Political Memes

In Sweden and Denmark, where I am from, it’s technically illegal to not be provided with a roof over your head. But as you say, some people just can’t live in a home, for various reasons. Some even choose to be homeless or more precisely; be a vagabond.

Solves the problem of too many empty beds in a for profit jail

This! Best treatment against homelessness is:

Give them a home!

I heard about the Portuguese program in a Ted talk. Well done!

In Oregon, we attempted to model Portugal's drug policy. The roll out was a mess and treatment centers weren't funded for several years. Additionally, following the advice of people in the field, the measure didn't include the mandatory meeting with the inter-disciplinary local commission like in Portugal. Instead, there was a hotline set up and possession became a citation. Unfortunately, the citation didn't have the number to the hotline. In places like Portland, the cops at least gave out a business card with hotline number on it in addition to the citation.

Several years later, we have a roll back of the citations to making drug use illegal again. It's not as bad as 2019, but it isn't Portugal either. The biggest strike against it was the public use of drugs in downtown areas and in small encampments. Sadly, this was happening nation wide, but Measure 510 was blamed. And this roll back seems to have taken drug decriminalization off the table in other states altogether. I hope someone braves these waters again, but the advocates who helped design the program have seemingly shuttered their legislative pushes elsewhere.

I wonder if things would have been slightly different if we hewed closer to the Portugal model. Sad that the worst off of us will suffer.

I’m not sure if this is going to work with our current system because 1) I don’t see enough punishment for their moral failures, 2) not enough profit/investment opportunities to capitalize on their vulnerable position and lastly 3) half of our two ruling parties fundamentally disagrees with the concept of a better future.

It’s a good start, but I think if you underline how we can make big money while maintaining the status quo, then we could arrive at something doable.

But if you treat drug users as human beings, where will the police get their justification for fuckmassive budgets to buy surplus military equipment painted scawwy black (because blue is SO civil servant, and olive drab just isn't COOL enough) and pay grifters to tell them how hard their pp will get when they kill another human being????