⭠ Return to thread

It's hard to find a philosophical home these days. I'd always considered myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal and so never felt comfortable anywhere until my nephews educated me about the libertarians. But I was very uncomfortable about the Completely Unregulated Drug Use thing.

I read with great interest Bari's open letter when she fled the NY Times, having followed her writings for some time. Nellie I knew less about, but had read some of hers. A lifelong hunter and conservationist, I began to read Michael Shellenberger, a dedicated environmental advocate who had begun to question the Environmental Crazies, and here he is!

I look forward to Common Sense each and every day - the writings of reasonable, classic liberalism, with a clear understanding of the dangers of unbridled socialism, nutcase-outrageous environmentalism, communist-inspired radicalism. Finally. I'm home.

Expand full comment

I call myself a small ‘L’ libertarian. Any philosophy taken to the extreme is bad. Libertarianism is no different.

Expand full comment

Wow! My "philosophical home" mirrors yours completely. I wonder how many others are out there who feel as you and I do? I found Bari, Michael, and Nellie after Bari and Michael were interviewed on Megyn Kelley's podcast a couple of years ago. Nellie's TGIF email is one of the things I look forward to reading each Friday.

Expand full comment

I’m a clinical social worker with a specialty in substance abuse, who had found a home in the libertarian party in my early 20’s, but parted company with them over the “Completely Unregulated Drug Use thing” as you do aptly put it. The problem with that, is that addicts are robbed of their free will by drugs, which completely ruins the reward centers of the brain, and it is no longer a choice to stop, without significant intervention and sometimes mandated treatment. Addiction is a terrible illness and the daily degradation that addicts endure to get their “fix” should be evidence enough that addiction is not a choice.

Expand full comment

it is a choice you just have to have will power . worked for me I just made up y mind and said enough already and quit . never looked back that was 30 years ago

Expand full comment

Part of the problem on this issue is the lack of nuance. Nuance gets a bad rep- for many people, it equates to temporizing- but without nuance, the debate revolves around abstract templates instead of ground-level reality.

First, it has to be acknowledged that the status quo on the "drug issue" (as if there was only one) has permeated the social fabric, the institutional response, and the discourse. And the discourse of resistance and reform is often operating within reactive assumptions as a response to that status quo. As a result, clarity about the most relevant problems- and their solutions- gets lost, while the debate goes in circles.

The status quo here is Zero Tolerance and Criminalization. Don't imagine that the organizing paradigm has shifted anywhere else, just because there have been some moves toward decriminalization and low enforcement priorities, and a surfeit of rhetoric about "education, prevention, and recovery". The primary "treatment" for the most seriously addicted users is still Jail. A regime of forced abstention behind bars that is, to put in kindly, erratically enforced; in quite a number of correctional facilities, enforcement is a joke, and the illicit drug markets are rampant, organized, and run from the inside.

Zero Tolerance User Criminalization rests on some terribly invalid premises that function to exacerbate the problem by widening the target population to All Users, instead of focusing law enforcement energy on the core of addicts who generate public health problems, crime problems, and the denial of public space characteristic of open-air illicit marketplaces in the city streets, parks, and other areas of the public commons.

To break it down: not all illicit drug users are users of hard drugs; nationwide, around 3/4 of drug users who participate as buyers in the illegal market confine their purchases to cannabis.

To take it further, in any given year, around 3/4 of the users of "hard drugs"- cocaine, opioids, methamphetamine- use them only occasionally. Between once a year and once a week.

The remainder of that user population are considered "regular users", but not all are addicts. Of the fraction of regular users who are addicted, some are still able to function without attracting undue notice by law enforcement as habitual criminals. As a population, such addicts show up disproportionately in child neglect cases and DUI offenses. But they don't rely on street crime to pay for their habits, and whether by diligence or good fortune, they keep a roof over their heads. A sizeable number of such (quasi)functional addicts enjoy the advantages of class affluence, including the ability to pull strings when they find themselves in legal difficulty; this is not fair, but it isn't any different in that respect than the other advantages of wealth privilege in this society. Some of the others are able to hold down jobs that supply them with enough income stability that they can "afford" their addictions, at least in the financial sense.

