Breakdown In Civil Order

[Politesse]

That's the thing. These folks keep trying to scare us with anecdotes about crime and drugs on the streets, and therefore just accept without evidence that their solutions are the only ones to try. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that increasing state oppression of the poor will help in any way, or indeed accomplish anything but to put more people ultimately on the street, or in our already overburdened prison system where drug abuse and violence are even more pandemic.

 

[Trausti]

Human nature is to have a pleasant and productive life as part of a community of friends. Drug addiction is what happens when society forces them not to live that way. If they can live that way, drugs become a rare indulgence, and purely recreational.

Drug addiction is what happens when some try hard drugs and can’t stop using. No one forces them. They could have had normal lives before they touched the poison. Have you not seen the before Meth and after Meth memes? If we really cared about these folks we’d allow them to be arrested for the crimes they commit. An arrest removes them from their toxic environment and gives time to clear their head and get clean. Services can be offered to get them back on track. An arrest also mitigates the harm the addict does to themself and society.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Human nature is to have a pleasant and productive life as part of a community of friends. Drug addiction is what happens when society forces them not to live that way. If they can live that way, drugs become a rare indulgence, and purely recreational.

Drug addiction is what happens when some try hard drugs and can’t stop using. No one forces them. They could have had normal lives before they touched the poison. Have you not seen the before Meth and after Meth memes? If we really cared about these folks we’d allow them to be arrested for the crimes they commit. An arrest removes them from their toxic environment and gives time to clear their head and get clean. Services can be offered to get them back on track. An arrest also mitigates the harm the addict does to themself and society.

Drug rehab only works for people who truly want to quit. Forcing it on someone does no good. (And that includes things like mandating AA for DUI cases.)

 

[bilby]

Human nature is to have a pleasant and productive life as part of a community of friends. Drug addiction is what happens when society forces them not to live that way. If they can live that way, drugs become a rare indulgence, and purely recreational.

Drug addiction is what happens when some try hard drugs and can’t stop using. No one forces them.

And the reason they can't stop is because they have a shit life without the drugs, and feel better when they have drugs to block that out. So the root of the problem is that their life starts out shit enough that drugs are an improvement.

They could have had normal lives before they touched the poison.

Sure. But 'normal' doesn't mean 'pleasant'.

Have you not seen the before Meth and after Meth memes?

Have you not considered that there might be more to a complex issue than the tiny scrap of information contained in a meme?

If we really cared about these folks we’d allow them to be arrested for the crimes they commit. An arrest removes them from their toxic environment and gives time to clear their head and get clean.

Only if they are arrested by the Cloud Cuckoo Land PD, whose jails are comfortable and populated by friendly inmates and helpful guards whose sole wish is that every prisoner be released to society a better person.

If instead they're arrested by a real world PD, arrest moves them from one toxic environment to another, with the new environment likely to be even less pleasant, and more drug-riddled than their old one.

Services can be offered to get them back on track.

They could be, but probably aren't; Largely because people like you vote 'no' on any measure that might fund such assistance.

An arrest also mitigates the harm the addict does to themself and society.

I presume you have zero experience of what prison is actually like. An arrest almost certainly does more harm than good, to both the inmate and our wider society.

 

[TSwizzle]

That's the thing. These folks keep trying to scare us with anecdotes about crime and drugs on the streets, and therefore just accept without evidence that their solutions are the only ones to try. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that increasing state oppression of the poor will help in any way, or indeed accomplish anything but to put more people ultimately on the street, or in our already overburdened prison system where drug abuse and violence are even more pandemic.

Why do you think it’s a poverty problem? And drug addiction is an expensive hobby, gets you in the poor house pretty damn quick. Lots of poor people manage without living on the sidewalk in their own filth. Yes, most of the people living on the sidewalks are poor but that’s not the crux of the problem. The problem for most of them is chronic substance abuse and mental health. A lot of them will never function normally such is the damage the drugs have done to them. Whatever the solution is is, it’s not letting them live on the streets.

