How sketchy and pervasive is your city's visible transient/drug addict situation?

[giallo]

^ Having Strathcona Park back is awesome. It's an amazing city park with so much to offer. I was just there at the Creative Arts Festival last Saturday, and it was nice seeing so many kids running around. That was not possible three years ago.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by giallo

^ Having Strathcona Park back is awesome. It's an amazing city park with so much to offer. I was just there at the Creative Arts Festival last Saturday, and it was nice seeing so many kids running around. That was not possible three years ago.

We had rented an industrial building on Raymur for the project, right across the park, and I wanted to be as close as possible so I rented something on the north side of Prior across the park too (shitty and overpriced, but proximity was my #1 factor, and it was the closest I found). My "commute" to our little factory was crossing the NE part of the park on foot.

The park was empty at first (March 2020) but then later that year the City expelled the people who were in Oppenheimer Park and they pretty much all moved to Strathcona, which became instantly full of tents. For the rest of my time in Vancouver, the park was unusable. Glad to see it's back to normal now

[bdurk]

As a native Philadelphian, the insight on the last page into tranq was very interesting to read about. Of course I've heard rumors about it but some real info was interesting to read about. I have noticed over time that drug user's sores seem to be getting worse and worse. I've seen multiple people with huge open wounds that look like something out of a war movie, it's horrifying. I've also seen videos of people's limbs just straight up falling off in Kensington. As for the actual drug problem here, obviously it's fairly visible, but not as bad as people think IMO. Kensington is actually nice in some parts and definitely turning around. I think Mayor Parker has a decent approach to the problem. She gets lots of criticism on her position on forced treatment. In my opinion, I honestly don't think it's that bad. Most of these people will probably never seek the treatment that they need. It's unfair to the families in Kensington who have these addicts come in from the suburbs and abuse their area and make it into a dump. I think that forced treatment may be the way to go after we see where the last decade of relaxed policies have gotten us. I am not super knowledgeable on the matter however, and would love to hear other people's opinions or examples where it has either worked or failed.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by bdurk

As a native Philadelphian, the insight on the last page into tranq was very interesting to read about. Of course I've heard rumors about it but some real info was interesting to read about. I have noticed over time that drug user's sores seem to be getting worse and worse. I've seen multiple people with huge open wounds that look like something out of a war movie, it's horrifying. I've also seen videos of people's limbs just straight up falling off in Kensington. As for the actual drug problem here, obviously it's fairly visible, but not as bad as people think IMO. Kensington is actually nice in some parts and definitely turning around. I think Mayor Parker has a decent approach to the problem. She gets lots of criticism on her position on forced treatment. In my opinion, I honestly don't think it's that bad. Most of these people will probably never seek the treatment that they need. It's unfair to the families in Kensington who have these addicts come in from the suburbs and abuse their area and make it into a dump. I think that forced treatment may be the way to go after we see where the last decade of relaxed policies have gotten us. I am not super knowledgeable on the matter however, and would love to hear other people's opinions or examples where it has either worked or failed.

Those wounds/sores if not caught early are basically untreatable/really hard to treat. The only real treatment if you have them past a certain point is removal of all of that tissue (up to the bone) or limb amputation, otherwise it slowly leads to sepsis and death. All those people you see with big open xylazine wounds are probably terminal, they have massive internal infection going on. The tissue you visibly see on the surface is necrotic, already dead. Those sores ooze smelly yellow puss, a combination of bacteria and your own internal tissue coming out (as most of the damage is actually happening internally, under the first layers of skin).
The only reason you don't see a lot more people on it, is because unlike heroin and cocaine, which you can technically do for decades, tranq kills you relatively fast. That first wave of pre-COVID tranq users, early adopters so to speak, is pretty much already dead. That is why you see drug death rates spike, its not the current users that are dying (unless OD), its mostly people who have been doing it for a few years. The human body is fairly resilient, and a lot of these tranq users get medical treatment for these wounds (cleaning and bandaging, etc), which prolongs the process and they take years to rot/die.
I personally think the tranq (xylazine+ fentanyl) epidemic will not last for decades (I think stuff like meth will outlast it), simply because the mortality rate is crazy high. I think these people will burn out in about a decade or two at most.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Gantz

Those wounds/sores if not caught early are basically untreatable/really hard to treat. The only real treatment if you have them past a certain point is removal of all of that tissue (up to the bone) or limb amputation, otherwise it slowly leads to sepsis and death.

Speaking of the bolded, xylazine can lead to limb amputation for another reason as well: The fact that a xylazine high lasts about six hours. If you pass out in such a way that you're cutting off the circulation to your arm for six hours, by the time you're back on your feet your arm is more or less already dead.

I haven't seen that personally yet, but I have seen some truly terrifying xylazine necrosis wounds. We had a person come for an intake whose collarbone was visible at the bottom of a huge oozing wound. We have another patient whose lower legs look like something from The Walking Dead.

[Steely Dan]

I saw a new (to me) zombie this morning as I was coming outta the Dunkin by my office. A shuffling dude hanging out by the exit with a big gnarly open festering wound on his head that stretched from his scalp down across the left side of his forehead all the way to his cheek.

Truly some scary-ass zombie looking shit. It's kinda hard to believe that people actually do this to themselves.

He wasn't fully tranq'ed out, though, cuz he was trying to ask passersby for money.

[ilcapo]

Would you say that the homeless and/or drugaddicts roaming the streets of lets say Skid Row or Kensington reflects the demography of the city fairly well?

One thing that struck me after doing some self research of Kensington was the lack of asian-americans in these camps. By the look of it theres a somewhat even mix of white/black/latino.

[Steely Dan]

^ Speaking very anecdotally from a Chicago perspective, I'd break down the macro demographics of our "street people" population (I'm not including the recent and massive influx of mainly south and central American migrants here) relative to our overall population like this:

Blacks - over-represented
Whites - about what you'd expect
Latinos - under-represented
Asians - can't recall ever seeing an Asian street person here


But keep in mind that Asians only make up about 7.5% of Chicago's population, so that group starts out pretty damn small relative to the other big three, who are all roughly 30% each.