“I can’t fucking do nothing,” he said, holding his only possessions—a newspaper, a carton of milk, and a sweater. “My body’s just so far gone. And nobody is helping me at this point.”
I live on Vancouver Island, Canada where we’ve been witnessing this madness for years. Our government’s drug policies to allow for open drug use in our neig…
“I can’t fucking do nothing,” he said, holding his only possessions—a newspaper, a carton of milk, and a sweater. “My body’s just so far gone. And nobody is helping me at this point.”
I live on Vancouver Island, Canada where we’ve been witnessing this madness for years. Our government’s drug policies to allow for open drug use in our neighbourhoods is now carrying over to hospitals where these idiots are allowed to carry on taking their drugs and hospital staff are being told not tp intervene.
This rot needs to be cut out so it won’t fester and spread. But the first step is to reject this societal acceptance of celebrating victimization, and acknowledge that the pursuit of excellence, and a healthy life through hard work, and diligence, must once again prevail. Sheeple gotta snap out of it.
I support full scale drug legalization. Government's role is to prevent crimes, not protect me from myself.
BUT
That doesn't mean government still doesn't have a role to provide order. There's a big difference between someone smoking a joint or doing a line in the privacy of their own home, and doing it on the street corner.
Or in a hospital room. Or shooting up on a school playground. We're not there yet, to uphold individual freedoms over the greater good of our community. We've seen the devastation of families and neighbourhoods based on this scourge, and until we can get it under control, it should be not be tolerated.
What’s the answer—to cut off the supply as much as possible and force them to withdraw? Will that automatically lead to sobriety and better choices? I’m asking, not challenging. I’d love to hear some practical ideas for rehabilitating these poor souls. My anecdotal evidence to the contrary is a friend who went to the methadone clinic but also developed a simultaneous drinking problem. She was a gifted person who seemed to not be able to cope without drugs. And the magnitude of this crisis is stunning. We need practical, workable ideas. Anyone got any?
Long term mandatory rehab or prison. If they are found to need other medications for psychiatric disorders then usually this is discovered in a long term rehab as they have psychologists visit and asses patients. In long term facilities they are given jobs within the facility and have full schedules with meetings, group therapy and other ppl in recovery who will call them on their bullshit.
Children need to be hammered with the certain knowledge that drugs destroy and kill. If these ppl had to face the hard consequences of their choices they might rally themselves to seek recovery. Many do but now they are accommodated in addiction so yeah, NOT gonna work.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. Ppl who find recovery must find an external power to tap into. Some find faith(not a specific single faith) some see the twelve step groups as a greater power. Whatever works but it must be from without.
Many who find recovery have relapses but some survive to start over. Some don’t.
The problem with addicts is that... they're addicts. It is a VERY difficult problem to crack. Extremely difficult. It requires at least as much money invested as we invested in the drug war over the years. And addiction will never go away. It will always be with us. Addicts will lie, cheat, steal, game the system, and laugh, cry, and destroy themselves.
The stronger the drugs, the faster the decline happens as a general rule.
Treatment or institutionalization. Dry up the supply as much as possible by closing the border, locking up/executing producers/dealers. Zero tolerance for sleeping on the streets, public drug use/defecation/sex. Read Michael Shellenberger's substack or books. Open air drug markets, cheap supply, no consequences have drawn drug abusers from across the country to places like San Francisco/LA and local neighborhoods like Kensington, causing a problem that feeds on itself.
Even if no one has a better idea, unless there is data to support that this type of program does substantial good (which I doubt), then such programs should be ended immediately.
I took 60 to 80 mg of Oxy daily for about 3 years; first to deal with chronic pain, and then because I liked it. When I decided to stop, my doctor gave me Suboxone for a few weeks and it was pretty painless. It's absolutely possible to quit with the proper support, but very hard to face withdrawal without it. The lost souls on the street could have decent lives, but we're leaving them to rot. I've known several addicts and they're not bad people, just too soft for the harshness of the real world.
Glad you are better now. Addiction can be so debilitating. To me, that’s why it is so critical treatment needs to be mandated in some capacity. Yet here in cities like Denver, the new-ish mayor and his team have decided that rapidly shuffling these folks into free housing (former hotels the city bought for millions of dollars apiece) is the solution with virtually no worthwhile treatment practices in place.
My best guess is to create some sort of Outward Bound program. Get them far away from the things that are enabling them. Have them spend weeks just walking/hiking from place to place where they know no one. If the scenery is familiar, they'll go back to what they've done. Change the scenery a bunch and many will find a chance.
That sometimes works. But you can’t save everyone, and we don’t owe addicts a lifetime of sympathy and resources at the expense of others who are working hard and honestly. Just as with COVID, our leaders are not stepping back and assessing the full consequences of their policies. That leaves activists with an outsized influence that their beliefs do not warrant.
Michael Shellenberger wrote an entire book on how to fix this in San Fransicko. You can also listen to podcasts he's done about the solution to this problem. It was like this in the Netherlands in the 80s and 90s and they figured it out. We just don't have the stomach yet to do what needs to be done. It takes a carrot and stick approach.
Your "anecdotal evidence" isn't relevant here. I'm less interested in finding a solution than I am about wasting billions of taxpayer dollars by constantly keeping this laser focused on those who choose drugs. Maybe ask at the top, why drugs are being allowed to flow unencumbered into this country, might be a first step, and putting government officials in jail for allowing this to happen (it's called accountability). Next, focus on the hard data where improvements have been made in reducing this plague in communities. The welfare state mentality has to end.
