[coldbrewed]

Addiction is an extremely complex public health crisis. Letting people starve on the street is bad, giving people benefits will result in some abuse, and real change would come from more comprehensive treatment plans but we're not ready for mandatory detox programs yet, and even if we had them we wouldn't set these people up for success after.

The abuse of benefits is bad but these people are the tail of a system. It's tragic and frustrating but we can't look at the tail and and assume that they bear the sole responsibility for their predicament.