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One of the great ironies here is that the Social Justice religion, which places the Victim (of anything and everything from "historical forces" to "power differentials" to that evil mark of Cain they call "Stigma") at the center of its movement and which is to California what Catholicism is to Rome, will end up killing many more of its sacred Victims than would have died or suffered otherwise.

I've said here before that I lived four years recently in Venice, CA, and I've seen all this up close: Social Justice disciples will vehemently furiously denounce anyone or anything in the most unhinged language if they suggest even one limit to the rights of junkies to do as they please at all times (thus meaning junkies' rights become paramount in any situation), even if this supposed right has the same result as giving a bottle of whiskey to a drunk or a bucket of KFC to someone morbidly obese.

The Social Justice religion has conquered the world because it allows people and organizations and esp politicians to purchase virtue on the cheap, with other people paying the price. But often the most compassionate thing you can do for people is to say NO. Otherwise your "compassion" is really about making yourself feel (and be seen as) good, world be damned.

As much as any opiate or fentanyl, the Social Justice religion's potent hit of self-righteousness, of making its users feel higher than anyone else when it comes to Caring and Being on the Right Side of History™, is the true Californian epidemic and I don't know if there will be any cure in our lifetimes.

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Harm reduction and low/no barrier housing are why Seattle and San Francisco and other like minded cities are the hell holes they are today. Some things are just not okay, like defecating in public or pitching your tent next to an elementary school while you pursue your drug-addicted "freedom" to live however you want. I wouldn't wish the life of an addict in one of these 'caring' cities on my worst enemy. If we really cared, we'd say no. No we won't affirm your throwing away the one precious life you have. No we won't watch you rot out your body and soul while you slowly die right in front of us. Harm reduction doesn't save lives, all it does is extend a miserable existence for a few more days or months or years. By the way, Vancouver BC, a pioneer in harm reduction, had the most ever overdose deaths in the first 9 months of 2022.

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Your claim that San Francisco is a hell hole doesn’t pass the smell test and makes all your comments suspect. It remains a city with one of the highest qualities of life in America.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-crowned-the-worlds-best-city-to-live-survey/

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It's great if your quality of life depends only on dining, night life, friendliness (whatever that means), and environmental initiatives. It sucks if your quality of life includes things like safe streets, good schools, sidewalks free of human feces and used needles and if you don't mind mentally ill drug addicted homeless people living in your parks and on your sidewalks. San Francisco itself doesn't pass the smell test, in a manner of speaking, unless you enjoy the smell of urine. Same goes for Seattle.

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San Francisco does indeed have dirty streets, though human feces and needles are exceedingly rare in at least 75% if the neighborhoods.

If by “good” schools you mean white majority schools, you would have to move to Orinda or a similar suburb, or send your kids to private schools.

If by “good” you mean schools that are performing well academically, with high standards and a student body that attends college, San Francisco has them. The plurality of students in San Francisco schools are Asian and Westside schools are excellent. Like any public city school there are pockets of schools with discipline problems, but the six largest public high schools, which educate in aggregate 2/3 of the students, rank in the top 15% by US News and World Report and other similar ranking agencies. If your children have an academic bent, they can attend Lowell, which is one of the highest ranked public schools in the country. If they are more artistic, there is the Ruth Asawa School of The Arts, which is also academically rigorous. Both are selective though, so there is no guarantee of admission.

San Francisco has a large but stable homeless population. It has lagged in building new housing, prices are expensive and many have been priced out. The West Coast cities all have a similar problem and no city in America is immune. If seeing poor people disturbs you, then a more income segregated place would probably provide more comfort to you.

Violent crime is lower than average for an American city and had been declining for decades. It’s not Palo Alto, so if suburban living is more your thing, then it’s probably a bad choice, though there are some surprisingly suburban neighborhoods in the fog belt on the west side of the city.

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founding

“Large but stable”

Are you aware that you sound like you’re describing the local deer population?

It’s grotesque. This on top of your glib & breezy lack of concern over the outright depravity & exploitation that Leighton is trying to shed light on - is so alien and sinister to me that I find you highly threatening in the extreme.

