Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/06/city-of-san-francisco-delivers.html
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Why do these people always freak out when addicts get access to Methadone?
Methadone is the drug people take when they are trying to overcome an addiction.
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“The poor, lazy druggies should only be given bootstraps with which they can pull themselves up, and those bootstraps should not be paid for by tax dollars, but outsourced to a private corporation that charges them a high interest rate!”
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If you stop giving chronic alcoholics booze they die.
Really abruptly.
Like Amy Winehouse did.
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My organization is in fact doing this, in my city. Its self preservation-- their ain’t no social distancing possible in a shelter-- you want to see a MAJOR infection vector, its a homeless shelter. Because its not a jail, its a place people sleep and eat. The rest of the time they are out there on the street, in close quarters, touching things a lot, etc.
The problem we are wrestling with right now is what to do about drug dealers (aside from weed, alcohol, and methadone/suboxone, which we can legally facilitate access to). Want to talk about a transmission vector: close contact, furtive, lots of touching things (like cash), etc, drug dealing is kind of like a perfect storm. And neither retailer nor customer is greatly concerned about distancing and hygiene or masks or shields or gloves, nor inclined to call the health authorities on each other if they were.
It reminds me of the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As with STDs, just maybe we are going to have to get a touch more honest about who’s doing what with who-- it turns out that an awful lot of drug addicts aren’t living in homeless shelters, not by a long shot. Many reside in nice white suburbs, bringing their goodies and now, their viruses, home to play.
But honesty isn’t much of a value in this day and age, is it?
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These harm reduction based practices… are not paid for with taxpayer money
Don’t worry taxpayers! Your money is being spent on fighter jets, missiles, and bunker-busting bombs, and not to actually help anyone. Sleep tight.
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I’ll take those, except the methadone.
It’s not any fun.
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I don’t think it takes extreme depravation or poverty, for people to stop giving a fuck. When I go out, I routinely see poorer latinos congregating without masks, without any pretense at social distancing, and it’s not hard for my mind’s ear to hear them say,“what, you don’t give a fuck for our lives when things are fine, now all of a sudden you care about our well being?”
Maintaining a permanent underclass doesn’t seem like an expensive prospect until suddenly it does. And I see no special efforts being made to connect with this population. They might as well be Trump’s undesirables for all the special attention they’re getting.
I’m glad to hear other places are behaving in a little more enlightened way.
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Harm maximization practices, you might even say…
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I almost want to turn on Hannity just to see his head explode when he gets this story.
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Just this week Trump decided his ridiculous wall (such as it is) needs a paint job. Taxpayer cost: half a billion big boys.
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Who does he owe money to that’s heavily invested in paint?
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It’s a coverup, [rim shot]
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Oh, didn’t know that. Who is he on tape giving rim shots to that’s heavily invested in paint?
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The Chinese. He owes them a bigly amount of cash.
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I’ve been seeing this trope since the lockdown started and I’m tired of it. I work an essential job, I live alone, and it’s NOT because I’m an “alkie” or have the DT’s or whatever, but if you think I’m going to go thru this crisis sober then you’re nuts.
Not everyone who drinks to forget is an alkie; maybe we just don’t want to process what’s going on sober and to paraphrase Billy Joel maybe we just want to “forget about life for awhile”.
Whatever gets people thru their day is fine with me. San Francisco is on to something.
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Its not that everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, but rather that the existence of alcoholics is at the core of the policy decision. Absent alcoholics there would be a good case for closing down liquor stores as a non-essential business, like we have electronics stores. Everyone else getting access is an ancillary benefit that comes with some serious risks.
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What happens if my TV suddenly stops working?
Whose businesses are “essential” and who decides this?
Nah, I’m single. I’m getting blasted on my days off.
Give me your honesty and two dollars and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. You can trust me. 
This is one of the problems of having such a haphazard patchwork of states calling for different things.
In Ohio, which is widely regarded as having done an excellent job defusing our early epidemic of this pandemic, both liquor stores and electronics stores are considered essential and are open. Housewear goods stores are also considered to be essential and are open. Even home improvement stores are considered to be essential and are open.
I can easily imagine governors of both sides trying to curry favor with the goodie goodie two shoes evangelicals by banning “sinful” businesses - which get a fair share of traffic from those same goodie goodie two shoe evangelicals; mind you; but they will complain about them in public to show their “virtue”.
The more I think about it the more those goodie goodie two shoes evangelicals ruin everything, basically. Live the life you want to live, but don’t tell others how to live.
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