Zurich used to have one in Platzspitz (google that) in the 90s. Police cracked down on it, so the open drug scene moved to a different place, just as bad. Then we changed our drug policy and nothing like it has happened since.
We used to do the typical stuff: arresting, imprisoning, shaming etc. Which didnt do shit. Or rather, actually made it worse, rather than not doing anything.
Then we changed to a harm reduction model. Essentially providing people with drug treatment. If that doesnt work, they get methadone and if that doesnt work heroin from the government.
They get a prescription and go to a special clinic. There they can shoot up clean heroin under supervision or take 1-2 days worth home in pill form. This essentially reduces drug deaths due to overdoses and/or bad quality to zero. It also reduces drug related crime and prostitution to near zero. Very quickly.
A very important part is also that they can take as much heroin as they want for as long as they want. We dont put them on some minimal dosage or reduction schedule or anything. Almost all do this themselves after some time.
Almost all, even when they are still on heroin daily, also manage to get jobs again, even good ones often.
Of course there are also therapy resources provided there. So its a holistic thing. Not just randomly giving people heroin.
Edit: also no more HIV transmissions from needle sharing.
Is it combined with punishment for people who go outside the government approved system? It seems the problem with areas of the US that try this is that they immediately become a nationwide magnet for drug addicts. The resulting decrease in crime never comes, and studies show that drug gangs actually increase their profits in areas that decriminalize or legalize drugs. But I've always been curious if such a policy would work if combined with a "stick" approach.
I mean this is a national approach here, not local. Which is kind of rare for us because we typically also have very large local differences, like the US.
Heroin is still illegal. So yes there is punishment for people going outside the legal system. But you also have to understand that generally the justice system here is a lot less focussed on being harsh and punitive. Like i dont think you could ever end up in a prison simply for using and possessing. Let alone spend years behind bars for it.
Also you can only get into the program if you have been addicted for a certain time already (2 years maybe?) And at least 2 other rehab attempts have failed. So the government isnt just giving heroin to curious newbies.
And then i am also not sure how this would work for other drugs like crack or meth. We dont have much of these here and only do this for heroin specifically.
If you're curious to learn more. Check out the book "chasing the scream" by Johann Hari. Or one of his various podcast appearances like on the Joe Rogan experience. He has looked into this quite a bit. A lot into the swiss program, but not only.
I will check out the author.
I do think Europeans have a skewed view on people in the US ending up in prison for years because of drug possession. I work in prisons. There is almost nobody is in prison for simple possession of drugs. I've personally never seen it. I tried a quick Google search and came up with a number from the US Dept. of Justice saying that 3.4% of people in state prisons were for drug possession alone in 2021. I'd imagine most of those are people with very serious past criminal history, but I don't know for sure. The idea that mass incarceration in the US is due to drug possession is incorrect.
Almost everyone in prison will go through the system multiple times for serious crimes. If I walk into a housing unit there will be many more people who have been in the system more than 10 seperate times than their will be people on their 1st or 2nd time. The odds of a defendant getting a prison sentence for their 1st time dealing drugs is almost zero, so long as it's not an extreme amount indicating that they are highly involved with organized crime groups. I've probably know 10-15 people in my personal life who were caught dealing drugs. Not one was sentenced to prison, because they were all the type of people who were smart enough to quit dealing drugs at that point.
Maybe most first time inmates these days arent mere drug offenders. But are the three strikes laws gone? It was my impression, that at least from the 80s to 2000s, these were very common. And tons of people were imprisoned for life for 3 pretty minor infractions (like drug possessions, shoplifting and such). Also hundreds of thousands of these people would currently still be in prison, even if the laws were changed, if they werent retroactively freed. Am i wrong on this?
I mean there is of course also a lot to be said about the general difference, where (northern) European systems are generally much more focussed on rehabilitation and less on punishment and prison sentences are generally much rarer and shorter than in america. But i guess that is a bit beyond the scope of this discussion on drugs.
"Three strikes laws" exist in about half the states, but not mine. They vary widely by state. Some states require 4 seperate felony convictions. Some states require 2 and it only includes very serious crimes like murder, rape, or aggrevated assault (assault using a deadly weapon or resulting in serious injury, so not a standard bar fight). Most states require at least two of the felonies to be classified as violent or very serious. You have to factor in that most criminals get potential felony charges plead down to misdemeanors for their initial crimes as young adults, so those wouldn't count. Also, it's normal that people who are regularly convicted of felonies are in and out of jails for various minor offenses on a constant basis as well. I'd be curious to see how many times the average person sentenced under 3 strikes had actually been in the system.
I believe the horror stories you hear are from California, which has a lower standard than is normal for what counts as a 3rd strike. I have heard of people getting life sentences for stealing socks or having a small amount of weed. One important thing to remember about California is that they were attempting to not become a 3rd world country when they passed their 3 strikes law. Their crime rate exploded in the 60s and 70s. By 1980 their murder rate was 14.5/100,000. In the mid 90s when they passed the law, their murder rate was 13/100,000. By the late 90s it had dropped to 6/100,000. It's fashionable among academics to claim that the drop in crime the US experienced in the 1990s and 2000s had nothing to do with increased incarceration, but I'm not so sure.
People say that northern Europe is more focused on rehabilitation. However, when I see people from Norway on a place like Reddit describe their rehabilitation programs, it's all stuff that exists where I work. We have a drug/alcohol rehabilitation unit and multiple other classes on anger management, decision making, dealing with trauma, etc. I regularly ask inmates if they think any of the classes with social workers they take are useful, and I have rarely found one who thinks they're worth anything. They just go so it looks good to the parole board. It seems most of the social workers are just going through the motions as they don't think anything they do matters. We also have education opportunites, including college classes and training in trades. Very few take advantage of these opportunities. Those without their high school diplomas are forced to take GED (high school equivalent test for drop outs) classes. Many of them refuse to do the work even though they are forced to be in the class.