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You know what's obscene? The fact that you want to criminalize poverty, throw millions of people in jail for getting high and ruin their lives forever with a criminal record. That's grotesque.

If you actually cared about poor people, you would advocate for more housing and more services but your only solution is more cops, more jails and more abuse.

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founding

Oh my bad - I see you’re a scripted mouthpiece using canned phrasing & scripted rebuttals that I’ve seen many times before.

The person who’s words you are parroting is still grotesque - you yourself on the other hand - who knows- you probably just don’t know any better and with different leadership would be perfectly capable of doing great public service

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So you are in favor of arresting and incarcerating drug users? Which drugs?

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It sounds like "harm reduction" has been reduced to absurdity.

When I think of harm reduction I think of things like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/26/homeless-shelter-ottawa-gives-wine-to-alcoholics

In Canada (far away from Vancouver, pointedly) a few years ago a clinic began making its own wine to serve to resident alcoholics - just enough to keep the shakes away and no more. As you'd expect, some took this as a chance to augment whatever rotgut whiskey they could procure outside. But many used it to taper, and while the results aren't a 100% conclusive slam-dunk, it's clear that many individuals did have their harm reduced this way. It was a strictly regulated pour - five ounces of wine once an hour - and wasn't given to anyone who was intoxicated. So while it was indeed giving booze to winos, it was controlled.

The rough equivalent to this article would be giving Everclear to anyone who showed up and asked for it - and not once an hour, either. This has gone past harm reduction and into simple enabling, and while enabling peoples' choices is exactly what the proponents of these policies want, I think it's hugely misguided.

Thank you for the article.

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That program is controversial, even in liberal Canada, but yes, harm reduction is absurd. It's like letting your three year old play with the kitchen knives as long as they wear safety glasses and then congratulating yourself on your great parenting skills.

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I'm sure it is controversial but it seems to me that if harm reduction is to be tried, that is the way of doing it - strictly regimented, difficult to abuse, and aimed at keeping people from the dire consequences of DTs, rather than keeping them plastered. I'm not well-informed enough to say if it's better than total abstinence; what I can say with confidence is that it's better than just giving them whatever they want to drink, when they want.

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It is possible to safely withdraw from alcohol under medical supervision. The life the people in this program lead is sad in the extreme. I watched a documentary about it when I was in Canada a few years ago. It might be available on YouTube. A better option would be for them to medically detox and enroll in a long term treatment program. If they relapse let them try again. Recovery is a long process of ups and downs but harm reduction is basically just giving up on people and admitting they will never be able to live up to their potential because they will be slaves to their drug of choice forever. That is the real tragedy.

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I take your word for it that detox and then total abstinence are better. (It seemed intuitive to me, but I didn't want to assume.) However, I do wonder if this program still might not have its place - for people who want some form of "help", but aren't mentally ready to say "I am detoxing and never drinking again after that." Maybe this is just enabling them to not make that harder choice, I don't know.

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Reality is doggedly refusing to conform to predictions and prescriptions of the SJW. Will they be allowed to continue unto our destruction? How long until America resembles Venezuela? We can see a clear outline now., yes?

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I notice that you provided no details regarding the success outlook for addicts which have been completely abstinent of drugs...I know why that- There aren't any!

Opioids are essentially impossible to completely discontinue use of after years and successfully maintain full sobriety without the aide of medications to regulate the chemical imbalance caused by years of hard opioid addiction.- 95% of users end up relapsing without replacement therapies.

You are correct- many addicts will use Methadone maintenance as a way to stay well when they cannot afford or source narcotics...most Methadone clinics force a patient to return to the site DAILY to obtain their doses- they are almost ALWAYS slammed into environments with active users with no intention on ever actually getting clean...it jeopardizes those of us who DO use the programs as they are meant to be- it threatens our sobriety by putting us back in with the people we want out from.

Replacement therapy is the reason I'm here and I'm functional. I take single-ingredient Bupenorphine; as I have been clean and free of relapse for more than three years...the Bupenorphine is an effective analgesic independantly and it can be used for legitimate chronic pain (which I have).

