[apple_cutie]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/06/01/florida.welfare.drug.testing/index.html?iref=allsearch

Florida governor signs welfare drug-screen measure
(CNN) -- Saying it is "unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction," Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday signed legislation requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screening.

"It's the right thing for taxpayers," Scott said after signing the measure. "It's the right thing for citizens of this state that need public assistance. We don't want to waste tax dollars. And also, we want to give people an incentive to not use drugs."

Under the law, which takes effect on July 1, the Florida Department of Children and Family Services will be required to conduct the drug tests on adults applying to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The aid recipients would be responsible for the cost of the screening, which they would recoup in their assistance if they qualify. Those who fail the required drug testing may designate another individual to receive the benefits on behalf of their children.

Shortly after the bill was signed, five Democrats from the state's congressional delegation issued a joint statement attacking the legislation, one calling it "downright unconstitutional."

"Governor Scott's new drug testing law is not only an affront to families in need and detrimental to our nation's ongoing economic recovery, it is downright unconstitutional," said Rep. Alcee Hastings. "If Governor Scott wants to drug test recipients of TANF benefits, where does he draw the line? Are families receiving Medicaid, state emergency relief, or educational grants and loans next?"

Rep. Corrine Brown said the tests "represent an extreme and illegal invasion of personal privacy."

"Indeed, investigating people when there is probable cause to suspect they are abusing drugs is one thing," Brown said in the joint statement. "But these tests amount to strip searching our state's most vulnerable residents merely because they rely on the government for financial support during these difficult economic times."

Joining in the statement denouncing the measure were Democratic Reps. Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch and Frederica Wilson.

Controversy over the measure was heightened by Scott's past association with a company he co-founded that operates walk-in urgent care clinics in Florida and counts drug screening among the services it provides.

In April, Scott, who had transferred his ownership interest in Solantic Corp. to a trust in his wife's name, said the company would not contract for state business, according to local media reports. He subsequently sold his majority stake in the company, local media reported.

On May 18, the Florida Ethics Commission ruled that two conflict-of-interest complaints against Scott were legally insufficient to warrant investigation, and adopted an opinion that no "prohibited conflict of interest" existed.

Also on Tuesday, Scott also signed a measure outlawing hallucinogenic designer drugs known as "bath salts."

"The chemical substances found in 'bath salts' constitute a significant threat to health and public safety," the governor's office said in a statement. "Poison control centers in Florida have reported 61 calls of 'bath salts' abuse, making Florida the state with the second-highest volume of calls."

The drugs "are readily available at convenience stores, discount tobacco outlets, gas stations, pawnshops, tattoo parlors, and truck stops, among other locations," the governor's office said.

It's about time junkies are to be held accountable for their habits.

[TheHighImperial]

Being addicted to drugs is like having a disease... these kind of people need quick admission treatment centers which is I hear are none existent.
Lets not forget Canada supports giving drugs to humans as we protect poppy fields in our current "peace mission" and if you think other wise you are a gullible robot.

[El Bastardo]

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8894/kaneklapqo6.gif

[Nightwalker]

I can't see how this will do anything but increase the amount of crime and homeless bums.

[Matlock]

Logically it makes sense. You should have to work for your moneys if you're going to do drugs.

But, then again it could turn them to a life of crime to support their habits, which would just makes things even more difficult.

The inhumane but most effective thing would be to just kill them.

[stewie]

its about time they do this.


they apply for welfare and with the money the receive they waste it on drugs and complain even more about how they have no money for food.

[Greenstoner]

Nice law
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[twitchyzero]

I can't see how this will do anything but increase the amount of crime and homeless bums.

you can never win with drug fiends
but maybe this will mean more funds will be directed to those that actually in dire need of social support

[Mr.HappySilp]

Vancouver should do the same.

[1exotic]

Vancouver should do the same.

I was just about to say the samething.

[seakrait]

Logically it makes sense. You should have to work for your moneys if you're going to do drugs.

But, then again it could turn them to a life of crime to support their habits, which would just makes things even more difficult.

The inhumane but most effective thing would be to just kill them.

the other thing they could also do would be to say: if you have a recent criminal record, you're not going to get social assistance either. ie: you have to be drug-free and be of good behaviour. ha. then no one would get any money at all.

[dangonay]

Better to kill the drug dealers/pushers. Maybe people wouldn't be so willing do become dealers if the punishment was more severe.