 

[lpetrich]

Drug addiction should be treated as a medical problem rather than a criminal issue. It's true that some addicts may deny that their addiction is causing them any trouble, but so what about that?


Home - Restorative Justice - that site has been redesigned.

But I've found this tidbit: Justice reinvestment - Restorative Justice - "The cost of jailing is about $27,000 per inmate per year. The cost of drug, behavioral and mental health treatment averages about $4,500 per year." - and I thought that right-wingers are economics geniuses.

Three Core Elements of Restorative Justice - Restorative Justice - encounter, repair, and transform

"Before offenders can participate, they must take responsibility for their wrong and want to make amends."

Which is a good condition for participation.

"The victim’s need for healing. Victims heal through the encounter and its outcomes."

The sort of thing that right-wingers usually pooh-pooh as crybaby weakness.

"The offender’s need to make amends, as offenders must atone for wrongdoing and work to regain good standing in community. Encounters empower offenders to make amends directly to victims and potentially community members."

"The community’s need for relational health and safety. Family, friends, and others support victims and offenders as they heal and reintegrate into community."

 

[thebeave]

Just came across this video this afternoon. Found it pretty interesting, and seems like there is a little something here for everybody. The video is shot in Skid Row in LA. Oddly enough, as horrific as it looks, its apparently a lot better that it was in previous years. Definitely worth a viewing.

 

[steve_bank]

Make it easy to do drugs and be able to get food without a job and more people will do drugs. Human nature.

How is life in a fact-free world treating you, Steve? Until you back your wild and wooly assertions up with empirical evidence I assume that is where you live.

I was once stupid like yiu back in the 70s. Drug\s and pot? It was just a pardona decison so fuck off, right?

In the 60s as a teen I was living in public housng.

Late one noght I went around with a black kid I knew who had abit scoring heroin.

We went into his house and locked the door of the bathroom. I attached him cook and fix, needle and spoon. Black tracks and brown skin.Hi eyes rolled and his legs wobbled as it hit.

After high school I heard he was murdered in prison.

A frind in my building is a retired nurse who at one time was drug addicted and homeless. He still works wuth addicts. He has a supply of Norcon and has given to pele on the siidewak in front of building.

So please, if at all possible from ignorant sloganeering and liberal cliches, like treating drugs as a medical disease.

Pot is everywhere on the streets. Kids hanging around getting high. I see it all the time. I watched a guy in a nearby park calmly take out his works and fix oblivious without care of being seen. Why would he, police will do nothing by policy. Peop le can not be forced into housing and treatment by policy, many refuse.

Today we have teen addicts and alcoholics, the result of getting rid of social pressure. Drugs were hyped in movies and musc starting in the 60s. In Clapton's live version of Cocaine the crowd sings along 'Cocaine!'. The Dead popularized LSD, they had their own chemist Owsley. Jefferson Airplane. Drugs became cool.

Here in Seattle the bus driver union is complaing about people smoking crushed drugs on busses. The polce won't come and remove them. It affects drivers and passengers.

The so called drug crisis is cultural not medical.

So please, what are those facts you are talking about? My experience goes back to the 60s. Sandoz, Owsely, Purple Haze?

You are just another arm chair commenter without a clue as to reality. No idea of social consequences to policies..

 

[Hermit]

Make it easy to do drugs and be able to get food without a job and more people will do drugs. Human nature.

How is life in a fact-free world treating you, Steve? Until you back your wild and wooly assertions up with empirical evidence I assume that is where you live.

I was once stupid like yiu back in the 70s. Drug\s and pot? It was just a pardona decison so fuck off, right?

In the 60s as a teen I was living in public housng.

Late one noght I went around with a black kid I knew who had abit scoring heroin.

We went into his house and locked the door of the bathroom. I attached him cook and fix, needle and spoon. Black tracks and brown skin.Hi eyes rolled and his legs wobbled as it hit.

After high school I heard he was murdered in prison.

