The opioid epidemic - hoppers/thieves

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"Follow the money" Explains it all.

I pushed enough Narcan the last 5 yrs I worked to float a battleship. You couldnt have disabled this many U.S. citizens any other way.
 
Drug abuse is very sad. We were propagandized for decades that drug use was a victimless crime. The victims are the drug users which it is their fault and the real victims is society that disgustingly has to put up with it and pay for it. Alcohol is the same thing.
 
"Follow the money" Explains it all.

I pushed enough Narcan the last 5 yrs I worked to float a battleship. You couldnt have disabled this many U.S. citizens any other way.
The druggies O.D. should be called suicides.
 
Austin area has a history with Tech but more importantly Texas has no capital gains tax. That's enticing for silicon valley executives (ex, Elon Musk) who have millions in stock options which they want to exercise or have made a bundle in crypto. So basically what you have is hundreds of thousands of dollars in California equity driving up prices.

Absolutely!

I'm sure it will benefit my family when I retire and cash out of our house. But for now, my property taxes are going to be going up a lot, because what Texas has is a high property tax on non-ag property.
 
There is no easy solution to drug addiction. It impacts so many.

The goal of handing out needles is simply to reduce disease transmission which is proven effective. The obvious con is people who use and abuse and sometimes commit crime conjure in the areas.
 
Surprised that this thread is still going. Everyone has shown a lot of restraint! I thought I'd add this though:

Last night, I was watching "Cheyenne" on INSP channel. Yeah, I know, my dad used to watch it religiously maybe that's why I still catch one on occasion. Anyway, the episode centered around a plot involving a rancher moving cattle back and forth across the Rio Grande.
Turns out they were smuggling Opium in the cattle's hollow horns. So I decided to check the episode date...1958!
So the "war" on drugs has been going on for almost as many years as I've been alive! I never realized that.
 
There is no easy solution to drug addiction. It impacts so many.

The goal of handing out needles is simply to reduce disease transmission which is proven effective. The obvious con is people who use and abuse and sometimes commit crime conjure in the areas.
I don't mind the clean needle dispensary philosophy, the issue appears to be the naivety of how the return portion of it was supposed to function. 2/3 of the needles given out didn't make their way back to the return bins, that's not a very good record and it appears that most of them end up in the parks and entranceways around town. In trying to solve one problem, they've created another.
 
Here in the Saint Louis area, drug addiction is Rampant, and for somebody who never even smoked Weed, it is a sad thing to watch.
 
I don't mind the clean needle dispensary philosophy, the issue appears to be the naivety of how the return portion of it was supposed to function. 2/3 of the needles given out didn't make their way back to the return bins, that's not a very good record and it appears that most of them end up in the parks and entranceways around town. In trying to solve one problem, they've created another.
We have the same problems with the free needles here, even ending up here and there. And i think its a big issue. But i think its mostly to save money insted of sending them on Rehabilitation
 
We have the same problems with the free needles here, even ending up here and there. And i think its a big issue. But i think its mostly to save money insted of sending them on Rehabilitation
Bravo. Instead of turning a blind eye to petty crime, I wish judges would start sentencing offending users to mandatory rehab.
 
Move away to a small town with a local Gov. with different views than where you live now. I still lock vehicles and hide anything valuable. Thieves don't last long in small towns if the local cops arent too lazy.
Maybe get a few retired people to take turns patrolling the neighborhood would help if you won't move away. some signs warning of the patrolling and possible jail time may help. Sadly any violence used against criminals will most likely get you in more trouble than the criminal will get in.
 
Austin area has a history with Tech but more importantly Texas has no capital gains tax. That's enticing for silicon valley executives (ex, Elon Musk) who have millions in stock options which they want to exercise or have made a bundle in crypto. So basically what you have is hundreds of thousands of dollars in California equity driving up prices.

