> this is the point of safe-use sites, which have counselors to perform outreach, doctors to ensure they don't die, and facilities to ensure they have somewhere to throw away needles and use the bathroom.

These already exist in all the cities I'm discussing, but that's not at all what those sites are like. There are no doctors, no talking, no help, just a chair in a little nook and one nurse watching a room of people through a camera. The current message to the addicted is that they will die addicted and there's essentially no hope of "being cured" so there isn't much use in having a doctor on staff to deliver it.

> They're extremely effective at combating overdose deaths and at reducing needles on the street.

That's what they claim in their funding requests. And who knows, years ago with a different drug problem they may have had some positive effect. (fwiw clean needles appear to be the only useful piece of this intervention and they are widely available elsewhere.)

> Thousands of users are killing themselves with the drugs. This is a self-harm issue, not a violent crime issue.

It's a criminal issue because there are armed dealers and fortified camps and dead bodies in our cities.

> It's only crime because we're criminalized possession, and that hasn't curbed use.

It's crime, and not one we can look away from, because they're incapable of doing it quietly and without secondary violence and crime. The point isn't to give them a criminal record, it's that once we judge someone's actions to be criminal it gives us a lot more power to compel them off the streets and into treatment.

Once we put them in a detox program we can waive the criminal record for all their non-violent crimes. Portugal does this - the criminal sanctions are secondary and only used if you don't cooperate.

>> If police don't answer a call did a crime really happen?

> This is a conspiracy theory.

This doesn't require any conspiring, it's just the natural consequence of the police being too busy. They don't even record the things that they're too busy to respond to so it's invisible to the criminal justice system.

> Again, the data doesn't support this. There's a very strong correlation between poverty and crime.

For which city, and when? Is the city also undergoing a fentanyl crisis during the study? The people in the drug camps are not the same people who would have been smoking crack by the side of the road twenty years ago, many of them are well to do people who've fallen - quickly - into ruin.

> Some of the addicts on the street became homeless because of their addiction, but some of the addicts on the streets became addicts after becoming homeless.

Ultimately it doesn't matter how they got there, they all need to detox before they can move on.

> so unless you're proposing detox and treatment centers

I am.

> Prison simply isn't the answer to solving drug use.

Nothing is the answer, but it's an important part of the solution. When you imprison the drug user they don't live in a drug camp on the street and they don't overdose. Everyone is safer and happier. But no, detox is the answer and you use prison to make the junkie do that if they won't take another option.

> it's just as easy to get these drugs in prison as it is to get them on the street,

Not in the slightest. You can openly buy and use injection drugs in front of a police officer in these cities.

> I don't see what your good social program suggestion is.

I don't think you really understand the scope of the problem or the solutions that have been tried. Especially when you're telling the most "progressive" cities to be more progressive.