Dude, people become addicts cause life sucks when you are in a constant struggle.
An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#52I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space. I've criticised the author (Chris Rufo, associated with the conservative and intelligent design group Discovery Institute) in his earlier pieces (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/acwqng/podcast_s... ) where he used seemingly incomplete estimates on the funding…
And if you tightly regulate the “pharma space” and those drugs are harder to get, the same addicts will just find a substitute drug. The “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure. If you lock up the users, you’re just spending more money housing non violent offenders. If you lock up the sellers, someone else will take their place. Homeless drug addicts don’t fear jail, how could it be any worse than life on the stre…
I think a big part of it is the decline in social structures and lack of meaning in many people's life. Happy people with a meaningful life are much less likely to take drugs.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#53I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space. I've criticised the author (Chris Rufo, associated with the conservative and intelligent design group Discovery Institute) in his earlier pieces (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/acwqng/podcast_s... ) where he used seemingly incomplete estimates on the funding…
And if you tightly regulate the “pharma space” and those drugs are harder to get, the same addicts will just find a substitute drug. The “War on Drugs” has been an abysmal failure. If you lock up the users, you’re just spending more money housing non violent offenders. If you lock up the sellers, someone else will take their place. Homeless drug addicts don’t fear jail, how could it be any worse than life on the stre…
The regulation on pharma should not be aimed at reducing supply (which is how it's done today, trying to avoid prescribing pain meds to anyone who is addicted) but on reducing the introduction of dependence. It's not going to solve everything, but there's a reason people are winning lawsuits against the Oxycontin manufacturers.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#54[flagged]
[deleted]
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#55[flagged]
> weirdo greedlords like Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump
This breaks the site guidelines against flamebait and name-calling. Would you mind reviewing them? Taking threads further into flamewar is what's most important to avoid here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20197294.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#56While this article alleges that addiction is the root cause of homelessness, it makes no effort to prove that claim. That there is correlation between the two is clear, but claiming that addiction is the root cause of homelessness of the west coast is just fear-mongering. Determining root cause is important to finding the right solution. Further cracking down on homeless people will just transfer them from the street…
There are studies that back up this claim, though[0]. From the paper: “Labor force participation has fallen more in areas where relatively more opioid pain medication is prescribed”
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueg...
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#57I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space. I've criticised the author (Chris Rufo, associated with the conservative and intelligent design group Discovery Institute) in his earlier pieces (see https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/acwqng/podcast_s... ) where he used seemingly incomplete estimates on the funding…
> I think the question to ask is what created the opioid problem in the first place - I tend to think it's lack of regulation in the pharma space.
The opioid addiction crisis is a complex issue, and the data defies reduction to any particular cause.[0] It's become popular to blame the issue on the pharma industry, but to do so is an oversimplification large enough to call a mischaracterization, and focusing primarily on that area will not solve the problem.
I think that the reason for the popularity of this misconception is that it throws a bone to almost anyone's ideological predispositions. It blames both "big business capitalism" and "the out-of-touch elite", it avoids laying blame on doctors, or on homeless urban addicts, or on poor rural addicts, or on the suburban middle class, or on a culture that fosters both urban homelessness and rural poverty, and it's a simple explanation that has intuitive appeal.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#58While this article alleges that addiction is the root cause of homelessness, it makes no effort to prove that claim. That there is correlation between the two is clear, but claiming that addiction is the root cause of homelessness of the west coast is just fear-mongering. Determining root cause is important to finding the right solution. Further cracking down on homeless people will just transfer them from the street…
Not saying I disagree with you, but west coast cities do have temperate climates that I would think attract more of the chronically homeless. I'd much rather live on the street in LA in the winter than SLC.
They also have booming economies. People move to successful big cities for work, where they have no existing safety net. Then they can't find a job fast enough, or get sick, or get divorced and start drinking, and become homeless. These are the vast majority of "not from here" homeless people in Seattle. The chronically homeless tend to be old people in pretty bad shape who don't move cities for the weather. So is the answer that people born in economically ruined rural areas should be locked out of big cities? Only allowed to stay there so long as they have enough money? People arguing you shouldn't be able to get benefits somewhere you're not "from" are arguing for a system that entrenches the political and economic divide between rural and urban Americans.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#59If you become homeless, you are super likely to do drugs. Just visit a homeless camp and you’ll find that out.
This article gets causality backwards. It’s kind of amusing.
Re: An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis
#60While this article alleges that addiction is the root cause of homelessness, it makes no effort to prove that claim. That there is correlation between the two is clear, but claiming that addiction is the root cause of homelessness of the west coast is just fear-mongering. Determining root cause is important to finding the right solution. Further cracking down on homeless people will just transfer them from the street…
Not saying I disagree with you, but west coast cities do have temperate climates that I would think attract more of the chronically homeless. I'd much rather live on the street in LA in the winter than SLC.
Or maybe the fact that there has been a population explosion on the west coast due to tech combined with a retarded attitude towards urban development has resulted in more people than available bedrooms.
Ima go with that explanation since it is a lot simpler.