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Sara Cash's avatar

Oh Leighton, thank you for AGAIN being willing to speak the hard truth that few are willing or able to state publicly. The rhetoric around addiction has gotten so tangled and weird. We need an organized societal response other than letting people die, often in the streets, at the mercy of their physical dependency. I think a middle path has to be the answer, with treatment, forced when necessary, along with criminalizing the activities of those vile people who profit from the addiction of their customers.

I can hear the chorus now of how societal factors FORCE people to enter the trade cause they have NO CHOICE. Well, lots of us grew up poor as shit in abusive homes with addicted parents and found alternative methods to support ourselves that do not require destroying the lives of others.

Moreover, I think what is the unspoken factor here is the actual cost in dollars it will take to provide treatment, housing, medical care, food, etc., for those hopelessly addicted because it will all have to be built from the ground up. How can we provide addiction treatment when there are not enough professionals or lay people trained to do this? And nowhere to house people, particularly in psychiatric or treatment beds? These obstacles are insurmountable without massive public investment. Those downtown flophouses were better than nothing! And now we can long for the good old days when NORML was radical stuff.

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zara's avatar

You're definitely one of THE best substack writers I've discovered this year. Thank you for writing on issues that matter and for defending your argument so eloquently.

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