tl;dr, we need more time examples and research to say anything authoritative, but anecdotally things look very positive. One excerpt,
There have been no known major injuries of any community responder on the job so far, according to experts. And data suggests unarmed responders rarely need to call in police. In Eugene, Oregon, which has operated the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (known locally as CAHOOTS) response team since 1989, roughly 1% of their calls end up requiring police backup, according to the organization. Albuquerque responders have asked for police in 1% of calls, as of January. In Denver, the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) team had never called for police backup due to a safety issue as of July 2022, the most recent data available. In Durham, members of the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) reported feeling safe on 99% of calls.
Many communities are still sending alternative responders to a narrow subset of calls, and debating whether it’s safe to expand their scope. For example, many cities will only send community responders to situations that are outdoors or in public spaces. Programs are also divided on whether disputes between neighbors or within families are a proper place for crisis responders, or calls involving suicidal threats.
Passed out but not ODing or other medical emergency sounds like sleeping to me for all intents and purposes (like, passing out drunk isn’t the same as actual sleep for the person’s brain, but for society there’s no real difference)
I’m of the opinion that unless someone is an imminent threat to themselves or someone else we can’t be doing involuntary commitments, because a) involuntary commitments are almost always super traumatizing and set the person’s journey to mental health backwards a few steps (maybe they get the resources they need from being committed and they leave the facility a few steps ahead, but most often they’re just held and medicated for 72 hours and back out on to the street, and either way they’re entering the facility worse than they had been if they’re being forced into it), b) we just don’t have enough beds at these facilities (let alone staff and other rehabilitative resources)
Or, given my town, fentanyl addiction, not sleeping.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fentanyl-fold-drug-user-19561190.php
Being addicted to drugs is not a crime (although I should probably shut up before Thomas and Alito and the rest remember this ruling exists), and I can’t believe we’d have weaker civil rights protections for people who are not accused of crimes but just have a health issue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_v._California?wprov=sfla1
Moreover, throwing an addict into detox is just a waste - unless they want to be there they’re just going to use again as soon as they get out (and since they lost whatever tolerance they were used to having it’s more likely to lead to an OD)
Being addicted to drugs is a mental illness that needs treatment, treatment the addicts will not seek on their own.
If they don’t want treatment then treatment won’t work. There isn’t a magic pill to make someone not addicted.
So people should be involuntarily committed to a mental instituiton for passing out after using drugs? That’s insane.
Yup. They are self medicating a mental illness and not very well, they need professional help and won’t seek it out voluntarily.
If they were capable of making decisions for themselves they wouldn’t be in that state.
So what are you doing as a mod here then if you are pro-authoritarianism to the point that you think police and other non-medical government employees should be locking these people away in institutions and medicating them against their will because you all consider them a nuisance?
“Self medicating a mental illness and not very well” describes probably half the population of the country these days.
They shouldn’t be treated because they are nuisances, they should be treated because they are actively harming themselves and are incapable of getting treatment on their own.
Anyone who overeats because of emotional problems & refuses tharipy is doing the same. Should they be forcefully institutionalized?