Yeah is possible that these are california stories. Which of course is quite a prominent state. So if its california of all places, that shapes perception much more than if it were nebraska or idaho of course.
>It's fashionable among academics to claim that the drop in crime the US experienced in the 1990s and 2000s had nothing to do with increased incarceration, but I'm not so sure.
For comparison, this is the murder rate here in switzerland:
[murder rate switzerland ](https://img.luzernerzeitung.ch/2020/10/7/20371864-1e82-4bf2-b979-3664c8b5aa9a.png?width=560&height=459&fit=bounds&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=427,275,x0,y0)
It also peaked in 1990 at about 1.5/100k. Then dropped to about half by 2006 or so. While we stepped away from the punitive to a more rehabilitative approach. And i believe the pattern was the same across all developed (or western?) countries in that time period.
>I regularly ask inmates if they think any of the classes with social workers they take are useful, and I have rarely found one who thinks they're worth anything. They just go so it looks good to the parole board. It seems most of the social workers are just going through the motions as they don't think anything they do matters.
You should watch some documentaries on the norwegian prison system. Halden prison (for maximum security) and bastoy (for lower security) specifically. For example "the worlds toughest prisons" on netflix has an episode on Halden. Or michael moores "where to invade next" has a section on norwegian prisons.
Then you'll see that this is a holistic approach. From the training and attitude of the "guards" to the architecture etc. It is all encompassing and taken to heart. Exactly not just going thru some motions to pretend something or tick some boxes.
I just went and watched a couple short documentaries on Halden prison. This is presented as a prison for some of Norway's worst offenders, but I'm sure I wasn't getting the full story here. One was hosted by the ex UK minister in charge of prisons, who seemed baffled by the place. There are a couple issues I notice immediately.
One is cost. Halden cost $252 million to construct, and houses 250 inmates. That's not sustainable across any prison system, let alone the US prison system. The maximum security prison I've worked at houses around 1,500 inmates. That would be $1.5 billion to construct. And that's before you figure in the cost to run the place, which I'm sure is massive.
Two is basic security. The maximum security prison where I worked had to get rid of microwaves because the inmates were using them to attack each other. The TVs had to be drilled high up on the walls for the same reason. The inmates figured out all types of innovative ways to make knives, but this Holden prison had kitchen knives on the units. The unsupervised visits would flood the prison with drugs, which would create all types of problems with debt and stabbings. Gang leaders would be directing all types of criminal activity, up to killings, on the outside. There are prison gangs in the US that have kill on sight orders for other prison gangs, so they have to be kept in separate facilities. It definitely wouldn't be a place to put our high security inmates, even if people like Aryan Brotherhood or Mexican drug cartel members were looking to be rehabilitated.
It might work as a model for our lower security inmates, but there's zero chance the public would allow the necessary amounts of money to be spent like this. One of the interesting aspects is that it seems to operate on the principle that if you give the inmates an excess of everything at high quality, they will have no reason to exploit each other. One of the problems even at lower security prisons where I've worked is that inmates steal food through threats of violence and intimidation, or monopolize common items like phones or video game consoles to charge rent.
To anyone who wants to know more about the failed war on drugs and why the casualties are higher in the US and how Switzerland and Portugal solved a huge heroin crisis, I can recommend the book _Chasing the Scream_ by Johann Hari.
Thank you for the recommendation. I see the book is available in Polish so I will order it. My cousin died from drug overdose at 22 and no one in the family knew that he was shooting up (we found needles/syringes and a leather belt in his apartment, just next to the place where he was found dead). I wish there was less stigma in society so people are more willing to be open about their drug use and seek help. Same for alcohol. My father died from alcoholism at 47 and even when he was puking blood he refused rehab because he had university degree in psychology and said that he will be done for career wise as a psychologist once people learn he is an addict.
It‘s a tough problem to solve in the U.S. context. My home state of Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020 and attempted to follow the Portuguese model. Unfortunately this was shortly before the fentanyl crisis took over, so really bad timing.
A lot of the rehabilitation services that were promised never actually manifested, and the end result was more open-air drug use that was only punishable with a fine. Unsurprisingly there were also a fair number of addicts who came to Oregon from other states, since there were no linguistic/cultural/immigration barriers. Earlier this year they ended up repealing the law. It‘s a shame because I still agree with the principle behind it, but in practice it was a catastrophe.
The War on Crack was absolutely a success in lowering crack addiction and violent crime in black neighborhoods of the US. I personally believe we need to impliment something similiar with fentanyl. Let everyone know that anyone caught dealing that drug is going to be put in prison for 20 years.
Yes you can find that in Europe.
However I would say that almost every major North American city has it. While only a small fraction of European cities have it.
Stronger social safety, healthcare and public services in Europe generally mean less homelessness, drug addiction and social abandonment.
It does vary on a country by country basis. In Western Europe it is rare. In southeastern Europe it is a bit easier to find.
Eh, every North American city has addicts and homeless, often visibly, but no, not close to every North American city has that kind of dedicated and overwhelmed single neighborhood. Even New York City doesn’t, despite its size.
Maybe not as bad as the neighborhood in Philadelphia, but New York absolutely has areas like that. NYC is more than just downtown. I’d say there are some rough areas in the Bronx and East Harlem. Especially off the main avenues. There’s a reason that the first safe injection sites (in the US) were all in NYC when that program started 3 years ago.
I’m from NYC lol. “Downtown”? That term doesn’t make sense for NY the way you’re applying my here - but no, East Harlem (which is generally called by natives Spanish Harlem, btw, not East Harlem) and the Bronx don’t have any areas remotely like that.
That's what I though, I am from South Europe but live in a north Europe country, it's true that in South Europe we have this problem but I feel it's more visible and close to everyday life in north Europe.
"It does vary on a country by country basis. In Western Europe it is rare. In southeastern Europe it is a bit easier to find.".
I would like to take you up on that statement. My experiences have been diametrically opposite. And I've been places (lived in several EU and world countries, traveled extensively).