Cutting off welfare will do nothing. The amount of money a drug addict burns through in a month is far higher than the piddly welfare cheque they get. Plus, for a lot of people welfare sends a portion direct to the landlord for rent, so you're not going to cut down on their drug use by cutting welfare - you're just going to create homeless addicts, instead of addicts living in slum rentals.
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[stylez2k4]

Better to kill the drug dealers/pushers. Maybe people wouldn't be so willing do become dealers if the punishment was more severe.

This mentality just doesn't work in the real world.


I can't see how this will do anything but increase the amount of crime and homeless bums.

Here is a really good article about some of the new methods that are being used to deal with homelessness. It is a bit long but the cliff notes are:

- homelessness problem does not follow a normal distribution but rather a power-law distribution
- top percentile of individuals account for most of the expenses
- much cheaper to give those chronically homeless a place to stay for free with food and everything and with constant supervision than for them to waste policing, welfare, medical resources

Culhane then put together a database—the first of its kind—to track who was coming in and out of the shelter system. What he discovered profoundly changed the way homelessness is understood. Homelessness doesn't have a normal distribution, it turned out. It has a power-law distribution. "We found that eighty per cent of the homeless were in and out really quickly," he said.

It was the last ten per cent—the group at the farthest edge of the curve—that interested Culhane the most. They were the chronically homeless, who lived in the shelters, sometimes for years at a time. They were older. Many were mentally ill or physically disabled, and when we think about homelessness as a social problem—the people sleeping on the sidewalk, aggressively panhandling, lying drunk in doorways, huddled on subway grates and under bridges—it's this group that we have in mind.

The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment in Denver averages $376 a month, or just over forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she would cost on the street.

The reality, of course, is hardly that neat and tidy. The idea that the very sickest and most troubled of the homeless can be stabilized and eventually employed is only a hope. Some of them plainly won't be able to get there: these are, after all, hard cases. "We've got one man, he's in his twenties," Post said. "Already, he has cirrhosis of the liver. One time he blew a blood alcohol of .49, which is enough to kill most people. The first place we had he brought over all his friends, and they partied and trashed the place and broke a window. Then we gave him another apartment, and he did the same thing."

That is what is so perplexing about power-law homeless policy. From an economic perspective the approach makes perfect sense. But from a moral perspective it doesn't seem fair. Thousands of people in the Denver area no doubt live day to day, work two or three jobs, and are eminently deserving of a helping hand—and no one offers them the key to a new apartment.


http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

[Vansterdam]

can someone tell me why they arent doing this in canada?

[Meowjin]

what if they are skitzo and taking anti psychotics?

[jigga250]

great fucking idea, too bad we don't do this


/inb4bleedinghearts"takingawayoursocialliberties!"

[moomooCow]

what if they are skitzo and taking anti psychotics?

Fairly certain that it's a targeted drug test and they're looking for specific things instead of a pass / fail for having "drugs" in your system.

[Manic!]

Anyone caught should be forced to go into rehab if they still want to be eligible for social assistance. But I doubt Gov. Rick Scott is willing to pay for it.

[tonyzoomzoom]

They should also do a drug test and IQ test on all politicians while they are at it.

[El Bastardo]

can someone tell me why they arent doing this in canada?


Because a million idiots will suddenly develop glaucoma overnight and end up going to the only dentist in the city that uses a cocaine-based numbing agent in his work. Oh, and they'll eat two poppy seed bagels a day to explain the opium/heroin in their blood stream.


Junkies are creative. They have the will and they'll find a way

[Culverin]

My opinion is generally that people should be working for stuff they own.
I know addiction is a disease, I get that.
I know that sometimes, people have to be helped to overcome their diseases. It's like going to The Doctor, but at the same time, people have to help themselves too, especially if it's a disease of willpower.

I'm pretty certain I'm an alcohol addict. I need a drink to sleep well, emotionally it always seems to be my fallback and if it's in my house, I don't stop until I can't. But that's kind of on me isn't it? I don't expect my family, friends or government to subsidize my poison.

I'm broke now, I can't afford anymore, so I can't get it.

[static]

legalize some drugs, that would help regulate the industry and somewhat decrease drug dealing. Maybe I don't understand what legalization will do, someone who does feel free to chime in.

[Teh Doucher]

Depends on how often they do it. Hard drugs dont even stay in your system for that long.

