What do you all think about the atmosphere right now?

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it was the whole of the south end of Tacoma, in one case.

I dunno why people cannot do the obvious. It is so obvious something like a giant high rise would not make a good housing project and would take a lot of money while failing to provide a good environment. They are just too massive and like a fortress in a lot of ways that insulates the residents.

People would be better off in other living situations.

It would be nice if they did that everywhere?

I suspect that if they did, we'd see really massive protests about civil rights being violated.

if the city powers-that-be [such as members of the city council including the mayor] in addition to the police force, lived in the communities of which they have purview, that would go a ways.

it was the whole community joining hands with the police force back in the days when there was something called "community policing."

In most cities, doesn't members of the city council live in the areas from which they are elected except for at-large members, if any? As for mayors, I remember reading about mayors who got into trouble for not actually residing in the cities in which they were elected.

In a city of a million people, how many city council members are there? Ten? Twenty? With twenty members plus a mayor, they aren't going to be able to reside in very many neighborhoods.

cities "with a million people" are not the only cities worth thinking about. and the poor parts of town are just as deserving of city council representation as the richer parts.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/02/us/ch ... oject.html
if jane byrne could do it, other mayors SHOULD do it.

That's why they elect their own council members from their own district.

Just cut off the demand for drugs by legalising them.

That wouldn't cut off the demand, but it would remove the necessary involvement of criminal elements in the supplying of the drugs.

Well, it *would* reduce the demand - at least, I think that's what the countries that have tried decriminalisation have found?

It would also, perhaps, make people more likely to seek help in overcoming addiction, knowing that they don't have to fear the government getting involved and labelling them as criminals. Maybe we'll see Meth Anonymous?

One thing it definitely would do is free up resources.

I think that it reduces crime which might give the appearnce of reducing demand.

Among politicians there are usually very few economists or people with another kind of financial education. Many of them are lawyers or medical people, so they are often not financial experts at all.

The vast majority of drug beefs in the US are related to pot. You don't need to legalize really harmful stuff like meth and coke, just treat cannabis the way Colorado, Washington (state and D.C.) have and you'd fix a lot of the problem.

A single felony arrest for pot can cut a kid off from school aid and many other benefits for life.

If we want people to better themselves, we need to make it easier for them to do so.

The logic behind prohibition doesn't work, it doesn't eliminate demand and it criminalizes what is really a serious health problem. It has been the biggest driver in the creation of the modern American police state, it has destroyed more families and communities in the last 40+ year than drug use has in the history of the world, it's created a prison-industrial complex. It's created a criminal culture, it has created violent gangs in this country and neighbors to the south. There is literally nothing good that it has ever done, anybody that has ever wanted to do drugs still can but now they run the risk of their lives being destroyed by the state. It's just straight up evil and is the modern-day moral equivalent for this country that slavery was in the 19th century, it's disgusting.

It should be all be legal, most the worst drugs are so bad because of the environment that the Drug War has created. If it were regulated, you wouldn't have people dying from messing up their doses or has these harmful chemical cut into them or share needles. The reality is that a lot of these harmful drugs probably wouldn't be much more harmful than heavy drinking if given they were regulated the same way, some prob significantly less to almost harmless.

Treat the addiction, it will save money and preserve freedom.

I don't know drug dealers usually tend to sort of conceal that...so how would they determine if someone is one or not to not allow them in?