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154 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 8 Jun \ on: Does legalising/decriminalising drugs work? AskSN
For a few years in my early twenties, I lived in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. I was working at a drop-in center for people with mental health issues and we served a lot of homeless and/or drug addicted people. At the time, harm reduction was the most popular approach to assisting such people. There were needle clinics and injection sites. I think it's fair to describe it as a magnet for drug users. It certainly was skid row.
Here's a few things I learned:
- When you think of people nodding out on a street corner or collapsed on the sidewalk, it's pretty hard to tell the difference between drug addiction and mental illness. I knew plenty of people who were not into any particular drug use, but had equally miserable lives due to their severe mental health problems. Between the extremes of people who were legit nuts but not really into drugs and the people who were pretty neuro-normal but extreme down the addiction path, is the vast majority of homeless people -- probably using as a way to self-medicate.
- Almost without exception, addicts in recovery had zero patience for harm reduction approaches. They strongly advocated zero-tolerance policies. It felt pretty harsh to me, but at the same time, I have to respect that these people had managed to extricate themselves from their drug use.
- I can't really speak to drug use among people who aren't homeless. It seems that I don't run in the circles of drug users...or all the people I know are very secretive about it. Either way, my instincts tell me that the percentage of users among the "normal" population is probably not so different as the percentage of users among the homeless population.
So, legalizing drugs? I'm pretty much all for it on freedom principles. I doubt it dramatically increases or decreases the number of people you see nodded out on the side of the street.