Honest question: has opioid drug use significantly proliferated because of open air drug markets in SF and Philly, or is it just surfacing a market that already existed? And what about the health outcomes of drug users? Have they improved or gotten worse?
That’s a good question, I think most people just want street enforcement on open selling/use, not jailing over small possession.
It seems our only options are either extremes bans vs mass open drugs areas, because cities/courts treat anyone poor enough to be selling/using on the street as a specially protected class…even when such behaviour predictably explodes in scale at the detriment of local communities.
Those aren't our only options. There are hundreds of large cities in developed countries and very few of them have anything like the open air drug encampments you see in the core downtown areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.
It's a bizarre regional affliction that somehow comes with willful blindness to how odd and atypical it actually is.
Have you considered that those are the cities (or in Portland's case after passing a law, state) not enforcing it?
This isn't some random phenomenon. Warm weather is only a part of it. DC, Philly, and NYC are all seeing large amounts of it and the only major change is basic street enforcement and judicial consequences.
All 4 of your examples are notorious for not enforcing it at the local level and Seattle decided to blame simple drug possession again after it got out of control, but without heart by the city we'll see the same outcomes. It's more than what's written in the laws.
Not sure this argument is as powerful as you think it is.
Is the frequent shitting in the streets actually the result of more human shit being created, or is it just surfacing a quantity of feces that already existed but was being routed into bathrooms or other private areas?
I've come to believe arguments from analogy are pretty much inherently fallacious.
The pretty obvious difference is that routing shit into a bathroom makes a real, negative difference in the suffering caused by shit.
Routing drug dealing into open air drug markets makes a real, positive difference, because you can police public markets to prevent violence in a way you can't police private areas, and you can provide services such as clean needles and rehab outreaches where they are most likely to reach people who need them. Such markets tend to arise in places where drug use was already rampant--i.e. they aren't creating new suffering.
The only similarity your analogy is addressing is the visibility of the problems. In your analogy, you're making the problem more visible by removing the solution, which obviously has negative effects that don't apply to drug legalization, because drug legalization is removing a big part of the problem rather than removing the solution.
> Good luck with that. Pretty much all arguments are by analogy.
I've made at least half a dozen arguments in this thread and not a single argument I've made in this argument is by analogy.
In fact, the very argument you are making currently isn't by analogy.
> That's how you determine if a generalized rule applies to a specific instance.
That is an extraordinarily poor heuristic.
If you have enough information to make a rule for a specific instance, why not just make a rule to apply to that specific situation? Why even bother trying to apply a generalized rule?
I mean, you can say literally anything with analogies. Here, I'll offer my first argument by analogy:
Drug prohibition is like letting churches handle child abuse: it allows harm to children to continue by hiding the harm.
For example a rule that says do not walk on the lawn might govern a specific section of ground that has a mix of blades of grass, a pebble, one bottle cap, and some bare dirt, is analogous to "lawn" as a concept. Were it to change, at some point, it would be sufficiently devoid of grass, or the other things that make up the concept of "lawn" that it would, in fact, more analogous to something else.
That's how everything works. Are you familiar with our legal system and the concept of precedents? Basically a precedent is an analogy, and the common law is a massive collection of analogies that have been extensively discussed over time.
If you ever end up in litigation, you'll notice that basically the whole thing involves trying to figure out which analogy is more applicable to the specific set of facts in question. This is usually called the "theory of the case" and the side that more convincingly matches its favored analogy tends to prevail.
For example, we're talking about "drug prohibition" but that's not actually specific at all. Are you talking about caffeine or heroin? Both are drugs, but which analogy would you compare your policy solution for consumption of heroin with? Is it more like a coffee shop, or how we handle cocaine? If you believe in legalizing opium, do you by definition believe in legalizing Fentanyl? Or are the two sufficiently different that a different analogy applies?
> For example a rule that says do not walk on the lawn might govern a specific section of ground that has a mix of blades of grass, a pebble, one bottle cap, and some bare dirt, is analogous to "lawn" as a concept. Were it to change, at some point, it would be sufficiently devoid of grass, or the other things that make up the concept of "lawn" that it would, in fact, more analogous to something else.
> That's how everything works. Are you familiar with our legal system and the concept of precedents? Basically a precedent is an analogy, and the common law is a massive collection of analogies that have been extensively discussed over time.
> If you ever end up in litigation, you'll notice that basically the whole thing involves trying to figure out which analogy is more applicable to the specific set of facts in question. This is usually called the "theory of the case" and the side that more convincingly matches its favored analogy tends to prevail.
Okay, that's mostly true, and would be relevant if we were trying a case in court.
But we aren't trying a case in court, we're disagreeing about the nature of reality. When I say "arguments from analogy are fallacious" I mean "analogies don't prove anything about the nature of reality".
> For example, we're talking about "drug prohibition" but that's not actually specific at all. Are you talking about caffeine or heroin?
You aren't confused about which of these drugs I'm talking about, and I'm not going to entertain a conversation where you pretend you are.
> Both are drugs, but which analogy would you compare your policy solution for consumption of heroin with?
I wouldn't compare my policy solution with an analogy, I would say which drugs I'm talking about.
> If you believe in legalizing opium, do you by definition believe in legalizing Fentanyl?
No, but not because of analogies, because they are two different things that exist in reality.
> Or are the two sufficiently different that a different analogy applies?
No analogies apply, ever, to determining the nature of reality.
> No analogies apply, ever, to determining the nature of reality.
Maybe not in your head. But as soon as you introduce language and shared meaning they do. You don’t even know if the color I call blue appears to me physically the same as it does to you. We can agree that it corresponds to a specific wavelength but we just have to guess if we’re both experiencing it in the same way.
