Heroin Users Take Over San Francisco BART Station

Discussion in 'Latest Hip News Stories' started by deleted, Apr 27, 2018.

  1. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    Traffic is pretty awful in most the desirable places to live in California, I'm sure that's reason enough for most people to bitch that live here.
     
  2. I'minmyunderwear

    I'minmyunderwear Newbie

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    that's true. if i lived there i guarantee i would bitch about the traffic. i bitch about the traffic here and there usually is none (weird thing about here: we have rush hours but they aren't based on anything measurable. like, during normal rush hour times, the roads are completely deserted, but at 1:30pm on a random wednesday everyone will be out driving at once for no apparent reason). but anyway, i would bitch because that's what i do, but i would still be happy to live there i think.
     
  3. Noserider

    Noserider Goofy-Footed Member

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    Pretty awful doesn't begin to describe it.
     
  4. Noserider

    Noserider Goofy-Footed Member

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    I've lived in New Hampshire, New Mexico, Maine, Massachusetts, and California.

    Day-to-day life in all of these states is pretty much the same. Yeah, LA has a shit-fuck-ton of traffic, and where I am I don't have to worry about mudslides or wild fires, but goddamn--sunshine over 300 days a year, great weather (except for the fall), year round surfing, hip urban culture. I like it here. Sorry, but I do.

    I'm 20 miles inland and it takes me an hour to make my 5 mile commute to work, but Goddamn, this place is rad.

    Piss on Cali all you want, but over the years, this place has become home.

    Buy my basketball loyalty remains firmly entrenched in Boston.
     
  5. Beach Ball Lady Balls

    Beach Ball Lady Balls Banned

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  6. NotMyRealName

    NotMyRealName Members

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    If anyone needs to grasp what the term shithole looks like, take a trip to this part of SF.

    Good article. I did not know the citizens had made this a misedeamenor offense now. They are seeing the benefits of their liberal beliefs.
     
    Beach Ball Lady Balls likes this.
  7. OrleansWordsmith

    OrleansWordsmith Moderate anarchist

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    You're saying to reinstitute institutions that were abolished in the '80s.... where many mentally unstable and some addicted people were kept instead of jail. But those institutions weren't doing their jobs so well... a lot of patient abuse happened... So these smaller group homes were set up. A lot of resistance to that "not in my neighborhood....crazies, drug addicts". Most of homeless people are alcohol, drug dependent and usually have a host of mental issues. A multipronged approach with social and governmental agencies cooperating would have to be instituted. Don't waste jail space or jail people who are committing crimes to fuel a drug habit. People need rehab, counseling and possibly additional and longterm, if not lifetime mental health aid. No one says they want to grow up to be a heroin addict. Or pop opiods, or be an alcoholic. But human existential pain is real. People need viable methods to avoid drugs to solve their problems. This also involves poverty and lack of work skills. There is not one shot or band aid that fixes this.
     
  8. unfocusedanakin

    unfocusedanakin The Archaic Revival Lifetime Supporter

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    What is a better option: To give someone a second chance or to throw them away and say you are an addict get fucked? I don't know how you can not be in favor of rehab unless you actuly want some sort of criminal punishment for them. Prison and OD"s are both extremely expensive to treat. It's actuly cheaper to provide them a safe place to use. It also cuts down on disease. No one wants AIDS or Hepatitis to spread. You think the average heroin user is happy like that? Like the wake up and say "I could work but why would I when I can get high and some Fox news guy will pay for it". That's just silly trust me they are not happy. But that seems to be a major right wing issues. Someone is going to use MY money and they don't even live by the rules I had to to make it.

    Sometimes someone treating them like a person and helping them with employment and housing goes a long way. We have treated them like animals since Heroin stopped being available in children's cough medicine. Your hard ass right wing approach does not work either.
     
  9. NotMyRealName

    NotMyRealName Members

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    No it isn't an easy fix. But drug addiction was much less of a problem during the era of institutions in the 80s than it is now. Something in the fabric of our nation has made turning to drugs a much preferred pathway than it was in the 80s. Lack of consequence perhaps?

    I get that it's stupidly cheap and easy to get drugs. But that doesn't explain why people make the choice to take that path. Not all do obviously, but it certainly seems to a growing Demographic.

    SF and many other cities aren't solving it by making them comfortable, providing them safe places to shoot up etc.

    We never had 22,000 people openly injecting drugs in public in the 80s in SF.
     
  10. NotMyRealName

    NotMyRealName Members

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    Well California as a state has an economy that is something like 17th in the world in size. And that is all left leaning money.

