Does anyone else notice the slow, incremental decline in ease of access to over the counter drugs thanks to homeless addicts? It seems to really highlight the problems albeit in a subtle way. The most basic things are "harder" to purchase now and increasingly more and more, stores are treating every customer as a potential thief before they even walk in the door, forcing you to remove your backpack for fear of theft. I tried to buy a requested gift for someone at Canadian Tire recently, but was told I would have to relinquish control of my own backpack and stuff it into a locker only THEY had the key for in order to shop in their store...to buy a 30 dollar Made in China piece of shit kettle. They've had problems with theft, apparently. What the hell kind of policy is that to treat every customer as a potential thief before they even pick up a basket?
But about OTC drugs: some pharmacies now lock allergy and cough syrup up after a certain hour. So called Tylenol-1 (containing 8mg of codeine) is both often now unavailable/they expect your name or at least record how many sales per day occur. Funnily enough, I've had to purchase small bottles 3 times over the summer for someone from Walmart (different stores) and each time they offered entirely unprompted a naloxone/Narcan OD kit...from a pharmacist! You'd die from liver failure before you died from Tylenol products with a small amount of codeine. Convenience stores generally now only sell ginger nausea medicine (things like Gravol can be "abused"). Products such as Robaxin are similarly harder to find now, because apparently if you take enough you can get "high". There are other examples as well. It's ridiculous now.
It's an annoyance to have to deal with this sort of shit...but since blaming the people who cause problems is very taboo, what does society do in order to reverse these problems? Besides "keep giving them everything they ask for besides human dignity...and a job + free place to live" it is perplexing how we got here and how we fix it. Is it even possible to ever retvrn to a point in which we are able to look at people in the worst situations and either push them in the direction of improvement, or at least criminalize things again? I don't see how we can improve our society at a local or national level when we have judges that rule that people can legally create a slum and provide "safe use injection supplies" out of a dirty broken refrigerator while "outreach" workers hand out free cigarettes from a red party cup. All the while said slum has prevented the development of a much alluded to, promised, funded and developed intermodal train station in the heart of a region that'll house a million people soon enough.
Like, what's the answer besides stuffing them in garden sheds, which seems to be the best and only tangible solution Waterloo Region has been able to figure out? Affordable housing isn't an answer here, because the rhizomes of the problem are much deeper. That they can't seem to keep a garden shed in order illustrates that.
But about OTC drugs: some pharmacies now lock allergy and cough syrup up after a certain hour. So called Tylenol-1 (containing 8mg of codeine) is both often now unavailable/they expect your name or at least record how many sales per day occur. Funnily enough, I've had to purchase small bottles 3 times over the summer for someone from Walmart (different stores) and each time they offered entirely unprompted a naloxone/Narcan OD kit...from a pharmacist! You'd die from liver failure before you died from Tylenol products with a small amount of codeine. Convenience stores generally now only sell ginger nausea medicine (things like Gravol can be "abused"). Products such as Robaxin are similarly harder to find now, because apparently if you take enough you can get "high". There are other examples as well. It's ridiculous now.
It's an annoyance to have to deal with this sort of shit...but since blaming the people who cause problems is very taboo, what does society do in order to reverse these problems? Besides "keep giving them everything they ask for besides human dignity...and a job + free place to live" it is perplexing how we got here and how we fix it. Is it even possible to ever retvrn to a point in which we are able to look at people in the worst situations and either push them in the direction of improvement, or at least criminalize things again? I don't see how we can improve our society at a local or national level when we have judges that rule that people can legally create a slum and provide "safe use injection supplies" out of a dirty broken refrigerator while "outreach" workers hand out free cigarettes from a red party cup. All the while said slum has prevented the development of a much alluded to, promised, funded and developed intermodal train station in the heart of a region that'll house a million people soon enough.
Like, what's the answer besides stuffing them in garden sheds, which seems to be the best and only tangible solution Waterloo Region has been able to figure out? Affordable housing isn't an answer here, because the rhizomes of the problem are much deeper. That they can't seem to keep a garden shed in order illustrates that.