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San Francisco’s “Pro-Drug Culture”
  + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( German Lopez | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Culture can sound like an abstract concept, but it matters for drug policy. In San Francisco and other liberal cities, the opposite shift has happened with hard drug use. When I asked people living on the streets why they are in San Francisco, the most common response was that they knew they could avoid the legal and social penalties that often follow addiction. Some came from as close as Oakland, believing that San Francisco was more permissive. As Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, told me, San Francisco “is on the extreme of a pro-drug culture.”
Persons: Keith Humphreys, San Francisco “, Organizations: Stanford University Locations: Francisco, San Francisco, Oakland
America’s New Drug Policy
  + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( German Lopez | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
In fact, needle exchange programs can reduce overdoses and drug use over time, by acting as hubs that educate people on safe practices and connect them to addiction treatment. First, lawmakers grew desperate to reduce overdose deaths, which have climbed for decades and surpassed 100,000 annually for the first time in 2021. Second, the overdose crisis is now so widespread that many more people, including members of Congress, know someone hurt by it. “Every single member of the House and Senate has grieving constituents coming in, having buried kids or brothers or sisters or moms or dads,” Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University drug policy expert, said. Previous drug crises disproportionately hurt marginalized populations — such as Black people during the 1980s crack epidemic and poor white people during the 1990s-2000s meth epidemic.
There is thus a relationship between American alcohol consumption rising and the cost of alcohol falling over the past quarter century. Indeed, the biggest change to federal alcohol taxes Congress has made over the period has been to cut them for craft beer and spirit producers. Reduced alcohol consumption would thus almost certainly deliver large benefits not just to public health but also to public safety. The case for higher alcohol taxes is thus very strong and some advocacy groups are pushing vigorously for them. When the new Congress convenes Tuesday and focuses on America’s addiction crisis, raising alcohol taxes should be at the top of its agenda.
In the five years prior to the pandemic, Hispanic median household income grew more than twice as much as whites. It follows that, just as people rarely consider quitting jobs or divorcing spouses that they like, they find political change unappealing when they are satisfied with their life situation. There are certainly many Hispanic Americans who are poor and oppressed, but there’s considerable evidence that many are doing better than ever. In this year’s entering class at the University of California, the largest racial and ethnic group is Hispanics. But it’s easy for political junkies to assume that most people follow political nuances closely, when in fact they don’t.
“Friends” star Matthew Perry startled many of his fans by announcing that he had been to drug rehab 15 times and spent some $9 million on getting into recovery. And if you’ve tried to beat an addiction 14 times, does a 15th try really make sense? From left, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, and Matthew Perry in a scene from "Friends". If recovery attempts involve seeking professionally provided addiction treatment, especially those delivered in high-end residential programs, repeated attempts can be financially ruinous. Some other good news: Because of federal legal reforms enacted over the past 15 years, health insurance is much more likely today to pay for some or all of addiction treatment.
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