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Have you ever actually worked in the area of addiction recovery or homelessness? Yes, that’s my vocation. I am simply attempting to point out that your understanding of this issue is inadequate, because you cannot simply equate addiction with physical dependency. It’s a far more complex issue, and continuing to ignore this basic fact will not be helpful in developing effective policies - which is ultimately what we all want. I disagree. We have been criminalising drug use and waging a “war on drugs” for at least the past 40+ years, to no avail whatsoever. If anything, the problem is now far worse than it ever was, despite the heavy-handed approach of authorities in the US and elsewhere. To give another example, I have just spend 1+ year in Thailand, and they have mandatory death sentences if you are caught with more than a certain amount of drugs on your person. It’s also common practice there to force addicts into “reeducation camps”. The result? The place remains awash with drugs of all kinds - if you think the problem is bad in the US, it’s far far worse in Thailand, by orders of magnitude. Clearly, you won’t dissuade people from using by threatening them with punitive measures, or putting them forcibly through detox programs. There is not a single data point (that I am aware of) that supports the efficacy of such an approach, but plenty of data to suggest it doesn’t work. This has been the standard in many jurisdictions around Europe for quite some time. Again, it did not solve the problem - the drug problem in many places in Europe is still bad. No one here said anything about not punishing people who have committed crimes. Of course, if someone commits a crime they need to be held accountable, irrespective of whether they are addicts or homeless or whatever else. What you are suggesting though is something quite different - you want to forcibly commit people into camps purely on suspicion that they might at some point in the future commit a crime, solely based on their status as being homeless and/or addicts. Preventative incarceration, is what I’d term this - please don’t try to window-dress this as “helping the addicts”, because that is deeply disingenuous. I’m sorry, but this is simply not ok. Luckily I have enough trust in our democratic institutions to be reasonably sure that such a thing will not happen anytime soon - even if there was data available to show that this would actually solve the problem, which of course there isn’t. Personally though I must say I am quite horrified that anyone would even suggest such a thing in all earnestness. I am German by birth, and at one time not too long ago a government of my country sent people into camps based on their ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, political conviction, and even mental/physical health status. We all know how that turned out. Do we as human beings really forget so quickly? If I was to suggest a policy it would be roughly along the lines of: 1. Take drug consumption off the streets by providing safe, supervised and hygienic injection and usage facilities - harm reduction as a first step! 2. Address the problem of homelessness through policies that directly tackle the issue of poverty, income inequality, and lack of social mobility. So long as you facilitate an economic system where large numbers of people work full time jobs and yet remain near or under the poverty line, your drug problem isn’t going to go away, like ever. 3. Make substances available to those addicts who need them in a controlled and safe fashion, as part of a public health program - this stops the flow of money to drug cartels, cutting off much of the large-scale organised criminality that flourishes around addiction. Once addicts are within a public health network, it will be easier to help them with further therapeutic measures 4. Provide proper education around drugs to our kids - “just don’t take them” evidently doesn’t cut it! 5. Completely decriminalise possession of small quantities for personal use This is neither exhaustive nor complete, just a rough outline. All in all, I’d advocate a radical shift away from a punitive towards a public health approach - simply because the punitive approach has already proven itself to simply not work. Only a fool would continue to do the same thing over and over, and expect different results somehow. So I stand by what I said earlier - a complete paradigm shift is needed, because the current paradigm has failed us, and quite badly so.

What you suggest seems like an obvious solution, but unfortunately it does not and cannot work. Addiction is much more complex than just being a physical dependency on something. Yes, you could (ethical concerns aside for now) round them all up, put them in a camp, and forcibly put them through physical detox - the trouble with this is that it doesn’t actually address the underlying issue at all, because the dependency is in large part of a psychological, social and systemic nature. No one wakes up one morning and decides “I’m going to become a homeless addict…seems like a cool career choice!”. That’s not how it works. Most long-term addicts are in this situation because of multiple factors connected to their social environment, upbringing, past trauma, etc etc, many of which they have little or no control over. These are all complex issues that are not easily nor quickly fixed. It’s a common mistake to think that people remain addicts purely because of their physical dependency, and if we kick the physical dependency they cease to be addicts - that’s quite simply not true at all. So as for your proposal - you take them to your camp, forcibly put them through detox, and at some point will have to let them out again to re-join their families and social environments. What do you think happens then? I can pretty much guarantee you that within days or weeks almost all of them will be right back on their drug of choice, with perhaps the odd exception. Why? Because the underlying reasons for why they have begun to use substances in the first place have not been addressed. Addiction is a symptom of an underlying disease, not really the cause itself - just putting people through detox is like giving painkillers to a cancer patient; it alleviates the symptoms for a little while, but it doesn’t cure the disease. People don’t start off using because they are physically dependent, but for other reasons. It’s those initial reasons that need to be addressed. You cannot help an addict who doesn’t want to be helped - the impulse must always come from him/herself. People have to be ready to change, before therapy has any chance of success, and even then the relapse rates are still high. Forcing people into a treatment they are not ready for does not work. I don’t know if there are actual studies to show this (there probably are), but everyone who has ever actually worked with addicts knows that this is a basic fact. BTW, rounding up addicts and forcing them into rehab camps is what the Taliban in Afghanistan tried to do. Needless to say, it didn’t work. But it makes for an interesting case study if you want to research into it. So as for your proposal - it certainly has political appeal to those who don’t know much about drug addiction, but ultimately it does not and cannot work. It would just create a revolving-door kind of situation with people going in and out of camps, and the ones who ultimately profit will be the dealers and cartels, as always. Until we begin to treat homelessness and addiction as the social and health issue which it is, and stop criminalising something that the victims have little or no control over, no progress can be made on this problem. Criminalising the addicts and waging a “war on drugs” has never once worked, does not work now, and never will work. A complete re-think is needed.

