In the summer and early fall of 2020, as protests and riots swept across the United States, a new consensus began to emerge among progressive activists, writers and politicians. Given that black men, from George Floyd to Daniel Prude, were dying in drug and mental health-related altercations with law enforcement, perhaps police should not be handling these issues at all…
In many cities, “decriminalisation”, long a rallying cry for progressive critics of policing, became standard operating procedure…
Drug addiction itself is coercive. Giving an addict the “choice” to continue to use or to voluntarily get clean is as illusory as pushing someone off a roof and giving them the choice to either fall or fly. The current approach in cities such as San Francisco, Officer Lande said, “assumes people exercise full voluntary volition over their behaviour, and they don’t”. The decision to get clean has to be as non-optional as an addict’s “choice” to continue using. It has to be forced.
That doesn’t have to mean jail – in fact, it shouldn’t. Ginny was incarcerated repeatedly, but she finally got clean not through the criminal justice system but through her diversion to drug court and mandated rehabilitation. Nevertheless, coercion was an indispensable element in that successful intervention. The certainty of consequences is what finally broke through the fog of addiction. Read more…