There are some requirement in tech boom, you cannot have just a low tax culture alone and to be honest the biggest one is actually diversity. Cities that are not welcoming foreign cultures will not do well as at least 2/3 of tech workers are foreign born non white. This is why it happens in Austin, Dallas' Plano / Allen area, but not super low cost of living area with lots of anti-foreigner culture.

Techbros care about their children's education as well, which is why Boeing's move to Kentucky is a flop. They cut taxes to a point that the public school failed and engineers don't want to move there if they have children.
 
Surprised that this thread is still going. Everyone has shown a lot of restraint! I thought I'd add this though:

Last night, I was watching "Cheyenne" on INSP channel. Yeah, I know, my dad used to watch it religiously maybe that's why I still catch one on occasion. Anyway, the episode centered around a plot involving a rancher moving cattle back and forth across the Rio Grande.
Turns out they were smuggling Opium in the cattle's hollow horns. So I decided to check the episode date...1958!
So the "war" on drugs has been going on for almost as many years as I've been alive! I never realized that.
Look into the Opium Wars in China in the 19th Century. Those are the reason China has strict laws against illicit drugs to this day.

Opium was a common part of patent medicines sold over the counter in the US and elsewhere then too. Lots of people then were addicted, including housewives. The stuff was even added to nostrums to help babies sleep, no kidding. :O During the World War I era the majority of those hard drugs were banned in the US and other countries because of the problems they caused then.
 
Move away to a small town with a local Gov. with different views than where you live now. I still lock vehicles and hide anything valuable. Thieves don't last long in small towns if the local cops arent too lazy.
Maybe get a few retired people to take turns patrolling the neighborhood would help if you won't move away. some signs warning of the patrolling and possible jail time may help. Sadly any violence used against criminals will most likely get you in more trouble than the criminal will get in.
Problem with that is small towns don't have high income jobs, and often aren't any better in school and crime (I went to a rural small town high school and I know it ain't perfect).
 
I've happened upon recent Youtube videos of Kensington Ave., Philadelphia. They are mind numbing. Zombie apocalypse .

Very serious problem with very complex solutions. Does anyone here have any real solution ideas?

Every problem has a solution, just whether you want the cost in money, in locking up a few people who might get mixed up in there, and whether you will want the explain to your children what you did decades ago.

Communist China and KMT both use opium as a cash crop to fund the civil war. When the commies won they execute all the drug dealers they used to work with, and they threaten all addicts to either kick it or get executed. A huge portion of the addicts got executed because they couldn't kick it.

The nation was clean afterward until they open up to international trade. Of course they also have alcohol problem but no narco back then after they execute all addicts and dealers.
 
We have flip-flopped over the years, and here the attitude is that users are somehow victims. To be blunt, when we had a much harder line against drug use in the past, we also had far fewer problems from it. Few people used heroin in the 1950s, and those few were considered the lowest of the low then.
Addiction of all kinds are easy money. Gambling, drugs, free to play game with paid add ons, limited edition collectibles, alcohol, etc. It is hard to control biological urges but those who take advantage of it always make big money.
 
This past week, a woman in my county kidnapped her 2 year old daughter (whom she isn't allowed to see per restraining order) and lead police on a high speed chase into the neighboring county. She crashed the car (daughter was okay) and was arrested. They found 332 grams of meth in her trunk.
 
Absolutely!

I'm sure it will benefit my family when I retire and cash out of our house. But for now, my property taxes are going to be going up a lot, because what Texas has is a high property tax on non-ag property.


Unfortunately, you cannot grow an economy without impacting the local economy. Sometimes growth related new jobs will out compete the locals and end up causing backlash, and revolting against the growth.

The alternative is jobs get automated and lost, former job hub dies, and real estate prices decline due to aging population and deteriorating neighborhood. It is hard to just "stay still" without going one way or another.

So I always ignore those "California is doing bad because housing price is through the roof" "California is doing bad because people are leaving" "California is doing bad because housing price is collapsing" "California is stagnating because it is not growing" arguments. People can always find a way to spin something as bad news regardless of which direction things are going.
 
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