So... the solution to homeless drug addiction is concentration camps. Buildings, furnishings, water, sewer and power would have to be laid on. Food supplied. Staff hired.* Security measures built in: barbed wire, alarms, guards, tracking dogs - or maybe the inmates could be microchipped, right after the delousing. Obviously, after the entire law-enforcement budget has been used up to acquire the land and build the facilities, there wouldn't be any resources for individual or even mass trials. A classification of citizens would be criminalized without distinctions or hearings. And then rounded up. Only, of course, the police who did the rounding up would have to tell which of the homeless people are drug addicts and which are just unsteady on their feet from hunger, and decide whether the heroin, meth and crack addicts belong in the same camp with the winos. If a few sociology students who were just distributing blankets happen to be caught up in a raid, oh well, they probably had a joint or two in their pockets. Of course, all the alcoholics, coke users, opioid addicts and ritalin abusers who are currently housed would be immune from incarceration by the signal virtue of not yet being destitute, and could continue to support the legal and marginally respectable drug industries. But, of course, the illicit drug manufacturing, importing and distribution sector would be very hard hit financially, and forced to turn to other kinds of crime. And all the people who are homeless for reasons other than addiction would still be on the street, assuming the police could tell them apart from the addicts. * Or, we could just provide the housing, without the maximum security. Long as we're in the country, how about a few plots of land to grow vegetables? And a daycare center for the children? Or, we could just treat people better in the first place, so they don't turn to drugs for escape.

I think Markus explained very well why the proposal just would not solve the issue and others have chimed in on the legal ramifications. Now if we want to move into the realm of realistic solutions, there are studies on it that we can turn to, rather than trying tried and failed brute force methods. One of the key elements that Markus described is instilling motivation for change. We do know that force does not work. In fact, it may be very well what created a situation that benefits addiction in the first place. In Europe and Canada, there have been "housing first" initiatives, which aims to provide housing, not shelters and use that as a leverage to address e.g. substance abuse or mental illness. It is likely not a perfect solution, but it was found to be at least competitive in cost compared to other initiatives (especially when medical costs are considered) and compared to other measures shows at least trends in the right direction in terms of most indices (i.e. homelessness, health outcomes etc.). It does not work equally well for everyone, but it does move the needle in the right direction. On the other hand, even using historic knowledge using force on people for their own good on that scale and without individual consultations and deliberations has mostly resulted in trauma and even atrocities. I also note that OP has not shown any evidence how that has helped in the past, while others have mentioned negative outcomes. And this is fundamentally an issue if we deal with vulnerable or powerless populations using very simplified reasoning. This line of thought does not really take their perspective and trajectory into account, but it is strictly top-down level of thinking. If we remove them and do something magically it will all better, though what really changes is that one does not need to deal with them anymore. This magical thinking is of course only harmful to the people affected which unfortunately makes it very popular. We see similar reasoning for dealing with asylum seekers, folks tried to "help" folks by kidnapping kids into residential schools and/or forced adoptions, folks still try to coerce folks into unneeded medical procedures. The issue is that even if intentions were good (which at times is clearly disputable), it uses a very limited perspective of us vs them, assuming that our perspective and experience is the norm and if we forced everyone into that line, they would improve. Clearly this is not the case and betrays as rather limited perspective on the complexity of the matter.

Speaking of the devil... Here is a fresh photograph of our own walking fish, frogfish. Not very rare but often gets unnoticed because of the wonderful camouflage. Taken by a friend of mine, much better uw photographer than me.

How many are in jail as a result of this tolerance and non-intervention? The big problem is not drugs, nor addiction. The big problem is that drug use is illegal. Where? If there's somewhere you reside, it's your home. Homeless people do not have a residence. Did you think this topic through before you posted?