Suboxone is the Bupenorphine preparation cut with Naloxeone...and it is incredibly hard on patients hearts! Doctors prescribe suboxone for long term maintenance but the reality is that Naloxeone is not a drug that someone would want to take every day for years.

Big pharmaceutical and the FDA have done a pretty damn good job of hiding the realities of suboxones negative concequences years down the line.

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People stop using drugs when they decided to. Kicking them when they are down doesn’t convince them to quit. Perhaps rehab in jail is slightly better than court ordered rehab, which does not work at all, but it is easier to find drugs in jail than it is on the street. The overwhelming majority of drug users “age out” of addiction, an inconvenient fact that the moralizing crusaders against drug use always forget to mention.

If you really care about the lives of addicts legalize drug use. We ruined millions of lives needlessly for no reason because we decided that smoking pot was immoral. People are going to get high. Get over it. It’s not your business what someone else does with their body or their life. Sure give them choices, that great. Offer them sobriety and help them on that journey if they want to go there. But enforced sobriety is a joke.

It’s never really been about saving Iives. The Dutch showed us how to do that: rehab for those that that it can help and free prescription heroin for those that can’t or won’t quit. But that won’t satisfy the moralizing public who won’t be satisfied until they can lord it over someone they believe is “lesser” than they are.

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author

1. Drugs in jail are far more expensive.

2. I specifically address the "age out" argument — did you even read the piece?

3. It is absolutely my and the rest of the public's business when people are using openly on the street, sleeping in tents and committing crimes to feed their habit, and dealers are occupying street corners carrying guns and machetes.

4. Nobody is arguing for "enforced sobriety" so not sure who you're arguing with.

5. The Dutch give prescription heroin only to the most hardcore cases who fail every other option. The rest get pushed to quit.

6. The moral superiority oozing out of your assumption that everyone who disagrees with you thinks users are "lesser" is noxious.

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Prohibition doesn’t work and will never work and enforcement of drug laws does far more harm than drug use ever could.

But yes, until society wakes up to this fact, which might be never, I endorse 100% everything you said in this article.

Thanks for this *ahem* sober analysis of public policy failures.

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It heroin was $5 a hit and came in pharmaceutical doses then no one would need to steal to support their habit.

There are laws against carrying machetes, they should be enforced.

“ The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.'

Putting down people because they are poor is noxious to me.

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author

Nobody's "Putting down people because they are poor." Again, your self-righteous assumptions are incredibly irritating.

If heroin was $5 a hit the cartels could easily create a stronger product and compete with the pharmacies.

And nobody's enforcing laws against dealers, that's the point.

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“Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of 400,000 people.”

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

Someone forgot to tell Brooke Jenkins that she isn’t enforcing laws against drug dealers. She has cancelled all the diversion programs that Chesa implemented and is prosecuting dozens more.

All a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. Putting drug dealers in jail does not reduce the availability of drugs, nor their prices and increases their potency.

But if we can push the drug dealing out of the streets and into peoples bedroom that would increase peoples perception of safety which is something I can support.

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author

SFPD is not making arrests because the jails are full. Where's your evidence dealers are being arrested and charged?

Putting dealers in jail absolutely reduces the supply of drugs and drives up prices.

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Dec 6, 2022Liked by Leighton Woodhouse

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Mayor-Breed-pledges-again-to-17489031.php

“S.F. Mayor Breed and D.A. Jenkins tout jump in narcotics arrests, felony charges and drug seizures”

Unfortunately no numbers here. We will find out soon enough if this approach is effective or not.

I think this is a pretty good and balanced article. I do wish The City would try out some of your ideas though, especially the Naltrexone injections. I hear that it takes away the joy from being high.

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author

Naltrexone is a powerful tool but it's been throttled by the methadone lobby.

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https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/san-francisco-jail-district-attorney/

There is plenty of room though a severe shortage of deputies which I suppose means we can’t arrest a bunch more people until we hire more deputies. COVID and then Chesa let a bunch of people out of jail and they have not been replaced (yet).

