I know in a perfect world, it could be possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, but we're not in a perfect world.
There's a constituency out there pushing for safe injection as part of a spectrum of ways to help people get off drugs and living productive lives. People who OD & die have zero chance to rehabilitate.
Problems include:
- each individual has to be ready to quit AND get into a better lifestyle (if people find it hard to quit smoking, how hard must it be to quit drugs?);
- no one road out of addiction will help everyone, or even a majority (thus creating mini-empires, like many other government-funded solutions to things); and
- services to help people climb out of addiction and into productivity have to be consistently available with enough space to handle people, often more than once (see 2 re: one reason why no single program has enough room to help enough people at any given time).
There's also a constituency saying "let 'em die, they made their choice" or "lock 'em all up." Well, at one level, reducing the client numbers does lessen the first-order problem, but as others have pointed out, who wants to tell a family "fuck 'em, they chose" when they may have been looking for help for some time and met with no room at the inn. Also, anybody know which would be more expensive: treatment or jail? In jail, inmates are supposed to receive programming, but I can guess how short of services institutions in general must be vs. need.
Gotta keep the general public safe, too, but that's another one where LOTS of stuff needs to be done at all levels (law enforcement, the courts, parole systems, etc.) to deal firmly & consistently with those who peddle the stuff. At the root, though, is how do you deal with the
demand?
Like people who are radicalized, almost all addicts are trying to deal with what they see as a shitty situation. In some cases, it may be from bad choices, and in others, there may be problems with how the systems they deal with deal with them. Like with radicalization, how do you keep people from feeling that's the ONLY alternative? That's the source, and the hardest factor to pin one single solution to.
Bottom line: I feel for people people feeling unsafe due to the drug trade and behaviour of some addicts, I feel for addicts trying to dig themselves out but can't, but the solutions aren't simple because there's a lot of ground to cover.