Sometimes being a public servant is not all fun and games. It's not your decision to make! Not eating McDonald's would also be better for people but do you really want the State to round up everyone at McDonald's and put them in a nice camp with beds and running water and give them access to healthier foods until they are off fast foods? Okay. Let's hear your legal argument for imprisoning someone for being homeless, being an addict, and having a record. Ah, so it is compassion that is driving your proposal. Originally it sounded like you were trying to protect the general population. Either provide a citation or quit making the claim. You're beginning to sound like a bigot. I can't believe you are calling MigL a Nazi. No one else here has done that. Thanks mom.

These letters and numbers that you refer to, are meaningless on their own. But when you consider what they mean when they are executed by a computer, you shall see that each elementary step of execution of a program has 4 independent variables: 1) a current state of computer registers, 2) a current state of computer memory, 3) a state of the registers that replaces the current state, and 4) a state of the memory that replaces the current state. These four variables make the computer program at least 4 dimensional. DNA molecule has 3-dimensional structure, but it is not enough for DNA to function. To do anything, it has to dynamically change. This adds a new dimension making it 4-dimensional. Congratulations about it. But if you research Google or Youtube and alike, then large part of these hours is wasted and even is counterproductive. If you want to study for real, you need to study from textbooks.

Well, we do have centuries of practice. We rounded up black people from Africa for not meeting our personal biased standards. Nice cheap labor. Good for cotton profits. We rounded up Jews in Germany and surrounding countries for not meeting our personal biased standards. Nice easy scapegoats. Great way to bring people together… and gas them. We in the US seem to be similarly treating LGBTQ as somehow sub-human for not meeting our personal biased standards. The more we hate, the less we need to invest and grow. Yep, people struggling with addiction and unable to navigate the system for finding housing are the obvious next step, but really we should just save time and money and shoot them where they sleep. No need pussyfooting around it with complex filters like “rounding up” and forcing into “camps” involuntarily. That’s just for the weak willed who lack the courage of their convictions. These people are garbage. Time to throw them out. They’re stinking up the place like vermin, bringing disease and dragging us down, no better than parasites. … Do none of these points or obvious comparisons cause our OP pause? Did not this thread Godwin itself the moment it was submitted? Could’ve saved some bandwidth and time by just typing Sieg Heil instead.

My brother is an alcoholic. He is also a health physicist and we often trade tips on gardening.

I feel like I'm scraping the barrel just by getting into this conversation.

The OP question sounds to me akin asking, Can you be a football player and still like ballet? Regarding the OP question as it is, the answer depends on what kind of scientist and what kind of belief. For example, I don't see a problem with a Jewish crystallographer observing Sabbath. OTOH, I see a problem with a geologist believing that Earth is 5 thousand years old.

I myself am an ordained monastic in a Buddhist tradition of contemplative forest monks and nuns. The impulse to follow a contemplative and spiritual life - irrespective of what specific form this may take - need not at all run counter to science, as many who were simultaneously scientists and spiritual seekers have shown throughout history.

The obvious implication is intelligent intervention / control. That wasn't an isolated incident either.

You spend much time in any big North American cities lately? I worked in Washington DC. Never encountered anyone I could identify as a homeless drug addict You need to show the statistics showing escalating crime, and if you can do that, show that this is due to policies. California’s violent crime rate in the past decade, for example, is about half of what it was around 1990. (edit: xpost with TheVat)

Do you have evidence that rising crime rates are due to specific law enforcement practices? There are other factors driving crime, which makes analysis complex and challenging. There are Constitutional protections that mean citizens cannot be "removed" as you describe. You cannot detain and incarcerate people without due process of law, i.e. arrest them without a warrant and without their consent. Merely being homeless is not a crime. Nor is mental illness and addiction, unless it leads to specific chargeable offenses. And "rural, government supervised camp" sounds disturbingly like a concentration camp. Welcome, backward Uighurs! It's not ethical that a wealthy society cannot provide public toilets, housing for the poor, and sufficient mental health services and social workers and medical care, with this neglect leading to the result that people in dire circumstances have no choice but to "take over" public parks, grassy verges, sidewalks, riversides, etc. It's not ethical that fat comfortable people in 2000+ sq ft houses with five tv screens and climate control and home security systems, sit around whining about the horrifying prospect of paying an extra percent in taxes to help people huddled out in the cold and shitting in some bushes and wondering when someone might sneak up and clonk them on the head and steal what little they have.