[alwaysideways]

Too bad this will NEVER fly in Canada :(

[Graeme S]

Junkies are creative. They have the will and they'll find a way

This is the essential truth of it. People who think that denying Junkies anything will stop them is deluding themselves. The only way that you can stop a Junkie from wanting or getting drugs is by helping them into a life where they don't need or want it anymore. Rehab (voluntary or forced), not just in terms of getting drugs out of the system but in terms of training for jobs and life.
legalize some drugs, that would help regulate the industry and somewhat decrease drug dealing. Maybe I don't understand what legalization will do, someone who does feel free to chime in.
It's not about what legalization would do, it's what people THINK legalization would do. Several people who are agressive opponents of drug legalization essentially say "If you legalize crack and heroin, what's to say people won't start driving down the street while high? That your doctor won't inject before giving you surgery?" etc etc, and similar scare cases. The issue is though, that even if drugs were legalized many people would still not be interested in or want to use them.

I don't know about you, but most of my friends are quite disturbed by the idea of using Heroin or Cocaine simply for the fact that we don't want our lives to descend into a drug-requiring stupor. Most people (I would guess) probably feel the same way, but the fear-mongering of the pro-prohibition side keeps that fact in check for the most part.
Depends on how often they do it. Hard drugs dont even stay in your system for that long.
True, but it depends. Drug tests don't always test for the drug, they'll sometimes test for residual chemicals which are the broken-down components of said drugs.

If, however, you're talking about the effects, this is also true. There was a man who attended almost all the drug use symposiums in North America in which researchers and scientists discusssed methods of breaking people free of their drug habits; he attended them all because his son was a Heroin addict. IT might sound crazy, but all the researchers and scientists said "Well, at least it's just Heroin." Some drugs require several doses a day (crack, and to a lesser extent powder cocaine and Meth, among others) while Heroin is a once-a-day drug for the most part.

One of the big problems people face when thinking about "The Drug Problem" is that they think it's an issue that can be solved by a one-size-fits-all solution. Just like a lot of other situations, there is no one solution for any drug problem, or any drug user's problem. It's gonna take a lot more than just cutting off welfare to get people off drugs.

[optiblue]

Haha! Thats pretty smart!
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[tiger_handheld]

we need this in vancouver.

[TouringTeg]

Awesome. Welfare is abused like a mofo in the US.

[Death2Theft]

Does anyone really think a "junkie" goes thru less than 500$ a week in drugs? This wont do F all to limit drug users.
Hell to be a junkie i'd figure you'd be spending at least 3k+ a month on drugs if not your just a recreational user.

[Ronin]

LOL @ unconstitutional. How about some logic, hippies?

Taxpayer money goes to welfare cases who spend it on drugs = your taxpayer money is playing for some assholes heroin...not hungry children or whatever. So they're basically saying that it is a human right for poor people to spend tax money on fucking drugs.

How does this make sense? I'm not against people buying drugs. I could care less. Yes, you can buy all the goddamn drugs you want...just not with other people's money.

This is a great idea. People spending their welfare money on drugs are either forced to clean themselves up or eventually die or something.

[taylor192]

Here is a really good article about some of the new methods that are being used to deal with homelessness. It is a bit long but the cliff notes are:

- homelessness problem does not follow a normal distribution but rather a power-law distribution
- top percentile of individuals account for most of the expenses
- much cheaper to give those chronically homeless a place to stay for free with food and everything and with constant supervision than for them to waste policing, welfare, medical resources

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

I've read this before, as well as most of Gladwell's work, and this one really tested my limits.

I believe in not throwing good money after bad, so the economics of it make perfect sense. Deal with the hardest cases to get the most cost reductions... yet I have a hard time with the moral dilemma. I don't want my tax dollars paying for someone to have a drug filled free ride. Its the same issue with the safe injection site, it saves our health care system money down the road by preventing serious disease from spreading, ... yet I don't want to condone letting people do hard drugs without going to jail.

So there's no good answer, thus why the moral argument usually wins.

[Bouncing Bettys]

Yes, you can buy all the goddamn drugs you want...just not with other people's money.

It is a good idea if there is an adequate support system to get these people to end their addictions but I am not aware this is also happening.

