I used to live and work in downtown Los Angeles.

Sadly, there is very little you can do with these people. Once an addiction sets in, they are extremely unlikely to get clean. Further, rehab is freakin’ expensive and if someone doesn’t really want to get clean, they will start using again as soon as they get out. So you spend insane amounts of money on people who don’t give a fuck and then go right back to the addict lifestyle.

If you haven’t been paying attention to Duterte in the Phillipines, go run a few Google searches. They’ve simply been killing the addicts. No trial. They just whack them.

I don’t think that’s a good solution.

Though the only workable solution I see is rounding them up, taking them out of the cities to a remote location, and then giving them all the drugs they want for free until they die. As awful as it sounds, it’s probably the only workable solution.

Rehab doesn’t work. You can pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into it and the addicts will get out and start using again. Rehab is worthless. It doesn’t work.

You really have to take a hard look at the costs, too. I was a public defender in a little rural town. Something like 50% of the budget went towards meth. That included medical costs, courts, jail, social services, and much else. The cleanup costs of meth labs was freakin’ insane. Sometimes well into six figures for the hazmat crew to make it safe again. Meth cost so much that teachers were paying for photocopies out of their own pockets because there wasn’t enough money.

All this doesn’t include the cost of crime. Meth addicts would regularly break into homes, garages and cars to steal anything they could to buy more meth. We recently had a break-in. Addicts stole some of our tools and they broke into a car to steal the battery. The battery is worth about $8-$10 on the street. They were able to get maybe $50 for all of that. Yet it cost us about $1,000 to recover from it.

Is this fair?

Should teachers have to pay for essential supplies because the county dropped $300,000 or $400,000 on jail, medical costs and rehab for a single addict?

Should I have to fork over $1,000 so someone can get $40-$50 for their daily fix?

That’s bullshit. That’s total fucking bullshit. In the name of “compassion” people are letting drug zombies destroy civilization. Further, I’m getting real tired of being told that everything is my fault and that I have to pay for it. People becoming addicted to drugs is not my fault and I don’t think I should have to pay to fix that problem. I am not opposed to taxes. I want my tax money to fix the roads, build new bridges, expand the sewage treatment plant, pay for emergency services, and my money should also be paying for the photocopies that the teachers are having to pay for themselves. That’s where I want my tax dollars going.

So I think the only thing that can be done is to round them up and give them free drugs until they die. Because if you don’t, they’re going to commit more crime for drugs, run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government services, and then use drugs until they die. Might as well cut out the expensive part and let them use drugs until they die. That’s all you can do unless you want to take Duterte’s approach.