Well, they are victims of an oppressive superstructure, after all. Who are we to judge?

One way to help get folks to stop using them is stop hospitals providing anything but palliative (or whatever the word is for food/water sustanence)to overdosed drug users.

This scheme is just like a lifelong welfare entitlement.

Most people who get caught up on the
"Canadien cities are cleaner, nicer, more
modern" thing conveniently leave out the
fact that their addicts and street vagrants move
about unfettered to bother respectable people
in all parts of the city.

In general Canadian cities are smaller and
possible have fewer disparities between
"nice" and "bad" sections of town, but clearly
there are fundamental problems in many of
these places.

I'd rather see a little graffitti and here a few
sirens in the distance than have to walk over
these lowlifes on the street.

I have a certain sympathy for the theory that delivery of addictive drugs will be reduced by socalizing it.

The last time I was in beautiful Vancouver I walked a little too far, into a jungle of men lying on the sidewalks soaked in their own urine and out of their mind. Not just a few, but many.

That was about four years ago and perhaps this is now the residents way of cleaning the streets. Wait till the word gets out. Euthenasia may be the next step.

Shooting gallery? Did someone say shooting gallery? I think I see the seeds of a solution. First we get all the junkies in one place.....

So, as I understand it, they don't hand out the drugs. The addicts have to buy it illegally like they always have. So the various crimes and hazards associated with that won't diminish at all -- they'll just have a nice clean place to shoot up & get a snack.

I wonder what the chances are that the local police will crack down so effectively on drug dealers that the city's high-tone shooting gallery will go mostly unused?

Sheesh. The city might as well underwrite the dealing part of the problem as well, if they're going to collude with the activity -- why go half way?

TN

The worst vacationing experience of my life--worse than missing two different planes within 24 hours in Europe--was in Vancouver, and for exactly the reason mentioned here. Instead of putting all their slums in one convenient area, they scatter them throughout the city, leading an unsuspecting family to rent a hostel room in the middle of druggie-car theif central. I've never seen that many street people, even in Santo Domingo. And they were far better behaved there.

TN;

That might actually work, because recent effort by the Candadian government to grow marijuana for medical purposes ended in abject failure, among other reasons because they couldn't grow potent stuff.

Mr. Judd;

A real libertarian would never support this kind of government subsidy for a private activity.

oj,

The Annoying Old Guy nailed it, "a real libertarian would never support this kind of government subsidy".

Libertarianism is very principled.

Your attacks are based on a mis-representation.

I always wondered how people like the Clintons could ever get elected, much less re-elected.

If natural allies like real conservatives and libertarians have enough disagreements, maybe we'll have more Clintons.

Why slam libertarians? I really don't get it.

Richard:

Libertarians are de facto statists.

oj,

Actually, that's not true at all. Why would you say something like that?

By definition, they are not statists at all. One prototype being your buddy Albert Jay Nock.

oj,

Maybe a better way of saying it is that statists are de-facto not libertarians.

What are you seeing that makes you say this?

Richard:

Because OJ is convinced that the alternative to being a religious conservative is believing in human perfectability, given the right social conditions.

Which only a state can proved. Hence secularist libertarians are statists.

That position isn't at all unlike saying that unless your car is white, it is going to be dirty.

Richard:

Jeff has that right:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/005097.html

OJ:

I guess that means the non-sequitor tag line is a correct representation, too, huh?

Jeff:

Yes, libertarians assume that because they start with a white car (absolute liberty) they end with it clean (a state of freedom).

OJ:

I was talking about your assumption, not libertarians'.

One doesn't have to be a religious conservative to conclude human nature is essentially immutable.

In fact, virtually any Evolutionist would take that as a given. Which makes that point of view far better grounded in terms of time than any extant religious viewpoint on the matter.

Jeff:

I'm continually amazed by the elasticity of Darwinism in your imagination. If evolution stands for any proposition it is that nothing is immutable, that the bundle of behaviors we call "human nature" will inevitablty respond to environmental selection pressures. I agree with you that such a notion is intolerable, but I'm not contsrained by a religious fath (in Darwin) from saying so.

Orrin & Jeff,

I see where you have taken a wrong turn:

"Libertarianism in its most extreme, or most immature, form rebels
against the notion that even God can limit liberty."

What you are describing here is not libertarianism.

Libertarians believe that "men are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness".

If you want to call that religious conservatism, so be it. But it comes from the libertarian, Thomas Jefferson.

OJ:

Sorry, I sacrificed clarity on the alter of brevity.

By "essentially immutable" I meant over time spans even remotely comparable to human lifetimes.

Human nature as it exists today is far older than any extant religion.