordability.

Please make your substantive points thoughtfully and avoid snark, as the guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

A poor statement gets a poor response. Start looking at the head of this comment thread before you choose to chide me.

And there is nothing snarky about this. We've seen this exact scenario happen recently in certain areas of the US (e.g. Oregon) and Portugal where they eased off on criminalizing drugs use. You're talking about an economic weak group, where legality is less of an issue than cost. Them being 'homeless' is BY DEFINITION an indication of their poverty.

If you still want to double down on considering my post 'snarky', how can you also not say the same about 'https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=39580412&goto=item%3Fi...' in this very thread.

The GP comment may have been bad or wrong, but it didn't break the site guidelines as far as I can tell.

We need you (i.e. everyone commenting here) to follow HN's rules regardless of how badly other people's posts are. Moderation is inevitably inconsistent because we can't see everything; not even in the same thread.

Aren't most opiods legal already?