[LawTalkingGuy]

Overly-liberal cities (SF, Vancouver, LA, etc) are killing far more of their citizens with failed drug policies than COVID, and with circumstance they've engineered such as giving extra "safe" fentanyl to people, telling dealers they won't be arrested, and never institutionalizing against their wishes.

The difference between approaches isn't "lock them up / don't" or "my kids / their kids". It's not a left/right or conservative/liberal divide, it's on another axis - more about the philosophical difference of personal vs group responsibility and meaning vs nihilism.

We need to look at the path these front running cities are taking, and where everyone else will be dragged, to see the difference. The same cities which refuse to lock up a violent junkie will lock up a parent who complains too loudly to the school board. It's not that they aren't authoritarian, often more than conservatives. It's that they don't feel there's any degradation of the individual which is ultimately wrong. Like, an individual can "choose" to be a street whore and die painfully from heroin. That's valid. This is how all junkies eventually live and die, and without a strong moral consensus that this is all bad - for the junkie and society and that we must stop it, you can't make progress on the base issues.

Vancouver will leave a junkie in their own vomit, to continue hitting the drugs that almost killed them, because "nobody should be committed against their will" but it will fine or confine an otherwise fit college student who drinks in public, or who commits any of the other offenses the junkie is committing (littering, starting fires on the sidewalk, having a violent dog, openly carrying a weapon, and so forth). The junkie has somehow "chosen" his or her role and now it's a beautiful thing, like a butterfly, that should be left to unfold, unmolested, in the parks.

Portugal, often held out as a utopia for drug users, has a "not even once in public" policy where they will jail you and assign you to a multi-year rehab program. They know nobody wants to die in their own vomit, in the street.

We need to regain the compassion we've thrown away in the "everything is okay!" anti-conservative backlash such that we can help people in obvious distress. Once we all look at things that way we can see that our policies won't actually be too different, or rather, it doesn't matter if they are and we can work in a spirit of cooperation from different angles rather than fighting about the issue itself.

Ultimately, Portugal is a more liberal society (for drug users) than Vancouver.

[themitigating]

"and with circumstance they've engineered such as giving extra "safe" fentanyl to people"

Fentanyl is cut with other drugs and there's no fentanyl distribution that I can see. Care to provide a source? The drug is extremely potent to be consumed alone.

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Here's a DEA warning about mass overdose events from Fentanyl "Fentanyl-related mass-overdose events, characterized as three or more overdoses occurring close in time and at the same location, have happened in at least seven American cities in recent months, resulting in 58 overdoses and 29 deaths. Cities impacted include Wilton Manors, Florida; Austin, Texas; Cortez, Colorado; Commerce City, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis, Missouri; and Washington, D.C."

I don't' see SF or LA mentioned here. I'm sure some of these are Democrat controlled but You are claiming that liberal policies cause an increase in overdoses. Do you have a source for your death rates?

https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2022/04/06/dea-warns-incr...

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Top 10 states by drug overdose in 2020 (latest year for this source)

West Virginia 81.4 1,330 Kentucky 49.2 2,083 Delaware 47.3 444 Ohio 47.2 5,204 Tennessee 45.6 3,034 Maryland 44.6 2,771 Louisiana 42.7 1,896 Pennsylvania 42.4 5,168 Maine 39.7 496 Connecticut 39.1 v1,371

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...

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"We need to regain the compassion we've thrown away in the "everything is okay!" anti-conservative backlash such that we can help people in obvious distress."

Ant-conservative backlash? Republicans, as in elected officials, are calling their political opponents pedophiles and communists. They claim guns are going to be taken away for the last 40 years guess what actually gets banned? Abortion. Multiple Republicans are still lying about election fraud and you wonder why there's a backlash?

[LawTalkingGuy]

> Multiple Republicans ... and you wonder why there's a backlash

I'm generally not in the USA so I'm trying to speak of things more internationally, and broader than just the divisive Dem/Rep mob.

And no, the backlash I'm talking about is the last eighty or more years. The hippies are boomers, after all.

> Top 10 states by drug overdose ...

I'm not talking about deaths but deaths that society encourages. What would happen in that area if you tried to shoot up in front of a cop?

> there's no fentanyl distribution that I can see. Care to provide a source?

The programs aren't very well documented because they're "just" a doctor treating their patients, many of whom they never meet. The newspaper articles aren't great. Here's a transcript of the Alberta government examining Vancouver's drug situation for the purposes of setting their own policies. There are also other days of testimony and citizen input if you look around. https://docs.assembly.ab.ca/LADDAR_files/docs/committees/ess...

> The drug is extremely potent to be consumed alone.

Yeah. The dealers intentionally kill a few every now and then as an ad for their product and they manipulate the potency in competition with other dealers. The police warn non drug users that a cheap street dose is many times more likely to kill an inexperienced user than a similar dose from a decade ago.

[themitigating]

You provided a link to a Canadian program. If you don't have other sources then why do you think it happens in the us

"The police warn non drug users that a cheap street dose is many times more likely to kill an inexperienced user than a similar dose from a decade ago."

This is a conspiracy theory. Evidence?

And about your first comment, I'm showing numbers of deaths, you're claiming that some part of that is encouraged and that percentage is higher for liberal cities. But the death rate doesn't correlate either way. So it doesn't make sense, even if it was encouraged apparently it's not making things worse

Most of what you said is speculation and you haven't provided meaningful evidence besides linking to a paper in another country.

[LawTalkingGuy]

> You provided a link to a Canadian program. If you don't have other sources then why do you think it happens in the us

Because the cities literally follow the same public policy. Don't arrest for "simple usage", camping on the streets is allowed, etc. They're getting advice from the same people. But yes, the USA does not that I know, have vending machines for drugs yet, that's still afaik a Canadian thing. In the USA you have to go to a "clinic" and ask a worker for your dose by hand and generally they want you to consume the drug there.

> [Street doses growing in strength] is a conspiracy theory.

Not even a little. I'm not talking about the why or the who. When tested the bags sold contain more active drug and many first-time users are reported dying when generally opioids (read erowid, etc) don't do that.

> Evidence?

Your googling fingers are busted but the ones you use to complain are working?

> Most of what you said is speculation and you haven't provided meaningful evidence besides linking to a paper

No, I've provided enough evidence to show that things are run by people who don't know what they're doing and are misrepresenting the studies to the city. If you can't find the public documents talking about your own cities you aren't trying hard enough.

> in another country.

Lol, so sorry the world doesn't end at your borders.

[themitigating]

"Your googling fingers are busted but the ones you use to complain are working?"

It's not my job in a debate to provide evidence for your arguments

"Lol, so sorry the world doesn't end at your borders."

We are discussing American politics

[LawTalkingGuy]

> We are discussing American politics

We're also discussing drugs and the lib/con divide which aren't in the article either. I didn't respond to you originally, you responded to me which means you adopt the discussion at that point - or did you intend to reply elsewhere?

Also, this is how you stay uninformed. Refusing to look to countries who are a few years ahead of you on a policy cycle. Drugs are drugs no matter the country.

> [not my job] to provide evidence for your arguments

You don't have to. I fully supported my argument, it's not my fault you can't read Canadian.

It's as valid for me to quote Vancouver as a model for SF and LA as it was for Vancouver to reference Amsterdam twenty years ago.