> Only if you ignore the crime of open drug use, and that it kills thousands per year.
Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue. It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use. It's still illegal to possess the drugs these folks are using, and they have roughly the same level of access to these illegal drugs inside of prison.
Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use. Drug use is also highly correlated with poverty. Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
The biggest driver of the heroin epidemic was perdue. The people responsible got off without punishment. You're proposing punishing their victims.
> The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
This is a conspiracy theory.
> And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.
No, you get that nonsense when the government subsidized a loan program.
> In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.
This argument isn't supported by the data. The data shows that total spending on healthcare in the US is considerably higher.
In the US the cost is also hidden by your employer, who's paying thousands of dollars a month for your insurance, which you also need to pay for, where you also need to cover a deductible, co-pays, out-of-network costs, ambulance costs, etc.
These things are all covered directly by your taxes in other countries. I'm currently living in Japan, and the cost of healthcare here is considerably cheaper, and my overall tax rate isn't much higher than it was when I was living in the US.
> Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries.
We're the richest country in the world. We need to compare ourselves to similar countries, not to third world countries. Folks in impoverished areas in the US can live in third-world conditions. This is extremely out of the norm when compared against our peers.
> Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.
Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
> You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.
Yeah, this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom. They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
As mentioned before, it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street, so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers, I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.
> this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom.
These already exist in all the cities I'm discussing, but that's not at all what those sites are like. There are no doctors, no talking, no help, just a chair in a little nook and one nurse watching a room of people through a camera. The current message to the addicted is that they will die addicted and there's essentially no hope of "being cured" so there isn't much use in having a doctor on staff to deliver it.
> They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
That's what they claim in their funding requests. And who knows, years ago with a different drug problem they may have had some positive effect. (fwiw clean needles appear to be the only useful piece of this intervention and they are widely available elsewhere.)
> Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue.
It's a criminal issue because there are armed dealers and fortified camps and dead bodies in our cities.
> It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use.
It's crime, and not one we can look away from, because they're incapable of doing it quietly and without secondary violence and crime. The point isn't to give them a criminal record, it's that once we judge someone's actions to be criminal it gives us a lot more power to compel them off the streets and into treatment.
Once we put them in a detox program we can waive the criminal record for all their non-violent crimes. Portugal does this - the criminal sanctions are secondary and only used if you don't cooperate.
>> If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
> This is a conspiracy theory.
This doesn't require any conspiring, it's just the natural consequence of the police being too busy. They don't even record the things that they're too busy to respond to so it's invisible to the criminal justice system.
> Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
For which city, and when? Is the city also undergoing a fentanyl crisis during the study? The people in the drug camps are not the same people who would have been smoking crack by the side of the road twenty years ago, many of them are well to do people who've fallen - quickly - into ruin.
> Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
Ultimately it doesn't matter how they got there, they all need to detox before they can move on.
> so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers
I am.
> Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use.
Nothing is the answer, but it's an important part of the solution. When you imprison the drug user they don't live in a drug camp on the street and they don't overdose. Everyone is safer and happier. But no, detox is the answer and you use prison to make the junkie do that if they won't take another option.
> it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street,
Not in the slightest. You can openly buy and use injection drugs in front of a police officer in these cities.
> I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.
I don't think you really understand the scope of the problem or the solutions that have been tried. Especially when you're telling the most "progressive" cities to be more progressive.
Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue. It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use. It's still illegal to possess the drugs these folks are using, and they have roughly the same level of access to these illegal drugs inside of prison.
Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use. Drug use is also highly correlated with poverty. Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.
The biggest driver of the heroin epidemic was perdue. The people responsible got off without punishment. You're proposing punishing their victims.
> The only thing you can trust from these cities is that they're dishonest about their stats. If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?
This is a conspiracy theory.
> And free school leads to the nonsense we have now with subsidized loans where a critical-studies degree costs $250k.
No, you get that nonsense when the government subsidized a loan program.
> In every other country it's hidden in taxes to some degree, usually a lot, if it's available at all.
This argument isn't supported by the data. The data shows that total spending on healthcare in the US is considerably higher.
In the US the cost is also hidden by your employer, who's paying thousands of dollars a month for your insurance, which you also need to pay for, where you also need to cover a deductible, co-pays, out-of-network costs, ambulance costs, etc.
These things are all covered directly by your taxes in other countries. I'm currently living in Japan, and the cost of healthcare here is considerably cheaper, and my overall tax rate isn't much higher than it was when I was living in the US.
> Our poorest are richer than the median in many countries.
We're the richest country in the world. We need to compare ourselves to similar countries, not to third world countries. Folks in impoverished areas in the US can live in third-world conditions. This is extremely out of the norm when compared against our peers.
> Crime on the other hand is more of a social thing than a poverty thing.
Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.
> You know what's a good social program? Building a place to put druggies before thousands of them die on the street in the middle of a city.
Yeah, this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom. They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.
As mentioned before, it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street, so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers, I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.