Comment by pton_xd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pton_xd | Hacker News Reader

A very tricky situation. On the one hand, I'm very pro-liberty and firmly believe every human has a right to decide what substances to engage with. On the other hand, it may be that the changes in human behavior elicited from consuming some drugs are just fundamentally incompatible with our collective vision of a healthy society.

How can this be reconciled? At the very least, anti-social / anti-societal behavior, eg crime, must be dealt with even or especially if the root cause is drug use. But then you get in the argument, well they're sick and addicted, is it really their fault, do they deserve to be punished for the resultant crime? They made the first decision to act so ultimately they have to be held responsible for the downstream consequences, I guess.

And then, is being homeless a crime? I don't think so. But how about littering, or using public spaces as urinals? We've decided that, for our vision of society, littering is against the law, and so is public urination / defecation. So why not enforce that, maybe especially if you're addicted to drugs?

> How can this be reconciled?

I think one obvious solution is to stop grouping all drugs together. No one is robbing a place to feed their DMT addiction and no one is shooting up psilocybin outside our homes. The criminalization of these types of drugs does far more harm than the drugs themselves. The issue with opioids and speed is more complicated, but I think the options and solutions for the most addictive and harmful drugs will become more clear once we stop muddying the waters by grouping them with party drugs and psychedelics.

I don't really buy into the "is it really their fault" argument if I'm being honest and I think humoring it is what holds a lot of this back. If I start pissing in public, picking fights, and generally behaving like nuisance because I'm drunk I'll still be held accountable for my actions. Especially if I become an alcoholic and establish it as a pattern of behavior.

Ultimately, it's part of why I like regulated legalization more then decriminalization, users could at least be pushed from things like cocaine over towards Adderall or some other pharmaceutical that might not be sexy but at least it won't have a 50/50 chance of being cut with fentanyl like a lot of street drugs these days.

There are simple, expensive answers: highly diligent social workers focusing on homelessness outreach + massive affordable housing construction that crunches housing prices. Regulate the substances but have them available to addicts, and make sure fentanyl is out of the supply chain, and make selling drugs outside the regulated system a felony.

We’re just not willing to pay the bills.

The people that are proposing the bills are not the same that pay the bills.

The same people that talk talk will pull a NIMBY.

Same with politicians, propose something bold and daring, just not in their lobbyst backyard.

Not saying you’re wrong in the context of your locale, but there are many places around the world that are not plagued with these problems and have dealt with them in very different ways.

I'd agree if our society had figured out any sane way to respond to crime in the first place, but that seems even worse than our barely extant resources for drug addiction in the first place. Somehow we're more willing to pay out the ass to make people feel bad than we are to make them feel better.

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