I'm personally not into incarcerating mass amounts of people, as it only centralizes a prison industrial complex. Rather, one glaring issue is dangerous drugs showing up on our streets & the conditions that lead to this usage. In the comment you linked to, I noted Kensington Ave in Philadelphia, where there are videos of many people on hard drugs stooped over. Many people, who would otherwise have happier lives are now dealing with addiction & living on the streets. Note that the reason why drugs are showing up on the streets are not random acts of mere petty criminals but involve people in domestic government & foreign governments. Rick Ross & the crack epidemic detail the history of how intelligence agencies create the conditions of mass addiction.
While some, including me, think this drug problem is an example of the hypocrisy of NeoLiberalism...I also think it's a centuries old playbook of wreaking havoc on whole populations of people by introducing vices such as drugs. The Opium Wars & what lead to the Opium Wars is an example.
Side note, I would like there to be a graph based form of communication that can better express the context of statements. It's too easy to take a couple of sentences on a forum out of context.
> Many people, who would otherwise have happier lives are now dealing with addiction & living on the streets.
I don't know about you but I don't know anyone who fell into drug use and homelessness who had happy lives. I think people who are homeless and or addicted to drugs are addicted to drugs because there lives are not good. If you improve economic and social conditions for people, drug abuse becomes less of a problem because people do not need to cope with difficulty in their life in the same way.
I dont know of any people who are happier addicted to hard drugs than not addicted to hard drugs. If the supply of hard & tainted drugs increases, then people with addictions are more likely to increase their consumption of these drugs.
The problem & solution space involves more than just enforcement. A root cause is the ineffectiveness & corruption in social safety net programs including housing, drug treatment, & other domains. Not saying we should not have any programs but the ineffectiveness with increasing budgets speaks for itself. Effective & efficient programs should be rewarded while ineffective & inefficient programs should be discontinued.
Government agencies which engage in harmful activities such as drug trafficking should be reformed or disbanded. I don't expect the status quo to change, as we didn't get into this mess with rational institutions, but its worthwhile to have a sober view of root causes to at least put pressure on the institutions to be more rational.
I suspect a lot of our problems are caused by high-functioning addicts who are unhappy/dysfunctional and use addictions of all kinds to compensate - and who also happen to hold positions of real power and influence.
That sounds unlikely to me. Instead, I think a lot of society's problems are caused by sociopaths in positions of power. People like Putin and Trump didn't become the monsters they are because of additions or drugs, they were born that way.
What does that have to do with neoliberalism? Also, you'll have to say which presidents you see as being responsible. Wikipedia says Trump was neoliberal, I've seen it applied to other presidents. Trump was impactful on the world because he was so ineffectual in general. But I think every president in living memory wanted to reduce drug use and the supply of drugs coming into the us. In a free society it's hard to stop people from doing what they want, even if they take drugs that hurt them, kill them, or might not do anything bad (like pot), large numbers of people can supply enough demand to overcome the impact of law enforcement.
Of course fentanyl is a society destroying thing, the impact of that and things like heroin lead to me not knowing what to do personally to stop this. Media reports claim fentanyl components are coming from China. So now what?
First, I take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to politics or anything remotely related to politics.
All I'm saying is that the results speak for themselves. The drugs come from somewhere. The drugs are allowed in somehow. Repeat violent criminals are somehow let out of prison.
Also, there is a history of collusion of governments, government agencies, NGOs, & drug trafficking. This spans over hundreds of years & there are recent cases. Watch a documentary of how Compton, CA was once a working class neighborhood with industrious people, then the CIA trafficked drugs in that neighborhood (note Freeway Rick Ross), & it quickly devolved into violent gang warfare. Now the land is being bought on the cheap. Note Sofi Statium, which is built on the ground of what were once homes.
While some, including me, think this drug problem is an example of the hypocrisy of NeoLiberalism...I also think it's a centuries old playbook of wreaking havoc on whole populations of people by introducing vices such as drugs. The Opium Wars & what lead to the Opium Wars is an example.
Side note, I would like there to be a graph based form of communication that can better express the context of statements. It's too easy to take a couple of sentences on a forum out of context.