Meth and the homeless - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15204678
A newer, easier to produce form of meth is turning users into homeless zombies, according to the article “The New Meth” in the November 2021 issue of The Atlantic magazine.

Remarkably, meth rarely comes up in city discussions on homelessness, or in newspaper articles about it. [Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig] Mitchell called it “the elephant in the room”—nobody wants to talk about it, he said. “There’s a desire not to stigmatize the homeless as drug users.” Policy makers and advocates instead prefer to focus on L.A.’s cost of housing, which is very high but hardly relevant to people rendered psychotic and unemployable by methamphetamine.

One counselor said it took him 12 years of using ephedrine-based meth to become homeless. But those using P2P meth are homeless within a year.

The article offers no solutions other than to look more closely and sympathetically at the users, the typical response of liberals who are incapable of seeing any drug addict as responsible for their own condition.

As the new meth users are self-isolated and usually non-communicative, hollow offers of therapy and treatment will not get them off the street. Only incarceration of some form, either in jail or psychiatric institutions, will do that. A more conservative U.S. Supreme Court may be willing to undo previous decisions that let the mentally ill run free. But don’t expect any stringent measures in woke California.
#15204679
Hopefully legalizing drugs, transience and property crimes will ultimately allow Californian cities to solve all their homelessness problems by ceasing to exist altogether.
#15204732
libertasbella wrote:Hopefully legalizing drugs, transience and property crimes will ultimately allow Californian cities to solve all their homelessness problems by ceasing to exist altogether.


I thought you were a libertarian.

Why should the government tell people what to put in their bodies? Do you also support mandatory vaccines?
#15204733
Pants-of-dog wrote:I thought you were a libertarian.

Why should the government tell people what to put in their bodies? Do you also support mandatory vaccines?


Why should the tax payer be on the hook for the cost of treatment when people put drugs in their bodies?

What do vaccines have to do with this?
#15204734
BlutoSays wrote:Why should the tax payer be on the hook for the cost of treatment when people put drugs in their bodies?


Strawman. I never talked about government handouts,

What do vaccines have to do with this?


Both mean that the government gets to decide what drugs you can and cannot put in your body.

Can you explain why the government should have that right and you should not?
#15204738
BlutoSays wrote:Hey …, not a strawman. Right at the heart of it.


No, I never discussed giving anyone any government money. People can simply read the thread and see what I wrote.

LIBERTARIAN: look it up.

Wanna debate? Then debate,…..


Okay.

Point to the part of the definition where they support making drugs iklegal.

    Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, "libertarian"; from Latin: libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core principle.[1] Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association.[2] Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of libertarianism.[3][4] Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines.[5]

    Libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics such as anti-authoritarian and anti-state socialists like anarchists,[6] especially social anarchists,[7] but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists.[8][9] These libertarians seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[14] Left-libertarian[20] ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school.[24]

    In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian[27] proponents of anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted[8][28] the term libertarian to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.[29] The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States,[26] where it advocates civil liberties,[30] natural law,[31] free-market capitalism[32][33] and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.[34]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
#15206723
Pants-of-dog wrote:I thought you were a libertarian.

Why should the government tell people what to put in their bodies? Do you also support mandatory vaccines?


I don't support mandatory anything. But if you're going to legalize drugs and homelessness, you had better double down on protecting private property.
#15206780
libertasbella wrote:I don't support mandatory anything. But if you're going to legalize drugs and homelessness, you had better double down on protecting private property.


You already have cops and vigilantes killing people over property.

How can you want even more?
#15207746
Pants-of-dog wrote:You already have cops and vigilantes killing people over property.

How can you want even more?


Because I want to secure my property against homeless drug addicts.
#15207748
Homeless drug addicts have real health problems and other psychological/psychiatric/social issues. They deserve society's help, but I wouldn't allow them to set up tent cities like Cali.

Just legalize and regulate the drugs. Putting people in jail is dumb.
User avatar
By Verv
#15207751
In a sense, we have to decriminalize things like marijuana so that we can focus entirely on hardcore narcotics that destroy people's lives and remove their will to live.