I would not be surprised in the least if the private prison industry had a hand in this move towards drug testing. Knowing these people are likely to turn to crime in order to fuel their addictions, crime will go up and that's good for business. The taxpayer goes from supporting these addicts with monthly welfare cheques to supporting them by paying the prisons to house them - a much costlier effort.

^This is just speculation from myself of course but the US prison industry is known to lobby for laws which translate to more people being housed in the their prisons. They have no concern for reducing crime or remedying the problems of society because that works against their business model.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like funding drug habits with my taxes but I have a bigger issue with my taxes being used to fund costlier for-profit prisons.

[melloman]

Its the same issue with the safe injection site

Yet with our safe injection sites, were paying for people to bring their own drugs there, and safely inject so disease isn't passed around, and by people sharing needles, you don't contract HIV/AIDS. Were paying for people to do their own drugs, in a safe way. This relates back to the main word "DISEASE" because some people got screwed over, want to help themselves so it's a step in the right direction to some sort.

Yet when taxpayers are FEEDING addicts disease, I find that wrong. I like this new law, and agree with it. They say it's breaking privacy policy, yet you KNOW your a drug addict, you KNOW that they will KNOW your a drug addict then.. it's a choice you make. Try to cheat the system and see if they catch you, or DON'T apply for it. That simple.

:thumbsup: for this law.

[TheNewGirl]

I know this all sounds really great and all. But it's an effort to appease undereducated conservatives.

As Gladwell points out, statistically, low cost intervention strategies are the most cost effective way of dealing with the poor. Welfare and food stamps being the most cost effective.

This approach costs more in crime, crime prevention, prison care (60-200K a year per inmate) and medical costs by FAR then welfare and food stamps (all of 18K a year) ever will.

[taylor192]

I know this all sounds really great and all. But it's an effort to appease undereducated conservatives.
Lets use the term you actually mean: "rednecks", aka those uneducated conservatives with values that do not support giving drug addicts a free ride.

I'm from small town Canada with similar values, yet also a education, and I can say I don't support giving drug addicts a free ride regardless if it is cheaper and more effective. Why? Come to small town Canada and see if you can find a homeless drug addict. You won't, cause if you don't work hard for a living you don't live - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with valuing that.

Homelessness and drug addiction are byproducts of "educated" city life where people ignore each other and hope the system takes care of them. Small town life depends on everyone helping each other out, they cannot wait for the system to take care of them.

So if we're drawing parallels, maybe without a system to abuse, there wouldn't be drug addicts abusing the system. :) (yes I know that's not true, yet trying to give you perspective from some of those "uneducated conservatives" you criticize :p).

[minoru_tanaka]

I say we should just give them one years welfare in one day. That should be enough money to figure out what to do with their lives, rent a place to live, buy some new clothes to look for a job and food. Giving them just enough to scratch by obviously doens't work so this way they can hopefully get themselves out of the hole they're in. Or they will have enough money to buy enough drugs to OD and be over with it.

[taylor192]

I say we should just give them one years welfare in one day. That should be enough money to figure out what to do with their lives, rent a place to live, buy some new clothes to look for a job and food. Giving them just enough to scratch by obviously doens't work so this way they can hopefully get themselves out of the hole they're in. Or they will have enough money to buy enough drugs to OD and be over with it.
Visit the DTES on welfare weds and see what happens, giving them money is not the solution. Unfortunately the liberal hippies put laws in place that do not allow us to force those with mental issues who need help to have to stay in a hospital and get the help they need - they think it is more humane to give them cash and let them roam free as prey for drug dealers.

[minoru_tanaka]

Visit the DTES on welfare weds and see what happens, giving them money is not the solution. Unfortunately the liberal hippies put laws in place that do not allow us to force those with mental issues who need help to have to stay in a hospital and get the help they need - they think it is more humane to give them cash and let them roam free as prey for drug dealers.

Would be definitely better if we could force help upon them. Too bad here we can force help that they need but we are forced to help them continue their drug problems.

[TheNewGirl]

Lets use the term you actually mean: "rednecks", aka those uneducated conservatives with values that do not support giving drug addicts a free ride.

I'm from small town Canada with similar values, yet also a education, and I can say I don't support giving drug addicts a free ride regardless if it is cheaper and more effective. Why? Come to small town Canada and see if you can find a homeless drug addict. You won't, cause if you don't work hard for a living you don't live - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with valuing that.

Homelessness and drug addiction are byproducts of "educated" city life where people ignore each other and hope the system takes care of them. Small town life depends on everyone helping each other out, they cannot wait for the system to take care of them.