I firmly debunked your claim about me personally and in reply you have done the equivalent of patting me on the head and told me “bless your heart.” If you enjoy our repartee so much, then show some respect. Hopefully by now I’ve earned it. I didn’t completely forget a damned thing. You misspelled “when someone completely misrepresents you.” And I gave him credit and positive rep for even acknowledging he has these thoughts. Wish more people would question their own feelings on these topics But I am feeling kinda salty. I’ll stipulate that.

k = 2 (or -1) are the only solutions that have closed orbits (Bertrand’s theorem) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand's_theorem

Well, who would dispute that the present is far from complete acceptance and complete equality before the law? Really, this present line of discussion seems to be turning on the degree to which personal reactions of distaste affect social progress for groups who are discriminated against. Like @zapatos I can agree that it would be better for all to jetisson such distastes while also questioning if that should be the primary focus in a world where people try to take positive action. Pulling on the levers of law and politics and grassroots solidarity would seem more fruitful (absolutely NPI) than rooting out all the bad turnips in our heads. That direction, in my reading of history, seems to run the risk of thought policing. (which seems to drive the real bigots even further into entrenchment and extremity)

And then here again last week: And then here yet again more explicitly just yesterday: And: You don't seem to realize that a lot of people have an aversion to anal sex. First off, it can lead to scatological incidents, and requires some sort of covering on your bed. Second, it can be extremely painful for the receiver, especially if you're as well endowed as I am 😁 . And third, some people consider it an exit, not an entry. None of this has anything to do with whether the butt is hairy or not, so it makes no difference whether homosexual or heterosexual anal sex. Capish ? There ... There ... ( pat, - pat )

That was not, however, the claim you made. The one I challenged. And which you refuse to support. Doing things to pump our own dopamine is not equivalent to: "and not just for themselves, but for everyone." Do you agree that claim is specious nonsense pulled out of your ass?

Citation needed. Also needed: Clarity on how you’re measuring pleasure and pain and how you define “try.”

I assume you are taking umbrage with the "everyone" part. You can see it everywhere: charities, socialism, "media police", cancel culture, etc.

Appreciate you so quickly confirming you're not worth my time. Cheers.

I thought I did... What about the idea of karma, do you disagree with?

Truly laughable ! Wikpedia says of csis : "Since its founding, CSIS "has been dedicated to finding ways to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world", according to its website" . Got any Fox New quotes? Might be a bit lighter in propaganda.

If you live in a big city in North America these days, you probably encounter homeless drug addicts on a regular basis. Cities like Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Vancouver are dealing with escalating crimes waves due to policies that are soft on crime and drug addiction. Addicts shoot up in broad daylight, leave their needles on the sidewalk in public areas, treat public spaces as their own personal toilet, and assault citizens in brutal stranger attacks. Stranger attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent, jumping 39% in Vancouver, with a probability that 1 in 4 Vancouverites will be victimized by such attacks. So far the corrective approach has been sorely lacking - one of tolerance and non-intervention, to allow the homeless addiction issue to propagate and expand across the urban areas that it afflicts. I believe that some cities are fast reaching a breaking point, and will need to take more meaningful action with respect to this problem. The most effective solution I can see for this crisis, since it has gotten so out of hand, is to remove homeless drug addicts from cities and place them in rural, government supervised camps. These camps would be in rural areas where proper supervision and medical treatment could be administered to those with addiction issues. The camps would be made up of large portable dwellings with bunk beds, AC/heating units, with fully working toilets and sanitation facilities. On site medical and security personnel would supervise the day to day operations of the camps, with detox and recovery programs offered to help the addicts get clean. An addict would not be able to leave the camp until they get clean. My view is that drug addiction is a disease, and consequently widespread drug addiction is a public health emergency. Those with a contagious disease that threatens the health and wellbeing of society should be quarantined. There is already legal precedent for placing citizens in camps if there is a declared public health emergency. Covid quarantine camps are one example. I think there is a strong argument that the homeless addiction problem in major cities presents a public health emergency, regarding both the addicts and members of the public themselves. Is it really responsible and humane to let addicts kill themselves via drugs with no intervention or treatment? It is responsible or humane to the general public to let addicts leave diseased needles and human waste on public streets, or attack strangers in broad daylight? From a logistical and operational standpoint, government camps would be much cheaper than building bricks and mortar homeless shelters in downtown areas, which could be reserved for those who do not have addiction issues. The housing facilities in the camps would be cost effective to establish, and since they are on rural government land, the costs could be kept low. They would be scalable and portable; easy to establish, move, or expand. Homeless addicts would be transported in buses to the camps after a clearing operation of homeless affected areas is carried out by police. Ultimately the homeless addiction problem (which I believe is a disease) needs a concerted, government mandated solution, and shouldn't be allowed to escalate further, due to the threat to the health and safety of the public.

Life experience and just common sense. I mean what typical things can you think of that is not a function or pleasure or pain? Thank you for your valuable time. I can only imagine what you had to put off to impart your wisdom onto me.