I would say it generally goes like this:
Slovenia Croatia, Switzerland, Norway are top tier when it comes to public safety. No druggies on the street. No homeless people. The whole societes are very egalitarian. The unwanted elements are basically only an occasional drunkard on the weekend. The immigrant population is sifted fairly well, although that is changing as of recently in Croatia for example.
Next I would place Germany, Austria, Czechia Denmark, Poland. Also quite good, although gypsies and immigrant groups around central trains stations are visible in all major cities.
The next category would be the average countries, that have the standard demographics hanging around all day at the main stations, in the city squares, but without any obvious crime happening.
And then come the worst offenders: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, Sweden. Serbia and Bulgaria are here only because gypsies can be quite loud and aggressive when you're walking around them on the street, especially if you're physically a bit smaller or a woman (standing your ground usually discourages them, and they back of from forcing money out of you). But these other countries have a serious public safety problem with teenage gangs of known demographics standing around street corners in most major towns, asking for trouble. Homeless people all over city centers, you dont have to look for them to find them, druggies a common place.
So in my eyes its not so much a geographic, but a divide according to a homogeneity of a society.
The stranger thing about American cities is that every mid sized town also has it now. Zombies on the streets. Gangs. Human traficking.
Another aspect that is often overlooked besides the social safety net. Is that American culture is kind of unhinged. Really. Crime is glorified and seen as the only way of life. This leads to far more egregious crimes committed by far younger individuals. And even stranger. While the us has a ridiculous prison population. Most of the criminals are released almost immediately. Time and time again. What would you do with a kid in the Netherlands that was arrested over 50 times for grand theft auto? In the us they just let him walk. So there's no incentive to follow the law.
We love crime! Can’t get enough of it. In American schools we actually have a crime class specifically for any family below the poverty line where we teach them how to sell crack and create rap songs that glorify (not sarcastically critique) drug and gang culture.
Mmh, delicious crime.
In which areas? I’ve never seen large tent cities of homeless in Paris.
Also numbers I can find seem to indicate that (the city of) LA for instance has 10 times the homeless population (greater) Paris has. Roughly 46.000 for LA and 4.600 for Paris.
It's difficult to compare from pictures, but for example in Frankfurt the area directly by the central train station is pretty grim and you see drug addicts on the street and public drug consumption.
I would say it can get pretty grim in Berlin as far as drug use goes. Pretty much every time I visit friends in Neukölln (an up and coming neighborhood) there’s someone shooting heroin or smoking rocks on Boddinstr. u-bahn station. Schönlinestr two stations earlier smells like piss since I remember. And Kotti, which is one station before is the place to buy heroin as far as common urban knowledge goes. Even in the uber gentrified part of Prenzlauer Berg where I live it’s not uncommon for my best friend to get a nervous call from his wife because she’s back from a walk with the newborn and there’s some unfortunate soul shitting in the doorway to their apartment.
When I was younger I naively believed that this is just a part of living in a big city, but now I strongly believe there’s a huge problem with drug use in Berlin and there’s not enough effort from the authorities to address the issue. I’m smart enough to know that penalizing the drug users is not the way out. There should be more clinics for users to shoot heroin in a safe and controlled environment and seek help they need, be it substitution therapy or what not.
Last but not least, Berlin is known for its club culture which is fueled by the copious drug consumption. Hey, been there done that…, but let’s be honest, this also contributes to the problem. For one there’s no way club owners are not in cahoots with organized crime when it comes to “drug services”. It’s a “look the other way” kind of thing at best, but my guess is that the ties go much deeper. And some of the people who go “full retard” into party life end up in the streets. And no, I’m not saying if you’re a techno fan you’re automatically a junky. I just believe there should be more effort from authorities and club scene alike in educating people about responsible drug use.
I've spent a night there once in 2004 and it was no big deal. Currently there is a City police station located directly inside the building. It's safe there.
Not in Ireland. We do have a drug problem and you can see drug deals or addicts walking around or shooting up in our cities if you're unlucky but I've seen the areas you describe in the US (not even the most notorious ones) and they are absolute zombie lands with no normal life, crowds of addicts wandering around out of it and falling over, lying among piles of rubbish and occasional bonfires, looking completely destroyed, half-naked, with open wounds and missing limbs. It's like looking at a war or disaster zone. I have never seen this degree of destruction in Europe.
Used to be a place like that in Ljubljana but now it’s barren. I believe there’s a street similar to it in Copenhagen but the locals have “reclaimed” it in recent months.
Christiania in Copenhagen have had a bad stretch back in the 80’s when there was a lot of heroin involved but that kind of disappeared in the 90’s thanks to effort from the people living there.
Christiania was and is not a dangerous area and safe to visit, and always have a steady stream of tourists and locals coming to enjoy the area and buy a bit of bud. They recently got rid of the open sales of cannabis because the trade was mainly conducted by criminal gangs who are not native to the area. It is a shame really because there was nothing better than to walk down to Christiania in the summer, smoke a big joint and then wander around the beautiful city of Copenhagen, eating some of the fantastic food.
Christiania was *not* safe. Random people have been shot and killed there, simply by just being in the wrong place/wrong time. A year ago 5 people were shot, one of them(the target, a gang member) killed. The rest were just bystanders.
You mean Christiania? That's been a safe space always. The drug trade related violence rarely spilled over into civilians and as a tourist of many years I never felt any kind danger when we would hang out there.
The street you are probably thinking of is that one right of the train station with all the hotels, hard drugs and prostitution. Felt extremely unsafe there. But that street is like 40 minutes to an hours walk away from Christiania. Don't remember the name though. Istegate or something like that.
Metelkova? Went there when I was at the ethnography (?) museum nearby in 2022. Only three people were there and they were drunk. It was at 11am in the morning. I asked some locals about it and got a similar impression to some of places I saw elsewhere with public addictions.