It is also the case that alcohol is strong enough to drive people into a state of total despair, dysfunction, and homelessness, and in these cases, we really do need to just put out the money and effort to save them and, when appropriate, even come up with a special living arrangement that confines them for periods of time to detox from the substance and to receive high quality professional treatment designed to give them their lives back...

I think it is wrong to even say that the goal should be to focus on making them productive members of society, of course that is what we hope for, but we must approach it as restoring dignity, confidence, and sobriety. Even if they never are productive, they are human beings who deserve a pleasant home & food in their belly, and we should not apply to them the stresses of total re-acclamation into normal society which will be likely to make them relapse into alcoholism or substance abuse. The message should be that we value them and we are not ashamed to pay for them to live in a comfortable, warm, pleasant place without pressures, and we simply want to free them from substance abuse.

It would be better to spend a tens of thousands of dollars a year on a person for decades on end to let them to live comfortably and even unproductively, receiving treatment, than it is to have someone's child dead in a homeless camp.

Of course, I am open to libertarian values and pro-capitalist thinking that emphasizes how the free market does it best, and I do not want taxes to be higher than they should be. I have some of these conservative values. If these services can also be provided solely through charity, I would be ecstatic. But, it is the case that we are a community, and no parents should have to identify a dead & homeless meth addict.

Nor should homeless people with mental problems be out on the streets so incidents like this (homeless man kills 70-year-old nurse*) happen.

*Nobody should be a nurse at age 70. You should be retired and spending the last part of your life enjoying freedom & a silver renaissance.
By late
#15207755
BlutoSays wrote:
Fix many problems at once'

Purges



Stalin used to do them all the time, killed millions.

So mass murder it is...
By late
#15207756
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Homeless drug addicts have real health problems and other psychological/psychiatric/social issues. They deserve society's help, but I wouldn't allow them to set up tent cities like Cali.

Just legalize and regulate the drugs. Putting people in jail is dumb.



Something like what Portugal does would work..

But you aroused my curiosity, if you won't allow tents, and we've ruled out jails, where would you put them?
#15207763
libertasbella wrote:Because I want to secure my property against homeless drug addicts.


If your only argument for political policies is to serve yourself and ignore things like root causes, go live in the woods by yourself.

Instead, you want to spend my tax dollars to benefit yourself. Perhaps you should think about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps instead of making us pay for your suckling on the government teat.
#15207765
Pants-of-dog wrote:If your only argument for political policies is to serve yourself and ignore things like root causes, go live in the woods by yourself.

Instead, you want to spend my tax dollars to benefit yourself. Perhaps you should think about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps instead of making us pay for your suckling on the government teat.


To be fair, the root cause of meth addiction is trying something extremely addictive like meth. The cure to stop meth addiction is to stop taking meth. I'm all for providing state-funded help for people trying to get off the drugs.

I guess some people don't have great parents to teach them these things, but unfortunately the government nor society can't ensure dad sticks around or mom is never a fool or little johnny isn't foolish, which is exactly why many people end up on the street. I think the anti-drug ad campaigns of the 80's/90's were at least something though, & that they should bring back.
#15207766
libertasbella wrote:Because I want to secure my property against homeless drug addicts.

“That’s libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.” - Kim Stanley Robinson
User avatar
By Crantag
#15207769
Unthinking Majority wrote:To be fair, the root cause of meth addiction is trying something extremely addictive like meth. The cure to stop meth addiction is to stop taking meth. I'm all for providing state-funded help for people trying to get off the drugs.

I guess some people don't have great parents to teach them these things, but unfortunately the government nor society can't ensure dad sticks around or mom is never a fool or little johnny isn't foolish, which is exactly why many people end up on the street. I think the anti-drug ad campaigns of the 80's/90's were at least something though, & that they should bring back.

The problem with addiction therapy is that it is sort of a one-size-fits-all approach, which doesn't work for everyone.

For some, it makes things worse.

I think decent housing and employment is the first start.

Neither of which I have.

I'm still working on being a functional addict, though.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

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