A frind in my building is a retired nurse who at one time was drug addicted and homeless. He still works wuth addicts. He has a supply of Norcon and has given to pele on the siidewak in front of building.

So please, if at all possible from ignorant sloganeering and liberal cliches, like treating drugs as a medical disease.

Pot is everywhere on the streets. Kids hanging around getting high. I see it all the time. I watched a guy in a nearby park calmly take out his works and fix oblivious without care of being seen. Why would he, police will do nothing by policy. Peop le can not be forced into housing and treatment by policy, many refuse.

Today we have teen addicts and alcoholics, the result of getting rid of social pressure. Drugs were hyped in movies and musc starting in the 60s. In Clapton's live version of Cocaine the crowd sings along 'Cocaine!'. The Dead popularized LSD, they had their own chemist Owsley. Jefferson Airplane. Drugs became cool.

Here in Seattle the bus driver union is complaing about people smoking crushed drugs on busses. The polce won't come and remove them. It affects drivers and passengers.

The so called drug crisis is cultural not medical.

So please, what are those facts you are talking about? My experience goes back to the 60s. Sandoz, Owsely, Purple Haze?

You are just another arm chair commenter without a clue as to reality. No idea of social consequences to policies..

You know what they say about anecdotes, right?

Your claim is that if it is made easy to do drugs and be able to get food without a job and more people will do drugs. I replied that you live in a fact-free world. Now you bring up an anecdote. Wow.

Let's look at statistics instead. If your wild and wooly, fact-free assertion were correct, Portugal would be in heaps of trouble when it decriminalised the use of all illicit drugs in 2001.

It isn't.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's the thing. These folks keep trying to scare us with anecdotes about crime and drugs on the streets, and therefore just accept without evidence that their solutions are the only ones to try. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that increasing state oppression of the poor will help in any way, or indeed accomplish anything but to put more people ultimately on the street, or in our already overburdened prison system where drug abuse and violence are even more pandemic.

Why do you think it’s a poverty problem? And drug addiction is an expensive hobby, gets you in the poor house pretty damn quick. Lots of poor people manage without living on the sidewalk in their own filth. Yes, most of the people living on the sidewalks are poor but that’s not the crux of the problem. The problem for most of them is chronic substance abuse and mental health. A lot of them will never function normally such is the damage the drugs have done to them. Whatever the solution is is, it’s not letting them live on the streets.

Drug use is often a response to a shitty life. Poverty causes a shitty life.

(There are also the people that got hooked on opiates when they aren't handled properly.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Let's look at statistics instead. If your wild and wooly, fact-free assertion were correct, Portugal would be in heaps of trouble when it decriminalised the use of all illicit drugs in 2001.

It isn't.

Quit it! How dare you bring data of this power to the discussion?! You're not giving them a chance!

 

[Hermit]

Let's look at statistics instead. If your wild and wooly, fact-free assertion were correct, Portugal would be in heaps of trouble when it decriminalised the use of all illicit drugs in 2001.

It isn't.

Quit it! How dare you bring data of this power to the discussion?! You're not giving them a chance!

Meh. I posted the same graph in this very same thread a month ago. Data get ignored when they don't fit the narrative. Anecdotes overrule them easily anyway.

 

[Emily Lake]

That's the thing. These folks keep trying to scare us with anecdotes about crime and drugs on the streets, and therefore just accept without evidence that their solutions are the only ones to try. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that increasing state oppression of the poor will help in any way, or indeed accomplish anything but to put more people ultimately on the street, or in our already overburdened prison system where drug abuse and violence are even more pandemic.

What's your working hypothesis for why there's lower rates of homelessness, drug abuse, and violence in place like Phoenix, Dallas, or Omaha... versus Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco?

 

[Trausti]

Human nature is to have a pleasant and productive life as part of a community of friends. Drug addiction is what happens when society forces them not to live that way. If they can live that way, drugs become a rare indulgence, and purely recreational.

Drug addiction is what happens when some try hard drugs and can’t stop using. No one forces them.