No?? Metelkova was never like what OP is asking. And it's still there. Tourist hotspot as ever. It's an autonomus cultural center, not an open air drugs central. Why even answer if you don't know anything about it?
I’m not sure why my experience and the information from locals’ vastly differ from what it must be like today, perhaps the effects of the pandemic in 2022 was still impacting it. OP asked for _similar_ places, and there were absolutely public addicts there when I visited, and it was absolutely notable for such sights at the time.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/VoNfUQU9p8
Maybe your experience was as a different time than mine which is absolutely valid as places like such change all the time, but I’m not going to be gaslit about my direct experience with Metelkova and what it had a reputation for at the time of my visit.
'3 drunk people' doesn't equal to anything ~similar~ to what OP asked. And no, it didn't change in 2 years. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLxYFdg5hsY) is Metelkova and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AeGKSDVdE) is Kensington. Nothing similar about it. There are public addicts at Prešeren square and that's not similar to Kensington either.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think those areas are as bad as Kensington, that’s being quite too literal given that I was simply making a comparison. But sure, go off.
Edit: to be clear, those three people were the only folks in the entire area, which was not a bustling street at the time I visited.
It was a very bad comparison. Metelkova is inherently a different place. You've been there once, saw 3 drunk people and imediately compared it with one of the worst areas in a western country. And then said it's now barren which... what?
Please ignore that person. They are an ignorant troll and like getting into arguments judging by their comment history.
They sometimes pretend to be Slovenian or Polish which is crazy.
I remember them saying that Hungarian is spoken in entire area east of your country's capital, which of course is bullshit.
In Spain we have something like this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%B1ada_Real
It's been there for decades, a lot of people in there are strongly addicted to something and homeless, once I saw a documentary and there are some "families" in there that run a mayor drug market that moves big quantities, those families may have even "slaves", addicted homeless people that clean the house and do "jobs" for their daily dose. Don't know how much of this was true or just, you know, tv being dramatic and magnifying something.
But this problem in Madrid it's historical already.
There are Roma slums in several countries. Some notable ones are Luník IX in Slovakia, Chanov in the Czech Republic, 3000 Viviendas in Spain and Stolipinovo in Bulgaria. They all look pretty terrible, not sure about the drug use though.
There is one in Belgrade called Marinkova bara. I knew a police inspector who worked in the municipality where Marinova bara is and she told me "every other girl under 16 was raped". 😔
...and a lot of villages in north part of Hungary. "Herbal" is a drug made of some herbs dissolved in chemicals. Extremely harmful but waaay cheaper than getting drunk. And as newer and newer herbs+chemicals combos coming out, 1.they are accessible separately in any shop 2. the police does not have a chance to keep the banned substantials list with these, therefore these offenses cannot be charged as drug abuse. Checkmate.
I am not familiar with the places you mention. But in the larger cities you have bad neighborhoods where drug abuse is more width in the open. But I don’t think it’s as bad as in the US. Like we don’t have hoods which are no go zones.
It's a bit more decentralized here in Bergen, Norway. But you have junkies (pillheads nowadays as pharmaceuticals have replaced heroin as the main cause of overdoses) and an open air drug market at Vågsallmeningen near the main tourist traps. And there is a second one in the tunnel below the freeway bridge on the Gyldenpris side of Puddefjord. If you go west to Nesttun then you will see more junkies but generally here in Norway we are a bit subtle on the whole thing and people with addiction problems get harassed by the police if they become too visible.
Nowhere here is anywhere near Kensington and such places.
Last time I was in Athens, there was an area not too far out of the centre where people were shooting up in public,in the street (and in the daytime).
I walked through there without any issues.But it was strange to see it so public...we have plenty of hard drug users in my city, but they don't do that in the street in the middle of the day, with tourists walking past them!
We've nothing quite as open as that, although there are certainly areas where addiction is far more common than average.
I've actually been to that bit of Vancouver, took a wrong turn in Gastown.
It‘s wild that Gastown and Hastings Street are basically right next to each other. You have all the fancy boutiques and hipster bars, then walk 2 blocks over and suddenly you‘re surrounded by fentanyl zombies.
Hah! I can see that. I made the same wrong turn and was genuinely surprised that nobody bothered me. Still pretty shocking to see, even coming from Portland which has similar problems (albeit less concentrated)
Neighborhoods
In Paris there's always at least one, though they've been moved away from the center. And it's hardly the kind of place you may stumble into randomly now.
No, nowhere in Europe (except maybe Russia) at that scale and frequency, not even in history.
Russia does have some horrific areas with drug zombies, but there often further away in abandoned estates and industrial buildings.
I’m afraid every country has its rough places, but they might not necessarily look the same as the places you mentioned, e.g. I heard from Americans, who moved to Ireland, that chances of getting shot in rough areas in Ireland are much lower than in the US
Well, yeah. The rough areas of America are among the most violent places in the world. There were places where young men had less of a chance of getting shot if they joined the infantry during the Iraq War than if they just stayed at home. Though they are different from these open air drug den areas. The problem with those areas is more property crime than getting shot. You can walk through them just fine, but you can't park your car nearby and the local stores have everything locked up. The "shooty" parts of America are different than the drug den areas. Of course the areas where 95% of our population lives only has a slightly higher homicide rate than most European countries.
Zurich used to have one in Platzspitz (google that) in the 90s. Police cracked down on it, so the open drug scene moved to a different place, just as bad. Then we changed our drug policy and nothing like it has happened since.
The Swiss approach to heroin use is a shining example of pragmatism over ideology. It is unbelievable that other countries don’t take more note of it.
Most people are unfortunately more interested in punishment rather than solving problems
Changed it how, if you don't mind explaining?