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-D-A-Brooke-Jenkins-to-revoke-over-30-plea-17348514.php

30 more being prosecuted by the DA. Let me see if I can find something on drug arrests. She said she was going to push SFPD to do more and from what I can see they are at least moving the dealers around, which they didn’t use to at all.

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author

these aren't new arrests.

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https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drug-problems

“ More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems

Data show no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse”

I can find a similar conclusion from the DOJ if you prefer. It was Obama’s DOJ if that matters.

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None of this is actually done with the addicts in mind. I used to think all of this SJW action was just misguided - maybe ill conceived, maybe with benefits outweighed by unintended consequences, maybe naïve... but no.

The longer it goes on, the clearer it becomes more obvious that this is purely a cynical, narcissistic scam. It’s becoming sobering even worse. These grifters have quickly moved from simply using the mentally ill to line their own pockets (and egos) on to actually *creating* the mental illness that supplies them with helpful grift opportunities.

BLM and their obvious financial larceny is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. There are multimillionaires being created every day on the back of this grifting industry. And money is probably the least of what is being stolen. Lives are destroyed on multiple axes.

Obviously the addicts, stoned out of their minds, defecting and dying on the streets are being destroyed. But so are their families, residents around them, the wider society, and all the other people who are drawn into the fantasy that being “broken” confers specialness.

Finally, anyone who resists this insanely destructive wave is treated with unlimited firepower. There is no limit to the punishment brought down on dissenters. Financial, social, professional & personal destruction are completely openly sought. Anyone with any concerns is branded as a violent extremist; few people are willing to undergo that, just to express concern for others.

Obviously, not only drug addicts are the fuel - but they’re the most obvious. There is starting to be some mild dissent, but I’ve begun to despair that this will ever be recoverable.

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Nov 17, 2022Liked by Leighton Woodhouse

Consider the incentives. There is a homeless industry that suffers every time a homeless person finds housing; there is an addiction industry that tries to ensure addiction is lifelong; there is a massive (and corrupt) pharmaceutical industry that is very sad Covid deaths are down 90% this year.

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Absolutely correct, without doubt. Humans are creatures of incentives, and BOY, do we have the incentives messed up.

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An almost unbelievable amount of bs is in this article. Harm reduction comes out of the experiences of Amsterdam in the 70s. They had a huge heroin overdose problem and now they don’t.

Addicts quit using when they decide to. Over half of all drug addicts in their 20s have stopped using 10 years later. It’s called “aging out” and is well understood and documented. The rehab and get tough on crime pushers don’t want you to know this, so they never mention it.

Putting people in jail doesn’t get them clean, though it can force them into rehab. Drugs are so easy to get in jail that people are *more* likely to use them than on the street. Think about that for a moment. Even in the most locked down place in our society we can’t stop drug smuggling and use. Why do the pro-incarceration crowd imagine that we can stop it on the outside?

Harm reduction saved 4,000 lives in San Francisco alone. The people who run it down would apparently prefer that these people just die. I guess that’s one way to get rid of your “drug addict problem”, just let them all kill themselves.

If these people really cared about the lives of addicts, they would decriminalize it and allow addicts to purchase cheap pharmaceutical grade drugs so that they don’t overdose. They give free heroin to drug addicts who fail rehab in Amsterdam. Guess what, almost no overdoses.

Prohibition doesn’t work and it never has. It didn’t work with alcohol. It didn’t work with marijuana. Remember all the “this is your brain on drugs” and other reefer madness bullshit that they tried to peddle on young people? How many lives were ruined with harsh sentences for a harmless herb?

The Economist recently ran an article “Legalize It” which argued that the societal cost of cocaine prohibition far outweighed and gain from less usage. People will make their own choices and no amount of thuggery from cops and well meaning but misguided citizens will change that. Prohibition doesn’t work and will never work. Someday we will figure that out.

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author

1. I specifically quote someone saying that most people age out of addiction. So yes, I did mention it.

2. Drugs in jail are way more expensive than on the street, for obvious reasons. I've interviewed numerous addicts who kicked in jail.

