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.
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.