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Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
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Feb 15 • 22 tweets • 7 min read
“Prosecutors in Sacramento, California filed charges in the killing of a woman whose partly nude body was found hanging from a tree in a homeless encampment after she was kidnapped & raped”

Stop calling them “encampments”

They’re deadly open drug scenes nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s…
European researchers are more honest

Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Vienna, Zürich had open drug scenes

Cops & social workers, working together, using carrots & sticks, shut them down

California must do the same. NOW. Before more innocents are killed

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
Open drug scenes are sites of rape, overdose deaths, & murder. They are anathema to a safe and free society

“Police responded to an early morning shooting… During the cleanup, a dispute broke out in which a person was hitting another with a broomstick”

westsidecurrent.com/venice/work-be…
The Venice Beach Library scene is typical of open drug scenes around the state

Everyone there suffers from addiction and/or mental illness including serious mental illness (eg schizophrenia)

There are also nihilistic criminals who prey on the weak

The reason California's leaders have allowed open drug scenes to spread everywhere is because they are in the grip of a reality-denying victim ideology which holds that the people living in open drug scenes are there because they can't afford the rent. They ignore root causes.
"On Friday, the Current spoke with a mother and daughter who moved to the area because they heard 'about the handouts.' The daughter explained that she had just learned about Tuesday's cleanup and wanted to plan a protest to stop it."

westsidecurrent.com/venice/work-be…
From Seattle to Portland to L.A., radical Left activists posing as caring liberals & progressives defend and politicize open drug scenes as "autonomous zones" that should be "self-governed."

In the name of "the people" they thus privatize public spaces

Around the country, the few brave people who dare stand up to the anarchist & @DemSocialists thugs who try to privatize public spaces find themselves doxxed, protested at home, and even driven out of town.

It's gross, fascistic, & needs to stop. Now.

What California Has vs. What California needs
Is the problem lack of money?

No.

The problem is that our thinking remains stuck in the 1960s

We need Shelter First, Housing Earned

Housing First failed because it doesn't address root causes of mental illness and addiction

Housing First doesn't even keep people housed

What works: What Netherlands did

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-progress…
Longer and more detailed

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-reason-t…
Why we were wrong about drugs

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-everythi…
Get into the nitty gritty

amazon.com/gp/product/006…
No whining. You have products of any length from which to choose to get educated:

The Three Key Ps — Policing, Psychiatry, Probation — are the alternative to mass homelessness/crime and mass incarceration.

They are described here:

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-black-mo…
Why good policing depends on positive morale

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-crime-de…
Overview of why everything San Francisco does makes the situation worse

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/san-francisc…

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More from @ShellenbergerMD

Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 17
People last week accused me of violating the privacy of a homeless addict named Korey, who I interviewed as he smoked fentanyl & meth

But thanks to that video, an outreach worker tracked down his sister, Keneda. She hadn't seen him for two years

I brought her to him yesterday
People rightly worry about the privacy and dignity of homeless drug addicts, but many tell me they feel invisible and *want* to share their stories. They often express gratitude afterwards.

Here's the first video with Korey that upset so many people

My critics are struggling with how to attack me. At first they said I never actually interview any homeless people, and just don't want to look at them. Then, after I shared video interviews, my critics said I was exploiting the homeless, and violating their privacy. Which is it?
Read 7 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 12
No sane psychiatrist believes that enabling & subsidizing people with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders to use fentanyl & meth is good medicine. Yet that is what San Francisco & other liberal cities are doing.

It’s sick & it must stop spectatorworld.com/topic/san-fran…
What California does with its 100,000 unsheltered residents, most suffering mental illness or drug addiction while living in violent, dangerous and degrading encampments, is mistreatment of the foulest sort.
The question used to be: do you reward people for not committing crimes, or do you punish them when they do? But that’s been superseded by a question from progressives: what if it’s a form of victimization to try to influence people’s behavior at all?
Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 10
People say we just need to offer homeless addicts more services, including special places where they can use drugs. But yesterday, one block from San Francisco's new drug use site, I discovered mass, open drug use, drug dealing, & psychotic, skeletal addicts on the brink of death
People say we need to follow the lead of Portugal which, they say, legalized, de-stigmatized, and normalized drug use. But the head of its drug program told me they arrest people who use drugs publicly, coerce treatment, and do not normalize drug use.

The most influential drug policy organization in the U.S., including with the Biden Admin., has, for decades, lied about what Portugal does

Here, the Director of Research for @DrugPolicyOrg told me "a police officer will not arrest" someone using drugs in public, which is false
Read 8 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 9
People say lack of housing forces local residents into the streets, but James says he came from Texas to San Francisco for the drugs, the non-enforcement of anti-camping laws, and the $820/month in welfare & food stamps. James says he sold fentanyl, 2 weeks ago, to a 15-year-old.
It's reasonable to ask whether I'm seeking out outliers, but I met James 5 minutes after parking my car and he was the first person I interviewed, and Ben, below, was the 4th person we interviewed after ~20 minutes on the street doing interviews

People are surprised by these interviews because much of what we've read is propaganda put forward by activists with an agenda & reporters who are also ideological but also lazy & too scared to ask direct questions of street people.

Read 8 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 8
I agree addicts have to decide to quit, but they are more likely to quit when when loved ones intervene and when they have to obey the law. When we don't enforce the laws against public drug use, defecation, and camping, we enable, normalize, & increase addiction.
Yes, addicts have to hit bottom before they'll quit, but San Francisco and other progressive cities keep lowering the bottom. They don't enforce laws against addicts. They give them cash and housing. And now they are giving addicts their own drug use areas downtown.
This isn't complicated. In Europe, addicts and the mentally ill are expected to take responsibility for their health and their cities. They are not excused of those duties. To boil it down:

1. Enforce laws
2. Shelter First, Treatment First
3. Housing Earned
Read 9 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 8
The people operating San Francisco's supervised drug addiction site say they're trying to save lives, but a government insider tells me, "People die in supervised drug sites all the time. They just register place of death as the hospital or ambulance."

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/insider-warn…
San Francisco Mayor @LondonBreed , Sen. @Scott_Wiener & SF Sup. @MattHaneySF claim supervised addiction sites prevent overdose deaths but there is ZERO evidence from anywhere that they do that.

Moreover, the sites may in fact INCREASE overdoes & poisoning deaths.
Far more people who overdose are revived and survive than die.

That's the situation right NOW *outside* the supervised drug addiction site.

During the last decade, as Canada created supervised addiction sites, its OD and poisoning deaths from illicit drugs *increased.*
Read 11 tweets

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