[ncr100]

Anecdotes, observation, and a wish:

Locally here in Seattle Greenwood neighborhood, there is a performing arts theater. Acting and such. On the roof of the building lives the air conditioners.

People got up there destroyed the air conditioners took the copper and now the building has to $100,000 to like a million dollars (??) to rebuild their air conditioning.

It's a moderately popular place but it's small so I don't see how this is going to work out well for them.

They had a giant fire not too many years ago and the rebuild and I assume they're still paying for that.

I have observed the local drug users [sometimes housed, there is a "friendly" house nearby] are often seen, by me and others, passing through the nearby alleys, setting up places to work, stripping little thin bits of plastic housing from wire cables that they have stolen. I've talked to them and they are real people but they're addicted so they're compromised. A variety of people,some young and active, some more on the mentally ill side of the vulnerable spectrum. Some violent. A real community.

Another anecdote: They destroyed the copper for the cooling system for a food distributor, four blocks away. A small local business that employees maybe 10 people.

I personally wish fentanyl was not so cheap. In my opinion it makes these kinds of crimes very viable. However I think if fentanyl were more expensive it would overall still be a toxic scenario, with these vulnerable people existing in modern America with its hostile anti-people pro-corporation Pro-profit faux-rugged-individualization cluster of somewhat homeostatic systemic dysfunction.

[WorldPeas]

The worst part of the $100k damage is that it's likely for $~200 of copper or less. That said, scrapping should require identification and recording. The people who take in the scrap should be of equal blame here. Though I do agree this is likely a result of the devolution of a socialized America into something more antisocial. The copper from the mothballed-since-Reagan mental healthcare facilities is also long gone.

[LorenPechtel]

Actually, the other way around. Cheap drugs would mean the addicts didn't have to steal as much.

Compare the harm from the hard drugs vs the harm from the winos.

[ErroneousBosh]

> However I think if fentanyl were more expensive it would overall still be a toxic scenario

Diamorphine is cheap, cheaper than methadone. It has no real health effects, beyond the obvious suffocating-to-death-from-an-overdose. You can take clean high-grade heroin pretty much indefinitely without doing yourself any harm, if you've got a supply of it.

It's the stuff that's been stepped on with washing powder or flea powder or Shake'n'Vac that's the problem.

Here in the UK there was a doctor in Newcastle who just simply gave heroin addicts a shot of nice clean safe heroin, for free, in his surgery. Come round, get your dose, off you go to work. Every single one of them was able to hold a job, keep a family together, be a functional member of society, and with that stable background they were able to get off the smack and stay clean and sober, surprisingly quickly.

Imagine taking that pressure off opiate addicts, to go out and score, interact with criminals, steal to get money, and imagine it being actually cheaper and more effective than anything we're doing right now.

Imagine if we just did something that worked.

[wildzzz]

Your body builds up a tolerance to opioids. If you can receive a constant dose of heroin every day, your body will eventually want more of it to chase the high. For people that already have an addiction, how are they going to manage these cravings? They'll look for it elsewhere and the problems come back.

Methadone (and Suboxone) is slow releasing so your brain is kept satisfied but without the massive high that a needle of heroin gives you. And because of that, taking other opioids at the same time blunts their effects. Since you're in a treatment program, you also aren't trying to figure out how you're going to make more money that day for heroin than you'd reasonably make at a job, your income can go towards supporting your well-being.

[ErroneousBosh]

> For people that already have an addiction, how are they going to manage these cravings? They'll look for it elsewhere and the problems come back.

It turns out that this is not actually a problem, particularly when you are using diamorphine to control people's street smack addiction. They want to get off the gear anyway.

> Since you're in a treatment program, you also aren't trying to figure out how you're going to make more money that day for heroin than you'd reasonably make at a job, your income can go towards supporting your well-being.

It turns out that this doesn't actually work. Methadone is completely ineffective at reducing cravings and most people on methadone programs go out to steal things for money to buy street heroin. That coupled with the massive health problems that methadone causes makes it an utterly useless thing for solving the problem. It also is massively physiologically addictive, so you've now got the problem of getting someone with failing health and no teeth and a roaring heroin addiction off of methadone as well. Good work.

It is really expensive though, so it's great for funnelling public money from the NHS into the pockets of drug companies, who generally have a few relatives of prominent politicians on the board.