3. "The people who run it down would apparently prefer that these people just die." The people you're referring to include parents of addicts, recovering addicts and people who run recovery centers. You might believe in radical harm reduction and that's fine, but insinuating that anyone who disagrees with you just wants people to die is asinine and offensive. Next time you say something like that I'll just ban you.

4. I've addressed the legalization argument in a different post. https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/legalizing-drugs-is-a-terrible-idea

Your comments are so reliably obnoxious that I'm not going to bother responding to you in the future. And will probably eventually just ban you since you clearly can't help yourself.

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There you go, put your fingers in your ears and you can pretend that no one disagrees with you.

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author

You also don't understand the Amsterdam model at all. They enforce drug laws in Amsterdam, alongside a robust treatment program which emphasizes abstinence.

"Pretend that no one disagrees with you" is a funny way to characterize me addressing your uninformed arguments point by point.

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I am familiar with the Amsterdam model, which would be a huge improvement over our current program of criminalizing users.

Amsterdam pioneered harm reduction and we could learn a lot from them.

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author

Yes, and as I emphasize in the article, harm reduction traditionally understood is entirely compatible with sobriety-based treatment modalities, and are indispensable to keep people alive long enough to kick. The critique is over this new variation of HR that sees any push toward abstinence as coercion and stigmatization.

Who in CA criminalizes users?

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https://www.ppic.org/publication/arrests-in-california/

Drug offenses are the largest category of misdemeanor arrests.

A quarter of about 758,000 misdemeanor arrests in 2019 were for drug offenses (25.5%).

I don't of anyone who breaks down arrests by users vs. dealers, but misdemeanor arrest are going to be for small amounts. I am sympathetic to the argument that perhaps some dealers are perhaps arrested for more easily proven possession charges, but it is also true that most street dealers are users who sell to finance their habit.

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author

But my whole question was who in CA criminalizes *users*? This stat is meaningless if it doesn't distinguish between users and dealers.

I don't know where you're referring to but in SF it is absolutely not true that most street dealers are users who sell to finance their habit. Most street dealers are cartel-supplied full time professionals who get cut off if they get addicted. And the addicts who sell piddling amounts of drugs on the side to support their habits are a total non-priority to law enforcement. They're not getting arrested and charged.

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Very solid.

Harm reduction leading to more death may be a silver lining. I know that’s harsh, I have no animus and wish it were not so, but, face it, stupidity begets what it will and a 10 year old could easily see abstinence is the cornerstone.  The entire exercise is futile, these are illegal drugs, arrest and imprison users until there are no more users to arrest and imprison (also obvious to a 10 year old).

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It is no longer a 'mystery' as to why best health and well-being practice of 'abstinence' from psychotropic toxins has been excised from much of the 'new' drug policy arena. Sadly, pro-drug actors have been chipping away at this actively for over a decade and now have wrested the language through re-tasking definitions. Many of these bad actors have aligned themselves with genuine harm reductionists, who hate drugs, but do want to save lives and help substance users exit said use. These saboteurs of important policy seek only to normalize drug use and care nothing for the growing egregious harms that ever increasing 'permission models' will eventuality bring to individuals, families and their communities. We have watched this happen and challenged it at every step. The Australian National Drug Strategy is Harm Minimisation - but it has three key pillars, Demand Reduction is (on paper) the highest priority, then Supply Reduction, then Harm Reduction for those who have become the sadly, inevitable casualties of 'recreational' drug use. However, the re-tasking of language (everything from 'stigma' to 'human rights to self-harm' mantras etc) to make everything 'harm reduction' is now actively undermining the first two pillars of Demand and Supply reduction, creating the ever-self-fulling prophecy that drug use is acceptable. A series of sessions on this hijacking can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjMD6CE0nx0&list=PLTMqlfT-1C1x7ekCSxIhF6HMjHBqMAK6n

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Another great article.

What I would love to see are numbers, though they may be hard to find. What is the death rate among those who live in areas with "harm reduction" policies and addicts who, say, find themselves in prison and thereby forced to give up drugs? While I hate to reduce it all to death, that is the one number that can be measured and is harder to spin.

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Whatever they are trying to achieve, it is clear the California Legislature has no interest in reducing, let alone eliminating, drug addiction.

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