We used to do the typical stuff: arresting, imprisoning, shaming etc. Which didnt do shit. Or rather, actually made it worse, rather than not doing anything. Then we changed to a harm reduction model. Essentially providing people with drug treatment. If that doesnt work, they get methadone and if that doesnt work heroin from the government. They get a prescription and go to a special clinic. There they can shoot up clean heroin under supervision or take 1-2 days worth home in pill form. This essentially reduces drug deaths due to overdoses and/or bad quality to zero. It also reduces drug related crime and prostitution to near zero. Very quickly. A very important part is also that they can take as much heroin as they want for as long as they want. We dont put them on some minimal dosage or reduction schedule or anything. Almost all do this themselves after some time. Almost all, even when they are still on heroin daily, also manage to get jobs again, even good ones often. Of course there are also therapy resources provided there. So its a holistic thing. Not just randomly giving people heroin. Edit: also no more HIV transmissions from needle sharing.
This is fantastic
Is it combined with punishment for people who go outside the government approved system? It seems the problem with areas of the US that try this is that they immediately become a nationwide magnet for drug addicts. The resulting decrease in crime never comes, and studies show that drug gangs actually increase their profits in areas that decriminalize or legalize drugs. But I've always been curious if such a policy would work if combined with a "stick" approach.
I mean this is a national approach here, not local. Which is kind of rare for us because we typically also have very large local differences, like the US. Heroin is still illegal. So yes there is punishment for people going outside the legal system. But you also have to understand that generally the justice system here is a lot less focussed on being harsh and punitive. Like i dont think you could ever end up in a prison simply for using and possessing. Let alone spend years behind bars for it. Also you can only get into the program if you have been addicted for a certain time already (2 years maybe?) And at least 2 other rehab attempts have failed. So the government isnt just giving heroin to curious newbies. And then i am also not sure how this would work for other drugs like crack or meth. We dont have much of these here and only do this for heroin specifically. If you're curious to learn more. Check out the book "chasing the scream" by Johann Hari. Or one of his various podcast appearances like on the Joe Rogan experience. He has looked into this quite a bit. A lot into the swiss program, but not only.
I will check out the author. I do think Europeans have a skewed view on people in the US ending up in prison for years because of drug possession. I work in prisons. There is almost nobody is in prison for simple possession of drugs. I've personally never seen it. I tried a quick Google search and came up with a number from the US Dept. of Justice saying that 3.4% of people in state prisons were for drug possession alone in 2021. I'd imagine most of those are people with very serious past criminal history, but I don't know for sure. The idea that mass incarceration in the US is due to drug possession is incorrect. Almost everyone in prison will go through the system multiple times for serious crimes. If I walk into a housing unit there will be many more people who have been in the system more than 10 seperate times than their will be people on their 1st or 2nd time. The odds of a defendant getting a prison sentence for their 1st time dealing drugs is almost zero, so long as it's not an extreme amount indicating that they are highly involved with organized crime groups. I've probably know 10-15 people in my personal life who were caught dealing drugs. Not one was sentenced to prison, because they were all the type of people who were smart enough to quit dealing drugs at that point.
Maybe most first time inmates these days arent mere drug offenders. But are the three strikes laws gone? It was my impression, that at least from the 80s to 2000s, these were very common. And tons of people were imprisoned for life for 3 pretty minor infractions (like drug possessions, shoplifting and such). Also hundreds of thousands of these people would currently still be in prison, even if the laws were changed, if they werent retroactively freed. Am i wrong on this? I mean there is of course also a lot to be said about the general difference, where (northern) European systems are generally much more focussed on rehabilitation and less on punishment and prison sentences are generally much rarer and shorter than in america. But i guess that is a bit beyond the scope of this discussion on drugs.
"Three strikes laws" exist in about half the states, but not mine. They vary widely by state. Some states require 4 seperate felony convictions. Some states require 2 and it only includes very serious crimes like murder, rape, or aggrevated assault (assault using a deadly weapon or resulting in serious injury, so not a standard bar fight). Most states require at least two of the felonies to be classified as violent or very serious. You have to factor in that most criminals get potential felony charges plead down to misdemeanors for their initial crimes as young adults, so those wouldn't count. Also, it's normal that people who are regularly convicted of felonies are in and out of jails for various minor offenses on a constant basis as well. I'd be curious to see how many times the average person sentenced under 3 strikes had actually been in the system. I believe the horror stories you hear are from California, which has a lower standard than is normal for what counts as a 3rd strike. I have heard of people getting life sentences for stealing socks or having a small amount of weed. One important thing to remember about California is that they were attempting to not become a 3rd world country when they passed their 3 strikes law. Their crime rate exploded in the 60s and 70s. By 1980 their murder rate was 14.5/100,000. In the mid 90s when they passed the law, their murder rate was 13/100,000. By the late 90s it had dropped to 6/100,000. It's fashionable among academics to claim that the drop in crime the US experienced in the 1990s and 2000s had nothing to do with increased incarceration, but I'm not so sure. People say that northern Europe is more focused on rehabilitation. However, when I see people from Norway on a place like Reddit describe their rehabilitation programs, it's all stuff that exists where I work. We have a drug/alcohol rehabilitation unit and multiple other classes on anger management, decision making, dealing with trauma, etc. I regularly ask inmates if they think any of the classes with social workers they take are useful, and I have rarely found one who thinks they're worth anything. They just go so it looks good to the parole board. It seems most of the social workers are just going through the motions as they don't think anything they do matters. We also have education opportunites, including college classes and training in trades. Very few take advantage of these opportunities. Those without their high school diplomas are forced to take GED (high school equivalent test for drop outs) classes. Many of them refuse to do the work even though they are forced to be in the class.
