> It's a tactic to convince a general audience,

It doesn't sound friendly the way you say it, as if the "general audience" can't think for itself and needs to be convinced and tactics (ie, not facts) are needed to do so.

How about: "It's a technique to connect with a general audience."

It feels like it was common practice until just recently.

> Unfortunately about half the population doesn't have empathy for anyone they don't grow up with, and some of those have empathy for no one at all.

You know, everyone feels the same but they think it of a different 50%...

But it's not that - it's that I want to have a discussion of alternatives and feasibility without being hampered by either side's forced emotional manipulation instead of policy points.

I live in a drug city and I hear the "think of the pain of the junkies" all the time - as if I've never had drugs impact my family. As if we didn't reach this point through 20y+ of only thinking about the short-term interests of the druggies. As if me not falling over and sobbing with the person delivering the message is a sign of my massive inhumanity.

And then I go to a different meeting and I hear "think of the family of the random-attack victims", etc. As if I've never considered crime victims until they showed me how and my failing to sob along with them and adopt their policy decisions is because I hate the common man.

I really just want to discuss options. How much does jail cost vs street life vs treatment, how much greater or lesser risk is someone at on this drug vs that. Only once we know what we could do can we actually decide what we should do.

> I know a thing or two about these folks and they're all suffering before they started using. They often start by self medicating because they were traumatized or incredibly impoverished due to a series of unfortunate accidents.

fwiw, none of the people I know who have died or had their lives ruined through drugs have been the type of suicidally circle the drain. They're a seemingly random subset of people, of all political and economic stripes, and levels of abuse of disforture. Many were addicted via medical opioids and many via casual party usage. They aren't a special subset, they are us. There but for the grace of not encountering a laced joint, go I.

I don't doubt that many of the worst off people have significantly more pain that the average person, but I don't think that's relevant - they need treatment not because they're worthy for having a large enough victim card, but because it's not only doable (the options I want to discuss) but because I believe it's the best moral action for society as well.

> So, yes, I believe it's the right thing to do to treat rather than imprison.

Of course, but where our cities went wrong is people sabotaging the system under a false pretense of kindness by rejecting any imprisonment or coercion as part of treatment. Their drug and mental problems are used to prevent them from being charged with their crimes where we could enforce treatment.

In the short term it's always better to have another hit. We've proved rats will push a cocaine button all day until dead, why we need to witness it in people is beyond me. We need to remove the button.