Gary, I don't disagree with the fact that addiction needs treatment. The issue at hand is whether the laissez faire approach we took after M110 causes additional problems. Some form of punishment whether it is short term constraint to detox and start treatment, more and easier arrests of dealers, or banning of public use will be beneficial to the process of treatment and prevention.
The other half of the issue that you and most advocates of total decriminalization tend to ignore is the cost to the rest of the community of unconstrained drug usage and homeless camping (the two are too often intertwined). Whether it is limiting sidewalk access for disabled residents, damaging small business livelihoods, or making life miserable for people living near drug use, there is a real cost to the inability to get users off the street. Lastly, given the fact that users need to fund their habit, leaving users on the street leads to a lot of petty crime. The net result is that productive citizens flee the urban core where addicts gather reducing the ability to raise funds for treatment.
Gary, I don't disagree with the fact that addiction needs treatment. The issue at hand is whether the laissez faire approach we took after M110 causes additional problems. Some form of punishment whether it is short term constraint to detox and start treatment, more and easier arrests of dealers, or banning of public use will be beneficial to the process of treatment and prevention.
The other half of the issue that you and most advocates of total decriminalization tend to ignore is the cost to the rest of the community of unconstrained drug usage and homeless camping (the two are too often intertwined). Whether it is limiting sidewalk access for disabled residents, damaging small business livelihoods, or making life miserable for people living near drug use, there is a real cost to the inability to get users off the street. Lastly, given the fact that users need to fund their habit, leaving users on the street leads to a lot of petty crime. The net result is that productive citizens flee the urban core where addicts gather reducing the ability to raise funds for treatment.