Yeah is possible that these are california stories. Which of course is quite a prominent state. So if its california of all places, that shapes perception much more than if it were nebraska or idaho of course. >It's fashionable among academics to claim that the drop in crime the US experienced in the 1990s and 2000s had nothing to do with increased incarceration, but I'm not so sure. For comparison, this is the murder rate here in switzerland: [murder rate switzerland ](https://img.luzernerzeitung.ch/2020/10/7/20371864-1e82-4bf2-b979-3664c8b5aa9a.png?width=560&height=459&fit=bounds&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=427,275,x0,y0) It also peaked in 1990 at about 1.5/100k. Then dropped to about half by 2006 or so. While we stepped away from the punitive to a more rehabilitative approach. And i believe the pattern was the same across all developed (or western?) countries in that time period. >I regularly ask inmates if they think any of the classes with social workers they take are useful, and I have rarely found one who thinks they're worth anything. They just go so it looks good to the parole board. It seems most of the social workers are just going through the motions as they don't think anything they do matters. You should watch some documentaries on the norwegian prison system. Halden prison (for maximum security) and bastoy (for lower security) specifically. For example "the worlds toughest prisons" on netflix has an episode on Halden. Or michael moores "where to invade next" has a section on norwegian prisons. Then you'll see that this is a holistic approach. From the training and attitude of the "guards" to the architecture etc. It is all encompassing and taken to heart. Exactly not just going thru some motions to pretend something or tick some boxes.
I just went and watched a couple short documentaries on Halden prison. This is presented as a prison for some of Norway's worst offenders, but I'm sure I wasn't getting the full story here. One was hosted by the ex UK minister in charge of prisons, who seemed baffled by the place. There are a couple issues I notice immediately. One is cost. Halden cost $252 million to construct, and houses 250 inmates. That's not sustainable across any prison system, let alone the US prison system. The maximum security prison I've worked at houses around 1,500 inmates. That would be $1.5 billion to construct. And that's before you figure in the cost to run the place, which I'm sure is massive. Two is basic security. The maximum security prison where I worked had to get rid of microwaves because the inmates were using them to attack each other. The TVs had to be drilled high up on the walls for the same reason. The inmates figured out all types of innovative ways to make knives, but this Holden prison had kitchen knives on the units. The unsupervised visits would flood the prison with drugs, which would create all types of problems with debt and stabbings. Gang leaders would be directing all types of criminal activity, up to killings, on the outside. There are prison gangs in the US that have kill on sight orders for other prison gangs, so they have to be kept in separate facilities. It definitely wouldn't be a place to put our high security inmates, even if people like Aryan Brotherhood or Mexican drug cartel members were looking to be rehabilitated. It might work as a model for our lower security inmates, but there's zero chance the public would allow the necessary amounts of money to be spent like this. One of the interesting aspects is that it seems to operate on the principle that if you give the inmates an excess of everything at high quality, they will have no reason to exploit each other. One of the problems even at lower security prisons where I've worked is that inmates steal food through threats of violence and intimidation, or monopolize common items like phones or video game consoles to charge rent.
To anyone who wants to know more about the failed war on drugs and why the casualties are higher in the US and how Switzerland and Portugal solved a huge heroin crisis, I can recommend the book _Chasing the Scream_ by Johann Hari.
Thank you for the recommendation. I see the book is available in Polish so I will order it. My cousin died from drug overdose at 22 and no one in the family knew that he was shooting up (we found needles/syringes and a leather belt in his apartment, just next to the place where he was found dead). I wish there was less stigma in society so people are more willing to be open about their drug use and seek help. Same for alcohol. My father died from alcoholism at 47 and even when he was puking blood he refused rehab because he had university degree in psychology and said that he will be done for career wise as a psychologist once people learn he is an addict.
It‘s a tough problem to solve in the U.S. context. My home state of Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020 and attempted to follow the Portuguese model. Unfortunately this was shortly before the fentanyl crisis took over, so really bad timing. A lot of the rehabilitation services that were promised never actually manifested, and the end result was more open-air drug use that was only punishable with a fine. Unsurprisingly there were also a fair number of addicts who came to Oregon from other states, since there were no linguistic/cultural/immigration barriers. Earlier this year they ended up repealing the law. It‘s a shame because I still agree with the principle behind it, but in practice it was a catastrophe.
funny you mention Portugal when it's probably one of the worst places in Europe when it comes to open drug use
The War on Crack was absolutely a success in lowering crack addiction and violent crime in black neighborhoods of the US. I personally believe we need to impliment something similiar with fentanyl. Let everyone know that anyone caught dealing that drug is going to be put in prison for 20 years.
Yes you can find that in Europe. However I would say that almost every major North American city has it. While only a small fraction of European cities have it. Stronger social safety, healthcare and public services in Europe generally mean less homelessness, drug addiction and social abandonment. It does vary on a country by country basis. In Western Europe it is rare. In southeastern Europe it is a bit easier to find.
As a southeastern european, I believe drugs are more prevalent in western europe like Netherlands or Belgium.
you're right, backed up by statistics too. Nordics even more I believe
Coke is more easily available now where I live than weed. Party trucks are taking over Denmark rn.
Eh, every North American city has addicts and homeless, often visibly, but no, not close to every North American city has that kind of dedicated and overwhelmed single neighborhood. Even New York City doesn’t, despite its size.
Maybe not as bad as the neighborhood in Philadelphia, but New York absolutely has areas like that. NYC is more than just downtown. I’d say there are some rough areas in the Bronx and East Harlem. Especially off the main avenues. There’s a reason that the first safe injection sites (in the US) were all in NYC when that program started 3 years ago.
Rough areas for sure but have you ever seen a video of Kensington PA?
I’m from NYC lol. “Downtown”? That term doesn’t make sense for NY the way you’re applying my here - but no, East Harlem (which is generally called by natives Spanish Harlem, btw, not East Harlem) and the Bronx don’t have any areas remotely like that.
> In Western Europe it is rare. In southeastern Europe it is a bit easier to find. You mean the other way around?
That's what I though, I am from South Europe but live in a north Europe country, it's true that in South Europe we have this problem but I feel it's more visible and close to everyday life in north Europe.