But I digress. That doesn’t matter anyways because we aren’t talking about the nature of reality in this thread, we are talking about agreed upon normative judgments. Not just what is, but what should be.
And that always relies on analogy. How could it not?
> Maybe not in your head. But as soon as you introduce language and shared meaning they do. You don’t even know if the color I call blue appears to me physically the same as it does to you. We can agree that it corresponds to a specific wavelength but we just have to guess if we’re both experiencing it in the same way.
You're posting random unrelated pop-sci at this point.
> That doesn’t matter anyways because we aren’t talking about the nature of reality in this thread, we are talking about agreed upon normative judgments. Not just what is, but what should be.
"Agreed-upon normative judgments" and "what should be" are not the same thing.
> And that always relies on analogy. How could it not?
Well, the way my arguments which don't rely on analogy exist is that I typed them into the text area and pressed "reply".
You're literally trying to argue that something can't happen, which is happening right in front of you.
However, I don’t find this particularly convincing:
> Is the frequent shitting in the streets actually the result of more human shit being created, or is it just surfacing a quantity of feces that already existed but was being routed into bathrooms or other private areas?
In this hypothetical shituation (I’m very sorry - I couldn’t resist), it would be very useful to answer that research question as it would serve to reveal more about both the problem and the solution.
The point of the comment is to point out that putting human misery into people’s faces isn’t a value-neutral decision.
I don’t want to see trauma surgery or graphic sex on the way to the park with my kids either, though I am of course fine with both existing in the world.
> The point of the comment is to point out that putting human misery into people’s faces isn’t a value-neutral decision.
That would be an arguable point, but you certainly didn't make that with your shit analogy. If you'd care to provide any evidence for that point whatsoever, I'd be happy to address that evidence, but you haven't provided any evidence for that point to even argue against.
The shit analogy isn't evidence because the problems of putting shit in the streets aren't cause by its visibility, they're caused (mostly) by bacteria.
> I don’t want to see trauma surgery or graphic sex on the way to the park with my kids either, though I am of course fine with both existing in the world.
Again with the argument from analogy being fallacious.
You likely won't see open air drug markets on the way to the park with your kids unless you already lived in a neighborhood where your children were already going to be exposed to drug use. These open air drug markets aren't opening in the Hamptons, they're opening in areas where the drug crisis was already pervasive.
Is that an argument? Because the open air drug markets exist in places that had drug use in them they are OK? How does B follow from A?
The point is that open air drug markets full of human misery, and usually unsanitary and violent conditions, are bad, and we should not tolerate them as part of our society.
It’s a sort of obvious mainstream view that everyone most likely shares outside of this sort of bizzare too-online culture that has developed.
My comment is just pointing out that having them in places where people are trying to live normal lives and raise children is bad.
The fact that this kind of thing will exist anyways isn’t a counter-argument any more than the argument that porn will always exist and is legal means it has to be allowed on billboards.
> Is that an argument? Because the open air drug markets exist in places that had drug use in them they are OK? How does B follow from A?
> The point is that open air drug markets full of human misery, and usually unsanitary and violent conditions, are bad, and we should not tolerate them as part of our society.
Anywhere drug addiction is pervasive is full of human misery, unsanitary, and violent conditions.
"Not tolerating" isn't a solution.
The concrete solution you're actually proposing is prohibition, which not only doesn't solve the problem, but makes the problem worse. It makes it harder to provide sanitation solutions such as needle exchanges, and it makes it harder to provide solutions to violence such as security presence.
> My comment is just pointing out that having them in places where people are trying to live normal lives and raise children is bad.
And no one disagrees with that.
The problem is, prohibition just means that people trying to live normal lives and raise children now live in a neighborhood with more violence and more unsanitary conditions that is less visible and harder to avoid. Your "solution" is not solving the sanitation or violence problems in any way, it's making both worse.
If anything, concentrating drug sales into specific areas makes the problems more avoidable for parents, because they know exactly where the problems are and can avoid those areas.
And, if you're concerned about children, surely you'd support programs to help families with children move away from violent and unsanitary areas. I'd certainly support that. That seems like it would actually solve the problem, unlike anything you've proposed.
> The fact that this kind of thing will exist anyways isn’t a counter-argument any more than the argument that porn will always exist and is legal means it has to be allowed on billboards.
It's tiring to continuously explain to you the differences between the analogies you keep proposing and the discussion at hand. Analogies still aren't a valid argument. Please make an effort to talk about the actual situation we're talking about, instead of bringing in various unrelated situations.
The difference in this case is that removing porn from billboards doesn't make the problems of porn worse, while making drugs illegal does make the problems of drugs worse.
I mean it's possible to have large scale programs that offer treatment and support for those who need it and decriminalization or a diversion focused approach to drug laws, while also making it illegal to shoot up in parks or defecate in public, and to enforce those laws.
It's really not all that complicated. The only places I see people breathlessly explaining that it's impossible are a few specific cities on the west coast of the United States.
> I mean it's possible to have large scale programs that offer treatment and support for those who need it and decriminalization or a diversion focused approach to drug laws, while also making it illegal to shoot up in parks or defecate in public, and to enforce those laws.
> It's really not all that complicated. The only places I see people breathlessly explaining that it's impossible are a few specific cities on the west coast of the United States.
You've certainly destroyed that straw man thoroughly! Now that we're agreed on the obvious that shooting up in parks and defecating in public should not be allowed, would you care to explain why you disagree with anything I've actually said?
I'm sure you can find some crazy person who believes that defecating in public should be legal, but there does not exist any significant movement of people who think that. If you think there is, that indicates a problem with your understanding of the situation.
