Overdose deaths have been increasing significantly, particularly due to fentanyl. There were 20k deaths in 2000, and more than 100k in 2021.
The root causes for homelessness and drug abuse are in large part due to trauma and bad childhood. Soft White Underbelly has interviewed thousands of people from Skid Row, and invariably they suffered major abuses and instability as kids. I guess you could go full historical materialist and say that was caused by economics too, though historically most people were far more impoverished as subsistence farmers, yet still managed to maintain dignity and stability through culture and community.
It should also be noted that other countries with fewer homeless also have higher rates of involuntary hospitalization, e.g. Japan. De-institutionalization of the mentally ill has directly led to the rise in homelessness. Portugal is routinely cited as a success story of decriminalization, yet they force treatment upon addicts as an alternative to jail. Progressives use all carrot and no stick, which is not going to work with people who have become mentally ill addicts.
> Overdose deaths have been increasing significantly, particularly due to fentanyl. There were 20k deaths in 2000, and more than 100k in 2021.
And? How is this an argument against legalization of drugs? This certainly isn't attributable to legalization.
> The root causes for homelessness and drug abuse are in large part due to trauma and bad childhood. Soft White Underbelly has interviewed thousands of people from Skid Row, and invariably they suffered major abuses and instability as kids.
Sure, and when you figure out a way to go back in time and undo those major abuses and instability, that will be a fixable problem.
The fixable causes are all economic. People don't have access to mental health care to recover from the abuses and stability because we prioritize rich people not having to pay taxes over providing healthcare. People don't have homes because we prioritize rich people not having to pay taxes over providing homes.
> I guess you could go full historical materialist and say that was caused by economics too, though historically most people were far more impoverished as subsistence farmers, yet still managed to maintain dignity and stability through culture and community.
Instead of talking about vague unprovables like dignity and stability, I'd suggest you talk in evidence. Your argument here is even more disingenuous because you chose vague unprovables over concrete issues which we were already talking about, such as drug use and homelessness (which you yourself brought up).
If we look at drug use: many fewer drugs were available and with the exception of alcohol, the popular drugs were less harmful. The plight of alcoholics was (and is) worse in subsistence farming societies because less help was (and is) available. So this is closer to an argument for my point than for yours.
If we look at homelessness: a lot of housing was provided by stronger family units, communities, and other social structures (i.e. a serf was provided housing by the lord who owned the land--literally where the word "landlord" comes from--but hopefully I don't have to argue against bringing back serfdom as a solution to homelessness). In the modern day, we arrest black and poor men, tearing apart families and communities, to the benefit of for-profit LEO and prison industries.
> De-institutionalization of the mentally ill has directly led to the rise in homelessness.
This is largely a categorization error. You're basically considering mental institutions to be homes.
1. Mental institutions aren't homes. They're at least shelter, but that's not all a home is.
2. The solution to homelessness is homes. The mental health problem is intertwined, but critically, mentally ill people in homes are just mentally ill, they aren't homeless.
3. Mental healthcare is ineffective when someone is experiencing the ongoing trauma of homelessness, so mental healthcare of any kind is not the solution to homelessness. Mental healthcare is also pretty ineffective when all of someone's freedoms are taken away, so forcible institutionalization isn't necessarily a great way to treat mental health issues either (though admittedly it is necessary in some cases). Forcible institutionalization is a tool of last resort for solving mental health issues, and it's not a solution to homelessness at all.
It sounds an awful lot like you aren't interested in helping homeless people, you're just interested in hiding them in mental institutions. This means you don't have to see the problem, but it's really just shifting a homelessness problem into an over-institutionalization problem. It's arguable whether it's better to be homeless or unnecessarily institutionalized, but if these are the options you're considering, you're not trying to help the people most affected by this problem.
It's possible to give people homes and mental healthcare without forcing them into institutions.
> Portugal is routinely cited as a success story of decriminalization, yet they force treatment upon addicts as an alternative to jail.
I'm against prison because it's not rehabilitative in any way. I'm not against forcing addicts into rehabs, although I would like forcible inpatient rehabs to be a tool of last resort, and I would also like it to be more humane than most forcible mental health facilities are in the U.S.
> Progressives use all carrot and no stick, which is not going to work with people who have become mentally ill addicts.
I'm not "progressives" and progressives aren't any one thing, so this generalization you're making is pretty much a straw man argument.
And it appears you view forcible mental health institutionalization as a "stick", which is genuinely horrific. Do you really intend to make the argument that the solution to mental health issues is to punish the mentally ill?
The root causes for homelessness and drug abuse are in large part due to trauma and bad childhood. Soft White Underbelly has interviewed thousands of people from Skid Row, and invariably they suffered major abuses and instability as kids. I guess you could go full historical materialist and say that was caused by economics too, though historically most people were far more impoverished as subsistence farmers, yet still managed to maintain dignity and stability through culture and community.
It should also be noted that other countries with fewer homeless also have higher rates of involuntary hospitalization, e.g. Japan. De-institutionalization of the mentally ill has directly led to the rise in homelessness. Portugal is routinely cited as a success story of decriminalization, yet they force treatment upon addicts as an alternative to jail. Progressives use all carrot and no stick, which is not going to work with people who have become mentally ill addicts.