The Wire is fiction. The best place to observe the reality is Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia. I have driven through and parked and observed but never gotten out. The one thing the Wire got wrong was how densely packed everyone is... in Kensington Avenue people are only out and about to transact.
But realistically that does nothing to solve the problem. We could just designate SF the safe injection site for the USA and the problem would be out of view for the rest of the population.
When it's concentrated in one neighbourhood, you can concentrate social services in that neighbourhood. The DTES has a bank dedicated to avoiding paying a percentage of welfare checks to check cashing businesses. Insite has a rehab facility attached to it with a higher rate of non-recidivism after one year than any other in North America. Safe injections sites work. The Vancouver City Police are one of the biggest supporters of the Vancouver safe injection site, which should tell you something.
I don't think safe injection sites solve that problem, it's about making a safe environment for junkies to safely take drugs in hopes they don't do it elsewhere littering needles and drug paraphernalia in other public spaces, especially around children.
Now for the junkies, needs to be more than a safe haven to shoot up and definitely agree with your sentiments.
I know they offer more than that, but some people just want that and that's the problem
The hope is that the "junkies" don't die. If that is all that's accomplished, that's still a success. There doesn't need to be more. Obviously there should be an option for users to enter treatment or receive some sort of assistance, but addicts should definitely not be forced into anything just to satisfy some petit bourgeois stern moral impulse, because that will ultimately drive people away and cost lives.
I don't know if you've ever met a working-class person, but I think you have things the opposite way round. It tends to be the middle-class petit-bourgeois who advocate a tolerant approach to the victims of drug abuse. Working-class people despise junkies because they are on the front-line of the associated crime, decay, danger, filth, child-neglect, disease etc.
That junkie has a mother who has spent 20 years of her life trying to get him treatment for his schizophrenia but there is no government support, and he keeps disappearing from home and winding up downtown where he finds more comfort from
The drug and sold by predatory drug dealers and other people like him who will not judge him constantly.
His mother works harder than any “working class person” I have ever met.
I'm not sure how you've constructed morality in your mind, but if you choose to belittle people who want to protect innocent people from the ravages of heroin addiction, which is a lifelong sickness, then you are misguided.
The real measure of success is how few people become junkies in the first place.
>The real measure of success is how few people become junkies in the first place.
No, the real measure of success is how few peoples lives are ruined.
If a bunch of people end up addicted to heroin, but end up living fulfilling and productive lives regardless, that's a fairly good outcome. If implementing measures to reduce the number of addicts leads to the remaining ones living in poverty and overdosing, then that's not an improvement.
This isn't a sustainable solution to that problem. In Vancouver, rapid gentrification is simply pushing these people around once again anyway. We need long term solutions. Social nets which work to help these people get back on track, prevent people from getting on that track, and soften the blow of hitting rock bottom. I have a strong sense that supporting mental health issues more effectively is at the heart of this.
In all seriousness, watch The Wire. It gets you thinking and covers the topic well.