> until we shake off the current policies rooted in puritanicalism.
Why is anything that is not 100% supportive of people putting needles in their butts is deemed puritan and reactionary?
We had a long public consultation recently where I live, because the city wants to introduce free housing for drug addicts with a safe shooting room. Next to a day care, a park, and a bridge, and in an area that currently doesn't have any of the east-van type population. It was basically locals speaking against and support associations speaking for. Locals were called bigots, racists, needed to check their privilege, stereotyping. They weren't allowed to say there'd be more crime because "there won't be".
There are certainly better things that can be done to help addicted people, but just counting on being nice and giving them clean needles won't change the current curve. The dealers are not the ones making daily life literally shittier through human feces on the sidewalk, and bikes disappearing from under your butt if you only gaze elsewhere for a minute. Their violence is mostly internal. The real impact is from the thousands of these people who need a revenue stream to keep subsisting while trying to surf their high one last time, ride that they'll preferably have slowly on a sidewalk or crossing a street with their pants midway through their calves.
I pity those people, their life must be horrendous, and they don't get any help getting out. But I don't recognize their right to fuck themselves up to a point that it's a nuisance for everyone, and it becomes everyone else's problem to unfuck them.
If you replace them by state sponsored products, you'll just keep the same trend. The only way is to a) break the cycle that makes the problem worse, by making it illegal (prison is not an answer but at least allow cops to confiscate) and breaking the procurement chain and b) fix the existing problem by introducing real programs that get those people out of their addiction, rather than just helping them live through it.
And yeah I know that neither are possible, it's a simplistic point of view, but the policy of just letting things be a vaguely supporting it has only made things worse, and just saying "screw it, nothing can be done, just go with it", that doesn't sound like a winning stance to me.
It’s pretty damn easy to solve this tbh. Yes, you imprison people, push them out of your cities and confiscate all drugs. You don’t have to change the laws, just enforce them, it doesn’t matter if you’re addicted to drugs, taking a dump on the street has a criminal penalty.
Why is anything that is not 100% supportive of people putting needles in their butts is deemed puritan and reactionary?
We had a long public consultation recently where I live, because the city wants to introduce free housing for drug addicts with a safe shooting room. Next to a day care, a park, and a bridge, and in an area that currently doesn't have any of the east-van type population. It was basically locals speaking against and support associations speaking for. Locals were called bigots, racists, needed to check their privilege, stereotyping. They weren't allowed to say there'd be more crime because "there won't be".
There are certainly better things that can be done to help addicted people, but just counting on being nice and giving them clean needles won't change the current curve. The dealers are not the ones making daily life literally shittier through human feces on the sidewalk, and bikes disappearing from under your butt if you only gaze elsewhere for a minute. Their violence is mostly internal. The real impact is from the thousands of these people who need a revenue stream to keep subsisting while trying to surf their high one last time, ride that they'll preferably have slowly on a sidewalk or crossing a street with their pants midway through their calves.
I pity those people, their life must be horrendous, and they don't get any help getting out. But I don't recognize their right to fuck themselves up to a point that it's a nuisance for everyone, and it becomes everyone else's problem to unfuck them.
If you replace them by state sponsored products, you'll just keep the same trend. The only way is to a) break the cycle that makes the problem worse, by making it illegal (prison is not an answer but at least allow cops to confiscate) and breaking the procurement chain and b) fix the existing problem by introducing real programs that get those people out of their addiction, rather than just helping them live through it.
And yeah I know that neither are possible, it's a simplistic point of view, but the policy of just letting things be a vaguely supporting it has only made things worse, and just saying "screw it, nothing can be done, just go with it", that doesn't sound like a winning stance to me.