So if we're drawing parallels, maybe without a system to abuse, there wouldn't be drug addicts abusing the system. :) (yes I know that's not true, yet trying to give you perspective from some of those "uneducated conservatives" you criticize :p).

But many homeless people didn't come from the city. They migrated there. Many of them are the product of small towns with limited opportunities. This is something a lot of people like to over look.

I too grew up in small town Canada. I understand that there's a hard days work to be had. But 1. I also know that people don't choose to be drug addicts, it's not 1. get hooked on meth, 2. mad profit or anything like that. I also like economic efficiency. Harm reduction is a cost saving measure. It also leads to a greater degree of rehabilitation which leads to people contributing to rather then draining on the system.

I don't think most people understand how little we provide in welfare now, and it's also strictly limited. Most of you couldn't live off of what a person, even a family on social services makes. This is not the lap of luxury by any stretch.

[Vette Dood]

I think there are two major points to this bill.

Only one of them is being realized and discussed in this thread, that being that if you are on drugs you don't get welfare.

I think the bigger point is, that regular people who are having hard times are now having to have their personal privacy invaded in order to seek social assistance. Not everyone who needs welfare is a junkie, however everyone who wants it will require a drug test. Its not random, or based on indicators of drug use. This would be the equivalent of requiring EVERYONE here to allow the government to know their status (even recreational usage) around drug use to get something like medicare... I don't know about you but the government sure as hell has no right to what I do on the weekends. Medicare is just another form of social assistance provided by the government, just in Canada everyone has it (and most need it / couldn't afford it otherwise). "If you got money for pot, you got money to pay for healthcare" would be the same thing... who here would support that?

As much as it pains me to know a junkie is shooting up their welfare cash every Wednesday, laws like this are really hard to support for a social system available to everyone.

[taylor192]

But many homeless people didn't come from the city. They migrated there. Many of them are the product of small towns with limited opportunities. This is something a lot of people like to over look.
They are overlooking it cause it is wrong. Most of the chronic homeless and drug addicted are mentally ill, and that comes from both big cities and small towns alike.

Putting them in apartments with free rent may be the most economic efficient thing to do, yet it still doesn't get them the help they need.

I like economic efficiency combined with social programs that work. Instead of giving the chronic homeless and drug addicted places with free rent, open up the mental institutions closed by liberal hippies the 60s and 70s and force them to get the help they need. They can have free rent there, get the help they need, and remove the moral problem people like myself have with the idea... yet the liberal hippies think its bad to essentially lock up a mentally ill person incapable of making good decisions, and instead give them money hoping they'll make good decisions despite proving time and time again they do not.

[Eff-1]

This is not surprising really. When it comes to drug enforcement, Florida is pretty hard core with the mandatory minimum sentences and such.

[Phil@rise]

can someone tell me why they arent doing this in canada?

To many bleeding hearts
Its a disease wa wa wa.
Drug addicts choose to be drug addicts , its the easy choice but if nobody forces them to make the harder choice then why would they.

[TheNewGirl]

They are overlooking it cause it is wrong. Most of the chronic homeless and drug addicted are mentally ill, and that comes from both big cities and small towns alike.

Putting them in apartments with free rent may be the most economic efficient thing to do, yet it still doesn't get them the help they need.

I like economic efficiency combined with social programs that work. Instead of giving the chronic homeless and drug addicted places with free rent, open up the mental institutions closed by liberal hippies the 60s and 70s and force them to get the help they need. They can have free rent there, get the help they need, and remove the moral problem people like myself have with the idea... yet the liberal hippies think its bad to essentially lock up a mentally ill person incapable of making good decisions, and instead give them money hoping they'll make good decisions despite proving time and time again they do not.

We don't do that though.

Again I don't think you have any idea of how diffecult it is to get on welfare here in this province and in the country in general. You also seem to be confusing Welfare and disability which are two completely different things.

And it's not the liberal hippies who let the mentally ill people on the street. I worked at Riverview. We fought hard to keep people in. It's the "Liberal" (who are really conservatives) government that closed most of the hospital and turned those people out onto the street because that was a "cost saving measure" and they wanted to free up the land for condos.

There they have the facilities to keep all the mentally ill people off the streets and in a place where they can be supervised and medicated and rehabilitated but the government refuses to support it. They would rather these people were on welfare.

