zlacker

> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.

We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.

>>nippon+(OP)
> Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me.

Why is this an either or?

SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with.

> Not to mention the tents.

Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them?

[1] https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/sfusd-news/press-releases/...

[2] https://sfstandard.com/2021/11/17/supervisors-approve-6-5m-i...

>>nippon+(OP)
While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community.

E.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541900/

>>cogman+Z
SF spends nearly $1B on the homeless.

>>dasein+j6
Homeless and drug addicts are not the same.

Letting the homeless block streets with tents is not the same as caring for them, or rehabilitating them.

>>culi+m4
It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic.

By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.

>>nine_k+Wa
correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.

>>nippon+Ed
I think a confounding variable is that SF also significantly reduced jail sentencing and prosecution of other types of crime during the pandemic.

>>dasein+j6
Dollars spent is a poor metric for effectiveness. If you were to become homeless in SF tonight, is there shelter available for you to sleep in?

>>nippon+(OP)
Honestly, it's because SF didn't actually do anything

Having harm reduction sites doesn't mean you get to shoot whenever and whatever

SF's governance is delirious honestly

>>nippon+(OP)
Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users.

Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.

>>mining+FR
The decline in Portugal may have been temporary.

https://archive.is/3iXlM

>>nippon+(OP)
I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open.

Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).