Consider that Paris is comparatively very trashy but also way more conservative than San Francisco.
The city hands hundreds of millions of dollars to outreach organizations that operate with little oversight and offer no results. We hand out 400,000 needles a month to IV drug users, and the dirty needles end up in the streets and sidewalks, putting everyone at risk. There is human feces everywhere. We allow open use in broad daylight. In some neighborhoods, we allow open dealing in parks and street corners. Police don’t bother to make arrests because the DA wouldn’t prosecute anyway. More and more homeless drug addicts move here to take advantage of the de-facto deregularization. The city reacts by throwing more money at the problem, without oversight or results, and the cycle continues.
The large number of homeless who are mentally ill or addicted to opiates are unaffected by the housing costs, because they couldn’t afford a house at any price.
You’re creating a false dichotomy between not enforcing laws on one hand, and being vindictive on the other. If those are the only alternatives you can see, that’s on you.
"Police don’t bother to make arrests because the DA wouldn’t prosecute anyway. More and more homeless drug addicts move here to take advantage of the de-facto deregularization."
"The city reacts by throwing more money at the problem, without oversight or results, and the cycle continues."
There are of course multiple options. That was what my initial post was trying to emphasize, not that you are some vengeful onlooker.
Edit: maybe I should emphasize this part of your sentence, "without oversight or results, and the cycle continues." because refining that rather than our dumb argument makes more sense.
Can it all be attributed to housing issues? Maybe. But Hong Kong has housing issues. I've never worried about my safety, saw needles on the street, or saw piles of shit everywhere (though I have in all the other cities mentioned).
I don't think it's any one issue. Drug abuse is only one aspect of the problem, but not the root cause. Although I think if cargo ships were loaded up with coke and heroin, Hong Kong's problems would end up quite a bit worse than they are.
The GP brought up attitudes towards drugs, specifically. I'm not arguing other liberal points. Consider that Amsterdam has similar lax attitudes to drugs and isn't nearly as bad. Hong Kong, proper, is expensive, but Hong Kong also has a very rich public transportation system. My impression of Hong Kong is that you don't need to live in Hong Kong to work there.
Personally I think most US cities, and a lot of western cities in general suffer more profoundly from income inequality. I'd imagine it's very easy to feel trapped on the streets in SF if you can't afford housing or a car (Which are problems that can come to roost after several years of poverty, if you are poor, you can't build credit, so you can't get a car/home loan). If you have no life choices, its easy fall into drug use (see the rural america opioid crisis).
What are you talking about? Paris has the same sort of drug addiction issues. Lots of the people trashing the commons are nasty violent crack addicts
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.fr/20180117/junkie...
https://rmc.bfmtv.com/emission/ravages-de-la-drogue-dans-le-...
>"For example, last year, there were no fewer than 850 traffic interruptions and power cuts because drug addicts crossed the tracks, carried out their business on the tracks, or pulled the alarm to stop the trains to either sell or buy drugs," Chaplan, who is also a representative of the trade union SUD-RATP, said.
Junkies are a blight on civilization
Let me fix that for you: Junkies are human beings with serious medical conditions related to substance abuse and often mental illness.
As a "civilization" we are ultimately measured by how we treat our most vulnerable, because that tells you the value we place on human life.
Society needs to spend more time and effort helping people with drug addiction problems, and less time vilifying and dehumanizing them.
It was the introduction of the war on drugs that introduced the need to push drugs, to pay for the habit. When clean heroin and needles were available, along with treatment for those who wanted to quit, there was barely a problem at all.
Many nations had successful history of tolerance without problems of junkies. The the US was determined to export their war on drugs globally. The hysteria of Harry Anslinger who gave the world the Reefer Madness mentality, and faked acres of evidence, was the US representative for the newly formed UN committee on drugs. It was his swan song resulting from Nixon's public enemy number 1 initiative.
India, The Netherlands, Britain and others had almost no drug addicts prior to this. There were of course some - but they were still productive members of society - yet orders of magnitude fewer than in the USA under prohibition. No police connected drugs with crime or anti-social behaviours.
Now everywhere is in a similar boat to the US, drugs outlawed with enough organised crime that going back to the old ways is probably impossible.
What the GP was bringing up was the attitude towards drugs, not people using drugs in general. SF was a far more lax attitude to drugs than France, yet its afflicted by similar problems. Blaming drugs is just a convenient scapegoat so that harder problems aren't addressed.
Junkies are human beings with a problem. So are cancer patients. So are veterans with PTSD.
It's our job to remember they're people and need help, not cast them out further. We're rich enough as a species that we can save those in trouble; we shouldn't forget that.