    How much have they contributed in taxes to treat them as the humans they currently are now. Shall we double that rate and throw twice as much tax dollars at it?

    How far can you take the companies down the rabbit hole of making them pay for this before they say enough is enough?

    Or is your proposal take more money from those that don't have a quarter of the nation's homeless living with them, and help Ca treat them better than they are?

    Perhaps the most humane thing we can do is to provide them copious amounts of free heroin and let them blissfully OD. No pain, blissful, and no more living like a sub human.

    It's just a matter of time before they do it anyway. Let's just help them get there sooner.
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2018
  11. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    not mine, but:
    and your (all the fascists flying a desk in the russian army to post on here) problem with whatever you're too busy hating on to care what kind of world you create by doing so is?

    (mine is alien and peaceful, sustainable and creative, solar powered tiny villages and tiny narrow gauge railways)
    (mine is a post eco-pocalyptic earth inherited by the pointy eared fluffy tailed meek, who will be the children of humans, who will be able to live in a world humans as we know them now, won't)

    i'm sorry but no, there is nothing great about a world or even one country, where it is considered normal for everyone to go around hating each other and doing so twice if they perceive them to be the least way different from themselves, which, everyone IS different from each other, that is reality and the way the universe works.
     
  12. tumbling.dice

    tumbling.dice Visitor

    I did some quick Google searches and didn't crosscheck but this is just meant to be a ballpark estimate. According to CNN there are an estimated 22,000 intravenous drug users in San Francisco. The costs for a 30 day rehab range anywhere from $14,000 to $27,000...let's just say $20,000 (though I doubt it's that cheap in California.) That comes to $440,000,000. Damn near half a billion to get these people the treatment they need and even if they got it there is no guarantee of success. I just doubt it's politically feasible.

    Probably the easiest way to address the problem is to start arresting them, taking their drugs and paraphernalia and dropping them off at the county line with the warning never to show up in San Francisco again. I know it sounds cold but making addicts more comfortable never does any good in the long term.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 14, 2018
  13. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    Glad I live in a colder climate where the homeless retreat into shelters during the winter.

    Sure occasionally we’ll hear about some homeless guy who froze to death on the streets of Boston (we even have a name for them) Bumsicles, otherwise they just tend to disappear as winter approaches.
     
  14. GeorgeJetStoned

    GeorgeJetStoned Odd Member

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    They go to Florida. St. Augustine is a favorite stop for bums. So is Orlando and Miami. Oddly, Key West gets a lot of them and I'm sure they're not walking the entire causeway to get there. It'd be like hiking in a desert.
     
    hotwater likes this.
  15. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Or lack of purpose? The "War on Drugs" was a farce. Nixon used it as a means of criminalizing hippies and racial minorities, and Reagan's escalation filled our prisons to no avail. The materialism, hedonism, and moral vacuity of our secular paradise lead some to drugs and others to suicide, which is also on the rise. Welcome to our Brave New World.
     
  16. NotMyRealName

    NotMyRealName Members

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    Or perceived lack of purpose.
     
  17. unfocusedanakin

    unfocusedanakin The Archaic Revival Lifetime Supporter

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    Drug use has remained consistent for decades. Regardless of the politics of the time or how much DARE spends people get high. The only thing the war on drugs changed was long prison terms for possession. But to this day the addict remains an easy scape goat for all problems.
     
  18. Eddie Habte Mekasha

    Eddie Habte Mekasha Members

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    It is very sad to see more people are now addicted to various types of drugs and alcohol drinks including teens. We have to continue the awareness on the prevention of the addiction to have a better generation. I edited a book on the awareness and education on alcohol and drug addiction that is very much growing at native East Africa and among diaspora in N America, Australia and Europe.
     

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  19. GoVeganNow

    GoVeganNow Members

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    How'd you reckon? It's nothing to do with liberalism anymore - it's all dot com folks and people developing block chain microtransation architectures and shit. Pricing everyone else out of the place and replacing real jobs with "gig economy" positions in which people lose benefits, steady work and dignity and the guys who run Scrubbly or Dogwalkr or whatever make millions.
     
  20. newbie-one

    newbie-one one with the newbiverse

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    Some people become addicts because they're stupid and reckless

    Other people have some fucked up shit happen in their lives, and use heroin to try to deal with it.

    The whole epidemic got started when opioids got over prescribed for pain. I don't see a reason to blame someone if their doctor turned them into an addict.
     

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