And the reason they can't stop is because they have a shit life without the drugs, and feel better when they have drugs to block that out. So the root of the problem is that their life starts out shit enough that drugs are an improvement.

They could have had normal lives before they touched the poison.

Sure. But 'normal' doesn't mean 'pleasant'.

Have you not seen the before Meth and after Meth memes?

Have you not considered that there might be more to a complex issue than the tiny scrap of information contained in a meme?

If we really cared about these folks we’d allow them to be arrested for the crimes they commit. An arrest removes them from their toxic environment and gives time to clear their head and get clean.

Only if they are arrested by the Cloud Cuckoo Land PD, whose jails are comfortable and populated by friendly inmates and helpful guards whose sole wish is that every prisoner be released to society a better person.

If instead they're arrested by a real world PD, arrest moves them from one toxic environment to another, with the new environment likely to be even less pleasant, and more drug-riddled than their old one.

Services can be offered to get them back on track.

They could be, but probably aren't; Largely because people like you vote 'no' on any measure that might fund such assistance.

An arrest also mitigates the harm the addict does to themself and society.

I presume you have zero experience of what prison is actually like. An arrest almost certainly does more harm than good, to both the inmate and our wider society.

FFS, why do you want people drug addicted? If your son or daughter was ruining their life with drugs, would you encourage the behavior or try to get them off the poison?

 

[Trausti]

Let's look at statistics instead. If your wild and wooly, fact-free assertion were correct, Portugal would be in heaps of trouble when it decriminalised the use of all illicit drugs in 2001.

It isn't.

Are seriously suggesting that drug addiction is not a major factor with homelessness? How could you ever hope to return these people to society if you don’t address that? And in Portugal, people still get fines for drug possession and the drugs taken away. It’s understandable that we may not want long prison sentences for drug possession, but even the Portuguese recognize that you’ve got to separate the user from the poison.

 

[bilby]

What's your working hypothesis for why there's lower rates of homelessness, drug abuse, and violence in place like Phoenix, Dallas, or Omaha... versus Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco?

What's your working hypothesis for why there's lower rates of homelessness, drug abuse and violence in Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Copenhagen, versus Phoenix, Dallas and Omaha?

 

[bilby]

FFS, why do you want people drug addicted? If your son or daughter was ruining their life with drugs, would you encourage the behavior or try to get them off the poison?

FFS, why do you think I want people drug addicted?

Opposing measures intended to help that actually make things worse is not "wanting people drug addicted".

 

[Hermit]

Let's look at statistics instead. If your wild and wooly, fact-free assertion were correct, Portugal would be in heaps of trouble when it decriminalised the use of all illicit drugs in 2001.

It isn't.

Are seriously suggesting that drug addiction is not a major factor with homelessness?

Eh? Look at what I replied to, Trausti. I quoted it, but since you missed the relevant claim by @steve_bank, here it is again:

Make it easy to do drugs and be able to get food without a job and more people will do drugs.

HTH

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's the thing. These folks keep trying to scare us with anecdotes about crime and drugs on the streets, and therefore just accept without evidence that their solutions are the only ones to try. Despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that increasing state oppression of the poor will help in any way, or indeed accomplish anything but to put more people ultimately on the street, or in our already overburdened prison system where drug abuse and violence are even more pandemic.

What's your working hypothesis for why there's lower rates of homelessness, drug abuse, and violence in place like Phoenix, Dallas, or Omaha... versus Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco?

I grew up in Phoenix. Summer has dangerous heat levels in the summer. If you're living without AC you would be much better off in a more moderate climate.

Likewise, Dallas can be hot & humid, likewise dangerous.

 

[Emily Lake]

FFS, why do you want people drug addicted? If your son or daughter was ruining their life with drugs, would you encourage the behavior or try to get them off the poison?

FFS, why do you think I want people drug addicted?

Opposing measures intended to help that actually make things worse is not "wanting people drug addicted".

bilby, have you actually personally known anyone with a serious drug addiction? Interacted with them directly?