If they aren’t going to charge you for drugs surely they could arrest you for public intoxicating or disorderly conduct. Drunk people get arrested frequently. Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine. If they want to get into some kind of treatment or non-profit home waive the fine.
The goal is to provide incentives to get sober but not ruin someone’s job prospects forever for being addicted.
>> Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine.
That is Hollywood, not reality. Tossing happy drunks into cells to sober up overnight is not a thing.
(1) There are no happy drunks. The drunks cops arrest are loud and aggressive. Often the physical act of arresting them results in more violent behavior.
(2) "Drunk" is not a thing for cops. They don't know if the person has had too many beers or had just taken LSD, or both. If they assume a person is simply drunk, and that person dies in the cell of an overdose, the cops will be responsible because they isolated that person. Cops are forced to treat intoxicated persons is more like patients than a 'drunks'.
(3) Mental health problems can look like, or at least exacerbate, intoxication. Cops cannot casually lock people up under the assumption they are dunk when in all likelihood they may be a non-drunk person in the middle of an episode. So cops must test people, evaluate them to determine what is at play. That takes time/money.
(4) Police cells are not happy places. They aren't private 8x4s with a soft cot. Spend a night in an LA lockup. You will not be getting much sleep. Casually throwing hundreds of drunk people into that mix will not help.
Assuming this is just about happy drunks, businesses that get people drunk and let them loose on the streets share the responsibility. We cannot allow bars and liquor stores, and their patrons, to rely on a pleasant police force ready to keep drunk people safe after the bar closes. If a bar is going to serve someone to the point of arrest-worthy intoxication they must contribute to the cost of keeping that person safe.
I saw a BBC doc yesterday about drinking in the UK. They have stores selling 3-liter bottles of 7.5% cider for four dollars. That is ridiculous. 3-liter bottles of dirt-cheap alcohol, cheaper than coke, are not bought by happy social drinkers. Any store selling those knows what it is doing.
>I saw a BBC doc yesterday about drinking in the UK. They have stores selling 3-liter bottles of 7.5% cider for four dollars. That is ridiculous. 3-liter bottles of dirt-cheap alcohol, cheaper than coke, are not bought by happy social drinkers. Any store selling those knows what it is doing.
Speak for yourself! The Strongbow 2-litre (sadly now £3-00 but was definitely closer to £2-00 back in 2000's) was the staple of many the happy teenager.
In Canada at least, the beer you could get in 40oz bottles was generally pretty strong. For example, Colt 45 is 8%.
The hardest part of Edward Fourtyhands is that you’ve got to consume 80oz of strong malt liquor without peeing. Or... figuring out some way to unzip your pants...
Yeah lots of malts are up there, I suppose the game came about before the craft beer movement- many of these new craft beers are 9 to 13 and would never be sold in 40-form I suppose, so those are high ABV for a 32/40 I’m sure.
Happy teen yes, but we set drinking ages for a reason. Teenage alcoholism is an evil that we rightly should fight against. When a kid is trying to decide what they want to buy, Strongbow should not be the cheaper option than diet coke.
Worth noting that France has no legal alcohol consumption age, and Germany has it set to 14 if a guardian is present.
Alcohol is deeply embedded in French and German culture (and surely other nations) - I have seen a 3 year old sipping some beer in Munich in a beer house. Amusingly, neither of the countries really has binge drinking culture as the UK or US has so
People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie.
I know at least 30 friends, family, fraternity brothers, and classmates who were arrested for being drunk in college or minor possession of alcohol for doing something stupid and being too young.
I also know people who had drug habits when they were 18/19 and were arrested for drugs. Some quit college immediately because they knew their job prospects would be limited.
Last time I went to a baseball
game someone got arrested for having a thc vape. It’s a felony in my state.
> People are constantly arrested at sports events and music festivals for being too drunk. I’m not saying it’s a happy experience like an old TV show or movie.
Context and witnesses matter as well. There's a big difference between the police being called to handle drunks at a sports event and a passer by calling 911 to report someone intoxicated on the street. There's no context for the latter.
Music festivals, baseball games and college? Not everyone can afford baseball games and music festivals. That isn't the typical drunk arrest. Those are the polite cops. Back when I did this stuff I dealt with clients attested under bridges, while at work, on their porches, even in their own bedrooms. Permission to 'lock up drunks' is an open door for every police corruption and bias.
So you’re saying we shouldn’t charge people for drug possession or drug use? There’s going to be drug use in the streets and the nasty secondary stuff like needles or human waste.
Or have certain areas where police don’t arrest people like the wire? I think we will have homeless camps we can’t get rid of.
If you’re going to decriminalize something you need to provide services or incentives to get people to stop using drugs.
If you’re shooting up on your porch, outside, at work in your car, someone where in public it should be a crime. The drug shouldn’t be illegal but the act should be illegal in public.
