Crouse for President
Drug Treatment, Incarceration and Immigration
It is important to spotlight and support programs emphasizing abstinence from drug use as well as focusing on recovery options that do not merely substitute one addiction or dependency for another. As someone who formerly worked in harm reduction agencies, including those serving people the most at risk, I am specifically opposed to much of the harm reduction-oriented policy attempting to define the discourse on drug use and drug addiction. As someone who has also been homeless and on the streets in numerous different cities, I also understand that operationally speaking the idealism behind harm reduction regarding its benefits for those who are most at risk or vulnerable does not correlate with the actual realities of those who are most at risk or vulnerable. In fact, it does the opposite. Instead, programs that reward or offer tangible incentives to people who adjust to changes in their environment and access to other options besides the culture and economic prioritization of drug use or drug use substitutes should be prioritized.
It can be a fine line in confronting someone with a substance abuse issue when it comes to their rights versus the role of their addiction to be sure. But more often than not the harm reduction praxis penalizes people who do NOT have a drug dependency issue in preference to a hierarchy of people with “obstacles” to overcome. I call it "competitive deprivation" or "competitive depravity." The combining of other support services with drug addiction issues not only incentivizes drug use when it comes to accessing support or public resources, but exposes those who did not previously have a drug problem to the culture of tolerance for and normalization to the “street capital” associated with drug abuse and drug addiction. This in turn translates into access to real capital being diverted into more spending on drug abuse and drug addiction. Inevitably, it leads to political opportunism around decriminalizing drugs and normalizing consumption patterns connected to drug use and drug acquisition. The long-term costs are not worth it.
If you have not been on the streets then it is difficult to communicate this point. Altruism, charity and compassion can actually be a good person on the street’s worst enemy when it is manipulated through disinformation about the role of drugs in the street economy. Programs and political paradigms that allow competition for programming serving those with drug problems actually CAUSES more drug problems than were there to be a greater emphasis on expediting the transition for people who have been put into a situation of material disadvantage due to economic, employment or other medical problems. When you DO NOT do drugs and you are penalized for not competing “at that level” with people who do it is not only disparaging, but it is the greatest incentive to actually engage in drug use. Any program administrator or policymaker that does not address this directly is being disingenuous.
As such, I further support an immediate repeal of the legal hemp components of the 2019 Farm Act and a more concerted movement to block any legislation aimed at legalizing hemp or normalizing medicinal marijuana. In terms of addressing street crime, it does not actually address the realities on how people acquire drugs on the streets. When it comes to medicinal value, it MUST be viewed through the lens of understanding it as part of a long-term project to legitimize and normalize people to the recreational consumption of marijuana. This is wasteful and misrepresentative of the actual needs of people on the streets, or people forcibly relocated due to crime in their communities.
Criminal justice considerations in this regard also need to be addressed. While greater rates of incarceration is no one’s aim, neither is the increasing difficulty of a person who has not been incarcerated to compete with someone afforded another sort of economic advantage who HAS been incarcerated. There are many parallels between this and the role of the street economy in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The increase in workforce training programs offered to offenders while they are incarcerated and the subsequent incentives offered to employers to hire people following the former offender's release from incarceration is also a major enemy for people on the streets. The depression of wages, the normalization to high turnover, the lack of specific expertise that also contributes to a lack of legacy experience for the employee and the employer, is negatively impacted with these sort of priorities. This is not to permanently taint someone who was convicted of a crime and served time to ostracization or revisitation of their penalty for committing that crime in perpetuity, but the practical effect for people experiencing homeless is that you are at a disadvantage if you DO NOT have a drug abuse problem or a drug addiction or you do not have a criminal record, attendant with the experiences and resources offered to people as part of prison transition programs. This is unacceptable and represents a serious misprioritization of the U.S.’s priorities.
It also poses a national security problem as I contend it was actually the preferencing of policies with these sorts of focuses that contributed to misrepresentation of many seeking to immigrate to the U.S. and the resources and responses available to those who HAVE been subjected to violence or economic motivations to immigrate. The mischaracterizations of concerns associated with addressing the influxes of immigrants to the U.S., especially from South of the U.S.-Mexico border, cannot be evaluated outside of the priority and impact of the street economy in the U.S. In one way or another, how the U.S. responds internally to the vice and crime on the street is directly connected to how the U.S. responds to movements of immigrants from other countries. Categorizing someone who was beaten by someone threatening her children in the same category as someone who lost his job because he got caught hustling on the side or was dealing drugs in the workplace is pretty much what one goes through when standing in the line at the benefits office for food stamps. Ultimately, the same issues in addressing immigration honestly and effectively are present in providing for the domestic homeless, including what the habits, consumption patterns and political utility of the issues of the homeless and immigrants do for those who “serve” them.
This is not easy, but to the point no one has any credibility talking about the causes of migration while also stumping for “legal hemp.”