This article exhibits many of the damages that inflammatory hype around drug use and illegalization have created. Would the events in this story have been better or more appropriate if the person was drinking? Or smoking? Those are legal. But if someone walked in and started smoking, or was drunk, and was asked to leave but didn’t, we probably would’ve never heard about it.
The base truth is that the person is rude and out of control. It does not matter why. If the person had been lighting up a cigar and telling everyone else to fuck off, we’d have been more appropriately focusing on the ways in which that person sucked and was rude, rather than inappropriately “blaming” the cigar. (Although, given how downhill this society’s morals have gone, the significant portion of dumbass “I can do whatever I want cuz I’m Murican” traditionalists would have glorified the jerk because he was smoking a cigar, “doing whatever he wanted”.)
It exemplifies the problem that drug use continues to be put in a place of “criminality”, where alcohol drinking is not. And, we have seen what happens with alcohol, at least, when it was criminalized. Not much different with criminalizing drugs. (Some difference, perhaps; but really the underlying emphasis should always be on the person, and the society, and what about either or the interaction of the two is causing a person to be perceived as or to actually be out of control.)
It ignores the societal, resource-control problem that this person felt the need to go into a local business for shelter to do drugs, rather than just being able to have one’s own place to do that (however much of a hovel it might be). The implications of the article should instead point at a society and people who are okay with the few rich buying as much land up as possible for the sake of profiteering, so they hold that land over everyone else’s head to “rent” it out, so they can continue making a profit doing nothing particularly useful for society in general, while also making it harder and harder for “regular” people to reasonably afford a place of their own to live (rather than being forced to become feudal serfs renting from feudal lords) — or even that one human has to pay another to be allowed any small amount of land to live on.
The problem is with the law, if a person is unable to handle the customer directly on own property, and if police won’t or can’t respond (out policing traffic for “speeders”, most likely, to make their wage quota). Police officers don’t need reasons to arrest people for doing drugs. Not any more than they need reasons to arrest people for smoking or drinking. i.e. There is no excuse to arrest people for those things alone. There is, however, sufficient reason to arrest a person for not leaving when told to.
It’s furthermore indicative of the problems with wrongminded society and wrongminded law that the person running the business can’t kick the person out themselves — after asking them to and giving them a reasonable chance to leave of their own accord — reasonable meaning enough time to pick up belongings and walk out of the door and away. Why does the law need any more than that? And there is no reason that such behavior can’t be severely punished by the courts, if police have to get involved, to make it absolutely clear that is not okay. Is mention of or reference to drugs required at all to make that happen? You behave in truly, validly inappropriate ways, you get punished.
But, meanwhile, society better make damn sure it is properly set up so that sane, rational people feel no need to behave such. (i.e. Black protesters sitting in at white restaurant counters is an example of society not being right. It is not an example of people (the black people) behaving inappropriately and needing to be punished. People taking the guns they validly own and rising up against the tyrannies of feudal lords who invalidly hold land over the heads of everyone else such that they can’t make reasonable, safe livings is also an example of society not being right and being abusive and needing correction. It is not an example of people needing to be punished (but, yes, the invalidly, excessively, grossly wealthy will employ propaganda and guile to paint the picture to bend societal will and abuse the law such that imbecilic “duty-doing” traditionalists will think the “rebels” need to be punished).)
As for the rest, yes, that sucks — cleaning up human shit around their premises; people being afraid to come to it; especially the break in and theft. Some amount of that would be helped by society fixing the land/property/rent profiteering bullshit, and focusing more appropriately on fixing root issues rather than topical symptoms, so that all the other problems down the line can be fixed. Regardless, there is no excuse for the break in and theft. That should be punished to the extremes of the law, most likely regardless of why it happened. But, overall, the fact that the story and the people involved bring in all the other largely irrelevant aspects instead of solely the theft and break-in, and focus on that (drug use, and rude people), instead of focusing on the true crimes (theft, and that the law is stupidly defined) displays skewed emphases of catty, gossipy, petty people who created the society and laws that made drug use and homelessness the problem that it is.
Maybe if police were busy following up on people who steal, or who are actually being abusively unruly in direct interaction with others, rather than sitting along highways to catch horrible, horrible speeders in order to squeeze money out of them to make up shortfalls in their paychecks because people refuse to pay sufficient taxes and to manage those who administer those taxes while hypocritically pasting their stupid kneejerk little grey and blue flags all over their cars giving lip service to how much they support police… maybe then we’d have fewer of these problems.
It’s complex, yes. And lots of judgment and continued effort by human beings to be moral and to define valid moralities is required. But that judgment and effort should be pointed at much more important aspects of this than it generally is.