No, I said nothing about not arresting anyone. I am saying that we cannot pretend that cops will quietly and politely lock up drunk people for the night while they sober up. Arrest and detention is not as portrayed in countless sitcoms.
But I would say that cops should not be arresting people simply for being drunk in their own homes, or in the very businesses that intoxicated them. Arrest people who are violent, not simply anyone who is drunk.
If folks are breaking the law put them in jail. If the law is unjust, fix it. If they are being mistreated there, fix that problem too. Avoiding the cause, symptoms, and solutions are not how problems are solved.
> businesses that get people drunk and let them loose on the streets share the responsibility.
I would argue that nobody is responsible for your bad decisions but you. Additionally, your logic leads to some absurd conclusions.
Should we also go after the farmers and distillers that make the alcohol because their product might be misused? Where does the chain of accountability end?
If we accept your premise that individuals are not wholly responsible for themselves, then you can arbitrarily blame anyone for anything if you try hard enough. Maybe you should get fined for shopping at the same liquor store that got that person drunk. You supported the business even though you knew what it was doing. Maybe the UPS driver that makes deliveries there should be fined. He knew what he was doing.
For another example, I think most people would agree that the author of an open source library should not be liable for damages if someone uses their code to write a virus. Why should physical goods be different?
Most cities of scale, certainly Seattle and Portland, have drunk tanks and vans that are on call to scoop up non criminal drunks to dry out. In Seattle it’s called “SUV” and in Portland it’s contracted to a group called “Chiers” (hah).
Went to Deep Ellum with some neighbors and friends in 05; not everyone made it back. We had designated drivers too, but some got snatched up at closing time as we were making our way back to the cars.
Police can shoot unarmed people in the back with impunity.
What gives you the idea they give a fuck about drunk / drugged people in their “care”.
Edit to add: I’m not being hyperbolic here, they don’t care, particularly if you’re an Aboriginal Australian:
A 2018 investigation found that over half of the Indigenous people who died in custody since 2008 had not been found guilty.[2] In Australia, all deaths in custody trigger an inquest. In general, there has been a lack of action on recommendations arising from inquests, including the recommendations made as part of the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.[3]
As if being guilty excuses a death in custody. How absurd!
I love (/s/hate/) these kinds of generalizations that are broad to the point of inaccuracy.
Let's try some more.
Cops arrest mothers.
Cops arrest loved ones.
Cops arrest wives and husbands
Cops arrest innocent people.
Cops kill all of the above.
These statements aren't false, but they paint an inaccurate portrayal of the world. I hope you know that statements like that create genuine animosity towards both sides of the coin, cop or criminal.
In the UK alcohol is cheap. But only in retail outlets and not in public houses. It needs to be the other way around. As you mention 'happy social drinkers' and that is not the same thing as sitting at home alone with a drink. There is a lot of low level alcoholism going on which is fine but I would prefer that to be 'happy social drinkers', even if alone in a pub.
Before Thatcher alcohol was widely available - in pubs. There were not corner stores and supermarkets selling the stuff everywhere. If you wanted take out beer to drink at home you bought it from the 'off license' bit of a pub. If you wanted wine you went to a specialist wine shop that would not be open all hours.
Now the thing that is going on in the USA is a lot of drug taking at quite an unusual level compared to what goes on in Europe.
Drugs in the UK exist but not in an epidemic. Teenagers and students smoke weed and then move on. In America the view of weed is that it is kids stuff, drugs start with white powders and things people stick into their veins. It is at a whole different level and quite terrifying.
It is a winner takes all capitalist society in America. That is where the drug problem comes from. Socialist republics (not that there any) don't have this problem.
> As you mention 'happy social drinkers' and that is not the same thing as sitting at home alone with a drink
Why? Most of my drinking has been done at home _in groups_ with retail bought alcohol. I don't see this is a problem. If anything, might not the opposite be true? You're encouraging people who want a drink to go out, increasing the risk of them being a nuisance to other people, and increasing the risk of them drink-driving.
> Put them in the drunk tank, sober them up, suggest or provide rehab options, and let them out with a small cash fine
Thats sounds great except
1. Accusing the police of questionable arrest tactics, mistreatment, death while in police custody (even from lack of treatment) is already a PR issue that has caused huge public outcry.
2. Overdosing and sobering up isn't strictly safe on alcohol or on opioids. Where drug overdoses are a top killer in society right now.
3. Homeless and drug addled people don't have the cash to pay a small cash fine. They just spent it on their last score, or the only cash they have is stolen or pan handled. And if they don't have the money to pay, you've just criminalized them more or put them further into a debt they will never pay.
4. Denial is the first sign of a problem. Sure, tell a stranger to go to rehab. Thanks to the undoing of forced institutionalizing, that's all you can offer.
The goal is to provide incentives to get sober but not ruin someone’s job prospects forever for being addicted.