cross-posted from: https://feddit.online/c/ca@feddit.online/p/1956268/drug-decriminalization-in-british-columbia-reduced-police-encounters-for-drug-possessio
The solution is: individualized targeted care
The problem is: political will.
Addiction is a medical problem, not a moral one.
The medical problem is downstream of economics. Housing Theory of Everything applies:
High barriers to housing construction cause housing shortages.
Housing shortages cause high rents.
High rents cause homelessness.
Homelessness causes drug addiction.
Drug addiction causes overdoses.
thank you.
Addiction is a symptom of Homelessness just like mental health. We need a housing first initiative with needs based assistance but I don’t see that happening in my life time.
Except for all the empty houses.
High barrier to housing access is not due to construction regulations, just another symptom of capitalism.
Every study that’s been tried says that empty houses are overstated. I’m all for the socialist approach of taxpayer-funded government builders, but fundamentally you can’t escape the actual cost of manpower and materials and wasted time caused by municipal barriers to housing.
Like, it looks like there’s a zillion things under construction, but those are late in the massive lead-time of building. People inside the homebuilding industry say that the start of the pipeline has nothing coming, so in like 5 years we’re going to be right back to “everything is expensive and nothing is under construction to solve that problem”. And the reason for that is costs - the same costs that a government builder would face. Municipalities sucking up the productive effort into fees and obstructionism and delay.
Yeah the odds of me stepping on someone’s used needle while minding my own business walking down the street is certainly not ideal.
May not be the overall success this article suggests.
Not leading to a reduction in deaths says it’s not successful.
I wonder how it would’ve gone if police hadn’t thrown up their hands and said “Oh I guess we’re not doing drug enforcement at all anymore”
