[John23832]

I'm not ignorant at all. I live in NYC (the largest "community" in the country) which has the largest, most systematically effective social services system in the country. It's one thing I appreciate most about the city, other than the subway.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing (or good things used to advance perverse incentives).

Too Much of a Good Thing: Methadone and "clean needle" clinics on 125th and Brooklyn under the guis of "harm reduction". The goal should be to reduce drug usage. Not make a shopping mall for dealers and zombies. Another is the total hands off approach of the mentally ill and aggressive homeless on the subways and on the streets.

Good Things Use To Advance Perverse Incentives: The entire homeless industrial complex in California, which does absolutely nothing but syphon money to these homeless "nonprofits". I lived in both San Jose and LA and frankly the situation was addressed in a maddeningly regressive fashion.

You sometimes have to ask yourself WHY someone is championing something. Very often it's not because of altruism.

[danaris]

The goal should be to reduce harm. The idea that drug use is axiomatically bad is an invention of the War On Drugs.

Criminalizing drug addiction increases harm. Treating it as a disease provably reduces harm. And, in fact, reduces drug use.

Methadone and clean needle clinics are pointed in the right direction, but they're not enough. They just happen to be all the people who got them put in place could manage.

[John23832]

The goal should be to reduce drug use and end addiction. "Harm" is relative. There are functioning heroin addicts(either tar or hillbilly heroin) that some people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Hart) would say aren't "harming" anyone. It's still not something to societally encourage.

I also said nothing of criminalization of addicts. Seller's, sure.

> Methadone and clean needle clinics are pointed in the right direction, but they're not enough. They just happen to be all the people who got them put in place could manage.

This makes no sense. The halfass'd effort is worse than nothing at all.