The remainder of the Illicit Drug User population has hit the skids; they no longer have their habit under control, if they ever did. They're Dysfunctional Street Addicts. They don't obtain an income from working. A large fraction of them fund their addictions with crime- although not all of them do; some are actually able to feed their habits by begging on the street (a measure of how much disposable income is in the pockets of Americans, at least some of them; and also an indication of how inexpensive a bag of hard dope has gotten over the course of the past 40 years.) Other street addicts are prostitutes; however one feels about the decriminalization of prostitution, it will always be a hazardous game for streetwalkers, and addicted prostitutes are especially vulnerable. That said, even street addict prostitutes are usually able to make enough income to keep themselves from being unhoused on the streets.

Finally, we get to the addict population afflicting the streets, neighborhoods, and parks of San Francisco: they trespass. They use drugs in public, including injection drugs, and discard the needles. They use city alleys and even sidewalks as bathrooms, urinating and defecating in public. They shoplift, panhandle intimidatingly, and commit an array of offenses ranging from vandalism to residential burglary in order to commit property crimes to fund their addictions. Few of them bathe, certainly not regularly. Some of them own only the clothes on their backs, and sleep on the sidewalk winter or summer. In crowded environments like homeless encampments, they're often public health hazards. Dysfunctional addicts often overdose, sometimes more than once in the same day.

The response of the city of San Francisco to that population and their issues is "Decriminalization." A policy that I would support, were it only confined to drug possession. But for going on twenty years now, San Francisco and some other West Coast cities haven't just been granting decriminalization for drug possession; the authorities have also granted de facto impunity for trespassing, street camping, using public streets and parks as bathrooms, monopolizing publicly provided bathrooms and park benches, discarding needles, harassing and intimidating passers-by into giving them money, public intoxication (grossly and blatantly), and other activities that have resulted in addicted vagrants monopolizing public space in the city. Oh, last but no least, impunity for the failure to appear in court for hearings or unpaid citations.

My position is that decriminalization should extend to drug possession, but no further; if someone is found sleeping in a doorway, they're subject to arrest or citation. If they have outstanding warrant(s) due to failure to appear, they're subject to arrest and detention without bail. Misdemeanor recividism is a violation of the social contract; no one has any business scoffing at the law that way. Cars that get too many tickets get towed; petty criminals that stack up too many citations need to get sent to the pound.

But- and here's where the mercy comes in- we need Rehab Jail for street addicts. The courts and confinement facilities need to do intake evaluations to distinguish the population whose crimes are entirely due to their addiction from the smaller population of aggressive, violent, or predatory criminal offenders. (In the case of opioids, addiction can be detected by administering Naloxone, which induces withdrawal symptoms.) The population whose problems stem entirely from their addictions are the people who most need inpatient drug treatment, rehabilitation, counseling, education, and recovery therapy. Not for two weeks, or 30 days, or 6 months; for one year. At minimum, we need those jail facilities for dysfunctional street addicts to be airtight enough that they can't get any drugs when they're inside (with the possible exception of substances like Suboxone, which have some value in stabilizing the level of addiction for some opioid users. The controls need to be airtight, though.)

At minimum, we need to give the individuals who find themselves in that situation a year of dry time, to think it over. And we need to make it clear that if they return to their old patterns, they'll be subject to the same confinement and treatment regime. They can return to using and getting addicted; it's their decision. But they can't hang around unhoused on the city streets, funding their lifestyles with public money budgeted for their welfare.

The mandatory inpatient drug treatment program that I've just outlined.will require extra funding.

https://www.route-fifty.com/public-safety/2022/02/san-francisco-hundreds-homes-homeless-sit-vacant/362384/

Considering that San Francisco's 2022 budget for homelessness is $598 million, I'd propose $500 million of that money be shifted to pay for it.

The other part of the problem is more complicated; we need to divert as much demand from the illicit markets into controlled and regulated channels as possible, within reason. That's a different discussion. But the criminal monopoly over the illicit drugs trade has expanded to the status of an societal institution, and the effect of that is so corrosive that measures have to be taken to replace that market with medicalization- and possibly even some level of legal markets for some forms of these substances- in order to effectively shrink down the remaining illegally supplied markets to a level where law enforcement methods are able to effectively curtail them.

Expand full comment

Fantastic post thank you for that I learned much

Expand full comment

"....the daily degradation that addicts endure to get their “fix” should be evidence enough that addiction is not a choice." The most concise and accurate analysis I've ever heard.