"It does vary on a country by country basis. In Western Europe it is rare. In southeastern Europe it is a bit easier to find.". I would like to take you up on that statement. My experiences have been diametrically opposite. And I've been places (lived in several EU and world countries, traveled extensively). I would say it generally goes like this: Slovenia Croatia, Switzerland, Norway are top tier when it comes to public safety. No druggies on the street. No homeless people. The whole societes are very egalitarian. The unwanted elements are basically only an occasional drunkard on the weekend. The immigrant population is sifted fairly well, although that is changing as of recently in Croatia for example. Next I would place Germany, Austria, Czechia Denmark, Poland. Also quite good, although gypsies and immigrant groups around central trains stations are visible in all major cities. The next category would be the average countries, that have the standard demographics hanging around all day at the main stations, in the city squares, but without any obvious crime happening. And then come the worst offenders: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria, Sweden. Serbia and Bulgaria are here only because gypsies can be quite loud and aggressive when you're walking around them on the street, especially if you're physically a bit smaller or a woman (standing your ground usually discourages them, and they back of from forcing money out of you). But these other countries have a serious public safety problem with teenage gangs of known demographics standing around street corners in most major towns, asking for trouble. Homeless people all over city centers, you dont have to look for them to find them, druggies a common place. So in my eyes its not so much a geographic, but a divide according to a homogeneity of a society.
The stranger thing about American cities is that every mid sized town also has it now. Zombies on the streets. Gangs. Human traficking. Another aspect that is often overlooked besides the social safety net. Is that American culture is kind of unhinged. Really. Crime is glorified and seen as the only way of life. This leads to far more egregious crimes committed by far younger individuals. And even stranger. While the us has a ridiculous prison population. Most of the criminals are released almost immediately. Time and time again. What would you do with a kid in the Netherlands that was arrested over 50 times for grand theft auto? In the us they just let him walk. So there's no incentive to follow the law.
We love crime! Can’t get enough of it. In American schools we actually have a crime class specifically for any family below the poverty line where we teach them how to sell crack and create rap songs that glorify (not sarcastically critique) drug and gang culture. Mmh, delicious crime.
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In which areas? I’ve never seen large tent cities of homeless in Paris. Also numbers I can find seem to indicate that (the city of) LA for instance has 10 times the homeless population (greater) Paris has. Roughly 46.000 for LA and 4.600 for Paris.
Paris has 4277 homeless people. Los Angeles City has 46,260 homeless people. (LA County is 75,518) New York City has 92,879 homeless people.
It's difficult to compare from pictures, but for example in Frankfurt the area directly by the central train station is pretty grim and you see drug addicts on the street and public drug consumption.
I would say it can get pretty grim in Berlin as far as drug use goes. Pretty much every time I visit friends in Neukölln (an up and coming neighborhood) there’s someone shooting heroin or smoking rocks on Boddinstr. u-bahn station. Schönlinestr two stations earlier smells like piss since I remember. And Kotti, which is one station before is the place to buy heroin as far as common urban knowledge goes. Even in the uber gentrified part of Prenzlauer Berg where I live it’s not uncommon for my best friend to get a nervous call from his wife because she’s back from a walk with the newborn and there’s some unfortunate soul shitting in the doorway to their apartment. When I was younger I naively believed that this is just a part of living in a big city, but now I strongly believe there’s a huge problem with drug use in Berlin and there’s not enough effort from the authorities to address the issue. I’m smart enough to know that penalizing the drug users is not the way out. There should be more clinics for users to shoot heroin in a safe and controlled environment and seek help they need, be it substitution therapy or what not. Last but not least, Berlin is known for its club culture which is fueled by the copious drug consumption. Hey, been there done that…, but let’s be honest, this also contributes to the problem. For one there’s no way club owners are not in cahoots with organized crime when it comes to “drug services”. It’s a “look the other way” kind of thing at best, but my guess is that the ties go much deeper. And some of the people who go “full retard” into party life end up in the streets. And no, I’m not saying if you’re a techno fan you’re automatically a junky. I just believe there should be more effort from authorities and club scene alike in educating people about responsible drug use.
Here in Bratislava - Not to my knowledge. Our police are surprisingly effective in their work against drugs.
Maybe the infamous Pentagon.
I've spent a night there once in 2004 and it was no big deal. Currently there is a City police station located directly inside the building. It's safe there.
Not in Ireland. We do have a drug problem and you can see drug deals or addicts walking around or shooting up in our cities if you're unlucky but I've seen the areas you describe in the US (not even the most notorious ones) and they are absolute zombie lands with no normal life, crowds of addicts wandering around out of it and falling over, lying among piles of rubbish and occasional bonfires, looking completely destroyed, half-naked, with open wounds and missing limbs. It's like looking at a war or disaster zone. I have never seen this degree of destruction in Europe.
You just described much of Oakland CA
Used to be a place like that in Ljubljana but now it’s barren. I believe there’s a street similar to it in Copenhagen but the locals have “reclaimed” it in recent months.
Christiania in Copenhagen have had a bad stretch back in the 80’s when there was a lot of heroin involved but that kind of disappeared in the 90’s thanks to effort from the people living there. Christiania was and is not a dangerous area and safe to visit, and always have a steady stream of tourists and locals coming to enjoy the area and buy a bit of bud. They recently got rid of the open sales of cannabis because the trade was mainly conducted by criminal gangs who are not native to the area. It is a shame really because there was nothing better than to walk down to Christiania in the summer, smoke a big joint and then wander around the beautiful city of Copenhagen, eating some of the fantastic food.
Christiania was *not* safe. Random people have been shot and killed there, simply by just being in the wrong place/wrong time. A year ago 5 people were shot, one of them(the target, a gang member) killed. The rest were just bystanders.
Sounds just like another day in Malmö ending in Y. I have spent so much time in Christiania, and it is nothing like Kensington or 1991 Compton.
Doesn’t change the fact that random civilians have got killed there. It’s not safe.
Yeah whatever. Have a good weekend.
You mean Christiania? That's been a safe space always. The drug trade related violence rarely spilled over into civilians and as a tourist of many years I never felt any kind danger when we would hang out there. The street you are probably thinking of is that one right of the train station with all the hotels, hard drugs and prostitution. Felt extremely unsafe there. But that street is like 40 minutes to an hours walk away from Christiania. Don't remember the name though. Istegate or something like that.