[Graeme S]

I think a really good number of people disagree with the closing of Riverview, but one of the things that people absolutely hate is unaccountable costs. If it costs $60,000 to house and clothe and feed someone in a mental health institution, it's hard to show or prove that we are saving x dollars in policing, or insurance or other costs. We can quote statistics until we're blue in the face, but when people see "My money is being wasted on something that there's no real proof is saving me money", people tend to get frustrated.

For the record, also, it was actually the Social Credit party that was in charge during the decline of Riverview; the NDP was the official opposition. At the time of the decline, I was in my infancy so I can't speak specifically to what happened then unfortunately.

[TheNewGirl]

Ah well I was working there in the late 90s and the Liberals were cutting their budget yearly.

But, anyone that says it was "liberal hippies" who wanted the mentally ill on the street is a friggen idiot. I'm one of those Liberal Hippies that lobbied very long and very hard for money to keep it opened because I know what happens when these sorts of people are left to their own devices.

So you have your choice. You can pay for people on welfare, or you can pay for people in mental health institutes and prison. But no matter what you're going to pay.

[taylor192]

But, anyone that says it was "liberal hippies" who wanted the mentally ill on the street is a friggen idiot. I'm one of those Liberal Hippies that lobbied very long and very hard for money to keep it opened because I know what happens when these sorts of people are left to their own devices.
You'd do well to look up some things that happened in mental health in the 60s and 70s where liberal hippies changed the laws that used to allow mentally ill people to be confined to institutions that lead to the closure of many mental health institutions.

You're an idiot if you worked in this field and didn't know this, I don't work in this field and know the history - please educate yourself before you criticize.

[TheNewGirl]

I am educated.

In the 60s and 70s we had lithium and anti depressents suddenly available on the market, with these developments populations in the metal hospitals (Riverview at it's height had a population of over 20K) reduced dramatically. Not because liberal hippies wanted them to be free, but because with self medication they were able to be functional members of society.

Up until this point we also imprisoned people in mental hospitals for being rebellious, promiscous or even gay (homosexuality was classified as a mental illness in the DSM III). In the 70s these practices petered off. Which also contributed to a reduction in populations.

In this period there was also a movement towards home care for children born with pervasive disabilities such as Down's Syndrome and Autism, both because parents moved to more holistic and less medicalized care and because horrible abuses ran rampent in a lot of these "schools" and those cases were uncovered.

None of these had anything to do with liberal hippies nor did they remove people from care that SHOULD be in care.

At the same time the government decided to move to smaller, regional programs. Unfortunately THIS is not cost effective as it contributes to duplication of cost all over the place. But this is what they decided to do. At the same time they broke off colony farms from Riverview, separating the criminally ill from the general population.

The reason right now, today that the people who should be in care are not is because the government won't pay for it. That is it. Period. End of story. There are thousands of families struggling to provide care far beyond their means for elders with dementia, for children with mental illness, for spouses with mental illness and they can't get support. And the people who don't have families to support them and fight for them. They end up on the street.

We still have laws on the books that allow us to confine people who are critical and processes that allow us to keep them there. But they're rarely used now with the exception of suicidal patients because there's no where to put them.

I worked in two different locked wards. They still existed as late as 2003 (both of the ones I worked on are now closed). The problem is we need more of them. But instead of building more, they're closing them. THAT is the reality of the situation today.

[darkfroggy]

I don't think it's so much as a matter of cost-saving, than a matter of principle.

I would gladly pay more in taxes if it meant more mental institutions and support programs. Mental instability can also stem from drug use -- there is no "sane" daily user of meth. The problem with InSite is that it passively encourages drug users to seek help and doesn't force it upon them... it's extremely hard to persuade a smoker to quit, much less a drug user. I'm talking about the hopelessly addicted, not those that are already seeking help and looking for a safe place to inject for the time being.

Right now, it is very hard to support a mentally impaired person in Vancouver. It's ridiculously expensive to live here, rent+food alone already runs to $1200+ for a SINGLE person. My parents worked insanely hard to keep food on the table for two perfectly healthy kids. Families who have children with mental disabilities NEED help, otherwise many end up giving up because of the near impossiblity of supporting themselves and a dependent in the household.

The problem in our society is that everyone bitches about having higher taxes. And after that, they bitch about not having enough services. "You can't explain that."