Expand full comment

Jail, to many now and not enough financial resources, lock them up and give clinical support in jail.

Expand full comment

jail is not the answer more drugs in jail than on the street , jail just makes money for some including a few guards . not a soloution

Expand full comment

But, although I care about them, we need to get them out of society, we lock them up and free the functioning part of society from their presence. That seems a laudable good, 95% of us will benefit. I can also imagine there could be a solution to drugs in jail, ya, could be done, no drugs in jail.

Liberal prevacation on most such issues is so very tiresome, you folks have run Society for a long time and you’ve made a terrible mess. Time, it’s well past time your prescription be abandoned, we need to return from whence we came, reapply common sense. I think our grandparents would be ashamed of us, I think they would say something like: if you become a drug addled maniac and terrorize society you get put in jail.

This is common sense and based on the name of this substack I will presume to speak for Bari and say she would agree with me, at least, I suspect in private she would agree, in this public venue she would likely demure, bad for business insulting the sensibilities of your paying customers. She is smart enough to know her liberal audience, she knows their political shibboleths are inviolable and she is serious about her commercial best interests, so she edits herself. She might’ve been born at night but it wasn’t last night.

Expand full comment

I found Common Sense only about 2 weeks ago. I am finally home too. In the last week alone I’ve brought 12 friends on board as new subscribers. Good grief, what a relief. Finally a site for completely sane high quality investigative journalism. A few times over the last week I shed a few tears of relief. I know that might sound kind of ridiculous, but it’s true. I just don’t feel quite so freaked out and alone in my alarm about what is going on in this bizarre, dangerous, and confusing woke world that I’m trying to live in. My long time subscription to the New York Times has been ended. My husband’s long time subscription to the Washington Post has also ended. For the time being that money will be used to support sights like Common Sense. Bari Weiss and the entire group of journalists contributing to Common Sense… thank you for all your courage, diligence, integrity, and hard work . You have all inspired me to not cower from always striving to speak my truth and never let anyone intimidate me into compelled speech of any kind. Godspeed to each of you.

Expand full comment

Dear God, you are to be commended Ann! Leaving the NYT and WaPo is the first step toward 'sanity' for sure. I am a rookie as I am only in my second week as well.

This whole group of contributors is well worth my(many of us) standing a post while others slept for years.

Expand full comment

Hear! Hear! And TGIF is the best part of my week.

Expand full comment

Very similar here, Jim. The democrat and republican parties are really the UniParty with a radical Left and pseudo-Right wings and neither stand for anything other grift. Although destruction could be attributed to both over the past two years(if not decades)...

I am tired of labels and believe the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the Bill of Rights, several of which have been illegally suspended the last two years. THAT is our common cause, imho; if we all believe and support those then our core is strong and we can navigate through other issues pretty easily.. I am very happy to financially power a wonderful writer like Bari(and Greenwald and Berenson) rather than the rags they used to write for.

Expand full comment

When I was in college in the 'seventies, as an experiment, a poly-sci student stood on the street corner in Morgantown, WV, and asked passers-by to sign a "petition" of ten things. If you had a brain and actually read it, you immediately recognized it as the Bill of Rights in modern verbiage. He got spat on, cussed-out, and even assaulted for "trying to promote that commie stuff." Now it's exactly the same, only the side that claims to be liberal is doing it.

Expand full comment

"until my nephews educated me about the libertarians."

Small l libertarian here. I knew I found a political home of sorts back in the early nineties, when someone gave me the Libertarian Handbook. One of the Chapters was titled "What About Poor People?" It was a very short chapter - only a single sentence: "Well, what about them?"

Expand full comment

The ultimate irony: The more government tries to help poor people the more poor people they create.

Expand full comment

Perverse incentives.

Expand full comment

That’s not very good: “what about them “ is not a compelling plan

Expand full comment

Well maybe this will help. All the liberal leftist ideas and programs and policies when deconstructed and analyzed as to their effectiveness and success rate are usually found to be boondoggles and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Almost without fail.

Once a program is proposed in Congress and all the "positive" aspects put forth and the hoped for benefit to poor individuals there should be some accountability for the funds spent and the elected officials pushing the program should have to answer the simple question. If this policy and program is funded and successful then --- "what is next."

