[kepler1]

I commented a few times here over the years criticizing decriminalization as it came up as an option, against loud / vociferous people saying, how can you continue to embrace criminal penalties that clearly aren't working. As if it were crazy to believe that people need laws to obey.

I said that you can make all the rational step-wise choices in the world, and find yourself led down a path to oblivion, where you've made drug use not a crime, and find yourself in a drug-problem-overwhelmed city.

Lo and behold, we find years later, people awaken to the fact that decriminalization might not work, and countless people having left the city because of it, and probably more importantly, tons of people falling victim to the scourge of drugs.

Sometimes, as unkind as it sounds and expensive as it is, you need to enforce some harsh laws and have people understand that you won't tolerate certain behaviors, lest your society fall apart.

[skippyboxedhero]

The US is genuinely like a third-world country, in this regard. And apparently lots of adults in that country think they are doing the compassionate thing by allowing to people use drugs?

You have poor countries with no expensive treatment facilities re-distributing money to Democrat donors...why do these people think no-one uses drugs in these countries?

This kind of "compassion" is, ironically, complete anathema to anyone who lives in a left-wing society. The US version of left-wing politics is characterized by extreme individualism, it is on a spectrum along with Republicans, not something distinct in any way.

As a human who doesn't live in the US, the sad part isn't the people using drugs, it is the people who are gleefully pushing them into a situation where there are no disincentives towards self-destructive behaviour. Result: more suffering, more people gleefully suggesting that even more individualism will fix it, etc.

The other thing that is unique about the US is the lack of punishment for drug dealers. People on the left complain about pollution, drug dealers are ruining the lives of tens of thousands of people...stand aside, they say, for the entrepreneur?

It is complete madness, but you talk to anyone in the US about this subject and you realise immediately why they have this problem: they care about themselves, that is it.

[vore]

The problem is that the people using drugs out in public are already at rock bottom: there aren't many punishments you can use to deter that, short of putting them in jail and when they come out they're just going to be using drugs in public all over again. I'm somewhat receptive to the idea of mandatory treatment but as it stands, "enforcing some harsh laws" doesn't do anything to curb recidivism – temporarily incarcerating people falling out of the bottom of society is not a long term fix for society.

[xvector]

At the very least it cleans up the streets. I really don't care to see people shooting up every time I leave the BART. Enabling that is not a good use of my tax dollars.

[vore]

If you're trying to save your tax dollars, you should really be in favor of letting people shoot up on the BART! After all, doing nothing costs nothing!

[cjwilliams]

What about the obvious punishment: Taking their drugs away.

Doing so improves the addicts life in the medium-long term, and provides an immediate consequence. Its something that many addicts actually want, that society wants, yet no one has the balls to actually do it.

[kepler1]

Well, what about the value of making clear to people that in case they fall over that edge and start using drugs, they will be punished? Police being able to arrest people and caution them, rather than being told to actively ignore it?

In order to stop them from tempted to try it or go further, and prevent more people from joining that group? Or the people who deal drugs? Which decriminalization basically removed any check function on?

[vore]

The material problem is that their lives are often so miserable that feeling good from doing drugs even under threat of incarceration overrides most punishments you could dish out.

[tiahura]

Rubber hoses used to be a pretty good deterrent.

[vore]

We could sure save a lot of money on treating physical substance addiction if we just simply beat the shit out of people instead!

[haberman]

> short of putting them in jail and when they come out they're just going to be using drugs in public all over again.

The "Seattle is Dying" documentary describes a treatment program called the "MAT Program" (medically assisted treatment) that is used in Rhode Island prisons. They interview several people -- both leaders of the program and former addicts -- who speak positively about it: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?si=ZkMQb3tb5P_Ztbvs&t=2645

[Kim_Bruning]

If it's criminalized there's no way to go and no way to control things. So that's definitely not the right way.

Decriminalization is thus accidentally necessary to gain a better control of the situation, but then you do need to actually seize control of the situation. There need to be institutions to help get people away from drugs.