I feel like many of these solutions are fueled first by ideology, and only then by the evidence.
On the right, people criticize and blame the users, rant about personal responsibility, and try to lock drug users and the mentally ill up and throw away the keys. This is failed policy.
On the left, people invest in legalization and treatment as a personal ideology and don’t seem to be willing to admit when their policies fail. It almost seems like a failed policy conflates to some kind of personal failure that cannot be examined or criticized. And instead of policy failure, it’s always a funding issue, no matter how many times consistent results emerge. This is looking more and more like failed policy too.
I’ve seen it in Van, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco and LA, and it’s pretty consistently not only not getting better but getting much worse.
Ultimately, neither approach seems to be working very well. And in the meantime people are living lives of hopelessness and despair in tremendously awful conditions.
Are there no other options available than these two counter positions? I think we should be having more of an open dialogue about how to solve the problem and be more ready to examine the evidence, even when it doesn’t support our positions, for the greater good of those suffering, and I often see conversations on the topic break down into the tit for tat I’m seeing here. These kinds of conversations are the default, and solve nothing.
Neither Portland nor Seattle have received funding to tamper drug addiction to the necessary degree to provide indication that such a policy would work or not, which leads me to believe your other examples also did not get such funding, thus negating your entire argument, sans the failure of the lock em up policy, of course.
But in doing so you’re doing precisely what I’ve referenced as leading with ideology.
You are making assumptions about funding being the issue based on what you think should work and then attacking my argument by justifying your belief with assumptions to support the conclusion you want instead of letting the data and the facts lead.
For what it’s worth, draconian penalties against drug use, possession and trafficking actually do work. Countries like Singapore and many middle eastern countries have death penalties for drug smuggling and life sentences for simple possession and these places genuinely have very low drug usage in society. As a civilized society it’s really not worth killing people over this though.
On the right, people criticize and blame the users, rant about personal responsibility, and try to lock drug users and the mentally ill up and throw away the keys. This is failed policy.
On the left, people invest in legalization and treatment as a personal ideology and don’t seem to be willing to admit when their policies fail. It almost seems like a failed policy conflates to some kind of personal failure that cannot be examined or criticized. And instead of policy failure, it’s always a funding issue, no matter how many times consistent results emerge. This is looking more and more like failed policy too.
I’ve seen it in Van, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco and LA, and it’s pretty consistently not only not getting better but getting much worse.
Ultimately, neither approach seems to be working very well. And in the meantime people are living lives of hopelessness and despair in tremendously awful conditions.
Are there no other options available than these two counter positions? I think we should be having more of an open dialogue about how to solve the problem and be more ready to examine the evidence, even when it doesn’t support our positions, for the greater good of those suffering, and I often see conversations on the topic break down into the tit for tat I’m seeing here. These kinds of conversations are the default, and solve nothing.