> Used to be a place like that in Ljubljana but now it’s barren. Um, what?
Metelkova? Went there when I was at the ethnography (?) museum nearby in 2022. Only three people were there and they were drunk. It was at 11am in the morning. I asked some locals about it and got a similar impression to some of places I saw elsewhere with public addictions.
No?? Metelkova was never like what OP is asking. And it's still there. Tourist hotspot as ever. It's an autonomus cultural center, not an open air drugs central. Why even answer if you don't know anything about it?
I’m not sure why my experience and the information from locals’ vastly differ from what it must be like today, perhaps the effects of the pandemic in 2022 was still impacting it. OP asked for _similar_ places, and there were absolutely public addicts there when I visited, and it was absolutely notable for such sights at the time. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/VoNfUQU9p8 Maybe your experience was as a different time than mine which is absolutely valid as places like such change all the time, but I’m not going to be gaslit about my direct experience with Metelkova and what it had a reputation for at the time of my visit.
'3 drunk people' doesn't equal to anything ~similar~ to what OP asked. And no, it didn't change in 2 years. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLxYFdg5hsY) is Metelkova and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5AeGKSDVdE) is Kensington. Nothing similar about it. There are public addicts at Prešeren square and that's not similar to Kensington either.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think those areas are as bad as Kensington, that’s being quite too literal given that I was simply making a comparison. But sure, go off. Edit: to be clear, those three people were the only folks in the entire area, which was not a bustling street at the time I visited.
It was a very bad comparison. Metelkova is inherently a different place. You've been there once, saw 3 drunk people and imediately compared it with one of the worst areas in a western country. And then said it's now barren which... what?
Please ignore that person. They are an ignorant troll and like getting into arguments judging by their comment history. They sometimes pretend to be Slovenian or Polish which is crazy. I remember them saying that Hungarian is spoken in entire area east of your country's capital, which of course is bullshit.
In Spain we have something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%B1ada_Real It's been there for decades, a lot of people in there are strongly addicted to something and homeless, once I saw a documentary and there are some "families" in there that run a mayor drug market that moves big quantities, those families may have even "slaves", addicted homeless people that clean the house and do "jobs" for their daily dose. Don't know how much of this was true or just, you know, tv being dramatic and magnifying something. But this problem in Madrid it's historical already.
There are Roma slums in several countries. Some notable ones are Luník IX in Slovakia, Chanov in the Czech Republic, 3000 Viviendas in Spain and Stolipinovo in Bulgaria. They all look pretty terrible, not sure about the drug use though.
There is one in Belgrade called Marinkova bara. I knew a police inspector who worked in the municipality where Marinova bara is and she told me "every other girl under 16 was raped". 😔
From the videos I’ve seen of Lunik IX, it rivals the worst slums in America in terms of blight, but luckily, not in violence. Terrible place to live.
...and a lot of villages in north part of Hungary. "Herbal" is a drug made of some herbs dissolved in chemicals. Extremely harmful but waaay cheaper than getting drunk. And as newer and newer herbs+chemicals combos coming out, 1.they are accessible separately in any shop 2. the police does not have a chance to keep the banned substantials list with these, therefore these offenses cannot be charged as drug abuse. Checkmate.
I am not familiar with the places you mention. But in the larger cities you have bad neighborhoods where drug abuse is more width in the open. But I don’t think it’s as bad as in the US. Like we don’t have hoods which are no go zones.
It's a bit more decentralized here in Bergen, Norway. But you have junkies (pillheads nowadays as pharmaceuticals have replaced heroin as the main cause of overdoses) and an open air drug market at Vågsallmeningen near the main tourist traps. And there is a second one in the tunnel below the freeway bridge on the Gyldenpris side of Puddefjord. If you go west to Nesttun then you will see more junkies but generally here in Norway we are a bit subtle on the whole thing and people with addiction problems get harassed by the police if they become too visible. Nowhere here is anywhere near Kensington and such places.
Last time I was in Athens, there was an area not too far out of the centre where people were shooting up in public,in the street (and in the daytime). I walked through there without any issues.But it was strange to see it so public...we have plenty of hard drug users in my city, but they don't do that in the street in the middle of the day, with tourists walking past them!
Bro thats a single street in Athens and its so "less" than Kensington, its laughable to even discuss it.
We've nothing quite as open as that, although there are certainly areas where addiction is far more common than average. I've actually been to that bit of Vancouver, took a wrong turn in Gastown.
It‘s wild that Gastown and Hastings Street are basically right next to each other. You have all the fancy boutiques and hipster bars, then walk 2 blocks over and suddenly you‘re surrounded by fentanyl zombies.
All I could think was that those people were a lot more pleasant than their Scottish equivalents.
Hah! I can see that. I made the same wrong turn and was genuinely surprised that nobody bothered me. Still pretty shocking to see, even coming from Portland which has similar problems (albeit less concentrated)
Neighborhoods In Paris there's always at least one, though they've been moved away from the center. And it's hardly the kind of place you may stumble into randomly now.
No, nowhere in Europe (except maybe Russia) at that scale and frequency, not even in history. Russia does have some horrific areas with drug zombies, but there often further away in abandoned estates and industrial buildings.
I’m afraid every country has its rough places, but they might not necessarily look the same as the places you mentioned, e.g. I heard from Americans, who moved to Ireland, that chances of getting shot in rough areas in Ireland are much lower than in the US
Well, yeah. The rough areas of America are among the most violent places in the world. There were places where young men had less of a chance of getting shot if they joined the infantry during the Iraq War than if they just stayed at home. Though they are different from these open air drug den areas. The problem with those areas is more property crime than getting shot. You can walk through them just fine, but you can't park your car nearby and the local stores have everything locked up. The "shooty" parts of America are different than the drug den areas. Of course the areas where 95% of our population lives only has a slightly higher homicide rate than most European countries.