I could cite many great sounding programs like "Head Start" and others that are enacted and funded without being evaluated and assessed as to what is the bang for the buck and where are the funds going. Once you look closely and try to determine its success (if there is any) it would be nice to know "what is next." Or if there is even a next.

Did anyone benefit from that plan when you evaluate it on a what happened next after the program was implemented. Kind of like the "what about them" statement. Before the Great Society programs we had less poor and many intact minority families. After its enactment many, many administrators and federal supervisors got great paying jobs but no one asked what about the people supposed to be helped from poverty. What about the millions who slide into poverty during the Great Society and other "programs to help the poor?" There are in fact poor people -- what about them?

Expand full comment

Very well said, what’s next is not asked and the program becomes a make work program for the government employees. The whole liberal plan is now a cul-de-sac: dead end.

Expand full comment

But NEVER for the individuals administering the plan. It is always Payday!

Expand full comment

They aren't a waste if you are given the money in the name of "helping." There are millions of people (Chirlane McCray DiBlasio, for one) whose entire living is dependent on government handing money to people to hand money to the poor.

Expand full comment

It’s an industry with thousands of employees

Expand full comment

From a Broadway musical written 50 years ago (paraphrasing the bible):

"Surely you're not saying we have the resources to save the poor from their lot? There will be poor always, pathetically struggling, look at the good things you've got."

Expand full comment

"....You'll be lost and you'll be sorry when I'm goooooooone"

Expand full comment

I think Ted Neeley actually thinks he's Jesus at this point

Expand full comment

I am sure we do have the resources. Problem is the grantors and allocators of those resources put themselves first in line to get those resources as administrators and "facilitators" and are not concerned in the least whether those being "helped" or actually have their lives improved. As long as the "program" is renewed each year and funded it keeps on keeping on.

Good private and religious based charities often make a real difference to people in need. Great hospitals like St. Judes, Shriners along with countless other charities where individuals work as unpaid volunteers do move the needle. Try adding up the millions of hours worked by different organizations and their volenteers and multiply that by the minimum wage and the dollar value is astounding.. All without "benefit" packages and govt. union wages.

Most of these people don't reflect on what they personally have but on what they can do for people who don't have much of anything. Guess it is just what prism one looks through is to how we view the world. The idea that a govt. bureaucracy or program could or would solve the problems of society is very optimistic. They might do it but at probably three or four times the cost and very inefficiently in many cases. Government has some success but mostly it runs into fully funded DEAD ENDS. Just my POV.

Expand full comment

Well said, I think you nailed it.

I’m Canadian and our idiot Prime Minister endlessly speaks of investing in Canadians; that was his sales pitch in the last general election which he won. What he means is increasing taxes and debt, creating more government programs for the bureaucrats to run. At the centre of this is an incredible arrogance: we know better. His policies will impoverished Canada with a world of government officials pursuing their own self interest, producing a small output at great expense. I am a business owner I see it all the time, we are constantly being harassed by them but the average person doesn’t see this waste, they are fooled.

I think as the secular age has replaced the antiquated notion of a Creator God the human intuition of intelligent design has not gone away but migrated to new centres of moral authority currently the clerisy of the academic left and they are idiots.

Expand full comment

Sarcasm. I thought "Libertarian Handbook" would be the giveaway.

From a Steve Harvey comedy routine: "My daddy taught me about poor people. He said don't be one of them"

Expand full comment

Whoopsie 😙

Expand full comment

Jim this is so kind. I’m sharing it with Bar and the team. ❤️

Expand full comment

Thanks. So very much at stake now - hell, what am I saying? - EVERYTHING is at stake. So much screaming, shaming, and illiberal behavior everywhere, so much apologizing in response to those attacks. I'm a crotchety old guy, and I'm having none of it. Here you drag out your argument; if it's strong and good, then super. If it's weak, it's weak, and you learn. Good stuff. How it's supposed to be.

Expand full comment

I was in a different debate yesterday regarding the “new lefts” penchant for suppressing free speech and asked; what happened to “the wisdom of the crowd, crowdsourcing,” that was the rage a short while ago? Now the “crowd” is comprised of those acceptable to social media outlets resulting in the new “in-crowd, bubble” in which the new left exist.

Expand full comment

Samesies

Expand full comment

New word for me, thanks

Expand full comment

not a middle school teacher then

Expand full comment

I like the movie Superbad.

Expand full comment

Ya me too!

Expand full comment