There are countries like Portugal with systems for legalizing and reducing drug use, which have been working for years
It’s important to note that Portugal’s drug law doesn’t allow public use. And when using instead of being charged via the justice system they are sent to a dissuasion commission (A social worker, a psychiatrist, and an attorney) and furthermore drug addicts have the option of rehabilitation centers as well as being provided social rehabilitation. We in the states provide none of this.
So our ultimate goal here should be moving towards treating drug addiction as a Health problem and keeping it outside the Criminal Justice system. But we have no rehabilitation systems at the government level that can rehabilitate someone back into society at the level Portugal can. Upon “rehabilitation” we do not “rehab” the social aspect. We don’t have any level of government infrastructure setup here on par with Portugal.
The problem is only exacerbated by a rising homeless crisis perpetuated by a massive American wealth disparity. There are very systemic issues in America that will take a lot of movement to change. This is not a simple “let’s just decriminalize everything and call it good”. We are slowly making progress, but in the interim, we shouldn’t expect the residents of anywhere to sacrifice their own public spaces and safety, to perpetuate a neverending drug addiction/homelessness problem. We instead need to support building out this infrastructure and treating this as a mental health problem, but until the infrastructure is built we will always be sacrificing our public spaces and environments if it is allowed in public environments.
Also important to note that these are no longer felonies and are now misdemeanors. FYI I’m totally for full decriminalization outside of public environments.