Its relevance is to illustrate that drugs fuck people up so badly that someone smart enough to have gotten into medical school can—when in their relentless grip—focus with a hellbent determination on flushing their lives down the toilet. And there are always going to be those people. I care less where they end up than that they’re not ruining other people’s neighborhoods. But presumably some addicts *could* get clean and turn their lives around. And I agree 100% that cutting off the incoming supply is step #1. I very much like the idea of prosecuting those who have enabled it with bad policy, but being a cynic, I doubt its feasibility.
Bill Maher, in conversation with Matthew Perry, said something to the effect of, "doesn't matter how rich you are, if you're an addict, you're the dealer's bitch. "
If that's true, and it seems likely, the only way out is to get far away from it.
It is relevant. Unless you’ve known someone struggling with addiction, you can’t understand the problem. You have to watch someone - someone who wants to stop, someone with everything to live for - slow motion kill themselves to know how hard it is to quit. Really, we have to prevent people getting addicted in the first place and that’s a huge societal effort.
I don’t have to know anyone who’s struggling to understand that this
problem shouldn’t affect the daily lives of children getting stabbed by dirty needles on playgrounds on a regular basis or
Small business owners dealing with feces and smashed in windows on regularly. Who’s helping THEM? Stop asking us to fund your drug habit. We have all been affected by this plague. Take back our streets, and our neighbourhoods first, rather than the other way around.
I never said that if you actually understand - intimately - what addiction is, you think we don’t need to change what we’re doing. It’s because I understand addiction that I’ve been critical of allowing tent cities to form in the first place. Our friend, a mother of three with a large loving extended family, managed to be clean when she was away from her friends who used. When she got back into contact with them - or, worse, when they got back into contact with her - she invariably relapsed. It took decades, but she died of her disease. Her daughter became an addict and died young of her disease, leaving a small daughter. Our friend’s older daughter struggles and lost custody of her children. She lied endlessly to our family who supported her. And these were people with educations and means. It’s a horrifying disease and allowing addicts to live among other addicts with ample access to their drug, with a community full-on supporting their habit, is the opposite of compassion. I look at those encampments and imagine her in there and it makes my stomach knot and my blood boil. To be told shutting the encampments down is cruel makes me want to hurt somebody.
Exactly. I am in NO WAY condoning the enabling of this shit. My own niece was an addict for a while; my brother had to ban her from visiting her grandparents because she would steal anything from their houses to support her habit. She ended up in prison and finally got clean there. Out now and AFAIK staying clean--but she lost custody of her children.
And that is why I think hard-labor chain gangs would be an excellent way for dealers to spend their time in prison.
For one thing, it should not be a choice of treatment or jail. It should be jail AND treatment. Get them off the street and away from people they threaten, but have well-funded progams to end their addictions. Truly, no treatment can cure someone who doesn't want to stop using, but it can help those who do. And those who won't quit can stay in jail.
Maybe instead of funding a proxy war in Ukraine we can fund actual treatment for addiction. No one aspires to become an addict. Most are ppl suffering with other psychological problems or trauma.
That must not be seen as an excuse. Maybe screening kids better for addictive tendencies and or emotional instability. Mental health is way more impactful than previously thought.
I think a good start would be to divert all the money going to these non-profit "harm reduction" groups from the CDC, to the treatment programs and law enforcement.
Even if we wanted to, where I live, we don’t have the capacity to jail even half our street drug users. You’d have to have massive investment. Like you said, well-funded. But where’s that going to come from?
They seem to be able to find funding to send to Ukraine on a regular basis. Maybe if we took back some of that to fund the solution to our problems that are literally on our doorstep.
They - and this includes plenty of Republicans - want money for Ukraine so the authoritarian, corrupt, murdering Putin - with Chinese support - doesn’t profit from his war of aggression. I’m wondering what you’d like to see happen there.
Please, the war in Ukraine would have ended after a month without US politicians making sure to keep the conflict alive. Putin wants what Russia sees as theirs, the part of Ukraine where most people consider themselves Russians anyway. I believe Trump didn't exaggerate for once when he said he could end the war in 24 hours, it's basically that simple to find a deal that both countries could live with. I can't believe people in the West have forgotten everything we learned during and after the cold war about the long term interests of nations like Russia.
I'd rather the US not have told Zelensky to not negotiate very early on. Also it would have better if after promising Russia we would not expand NATO eastward ( James Baker said that back in 1990) we would not have kept expanding it. Given we are 34 trillion in debt ( and rising) I'd say we can't afford to be the World's police force. Given we can get ZERO audits of where the money goes, I'd like to have seen some accountability for my tax dollars. So what I'd like to see happen there is a negotiated settlement where people stop dying.
I’m curious when you heard Zelensky wavering on full resistance and zero capitulation to Russia’s invasion of his sovereign country. When did the U.S. have to urge him to keep fighting?
Consider this: Mexico invades the U.S. claiming the entirety of Texas was annexed illegally, that it has always been part of Mexico, and that the 42% of Texans who are Hispanic want to be part of Mexico. When our allies get tired of helping us, for the sake of peace the U.S. should say to the Mexican dictator (who regularly has his opposition murdered, on his own soil and that of any other country, plus has convinced his people via his vast, state-owned propaganda machine, that he’s protecting Mexico from America’s Nazi government, plus has his eyes on New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California), okay fine, you can have 40,000 square miles running from the eastern border with Louisiana and the Gulf, including Houston, with a generous carve-out for Corpus Christi. and, yes, you can keep the land south of San Antonio that you violently annexed 10 years ago, during which operation you shot down a commercial aircraft, killing all 269 people aboard including 62 Americans, but whatever. Like, you’d support that? Or what?
Editing to add that the question of the timing and manner of offering Ukraine NATO membership, the finances, and gauging when Ukraine might just have to cry uncle even though that’s a truly terrible outcome - for Ukraine, NATO, and the U.S. - are hard, hard, hard. There are absolutely legitimate arguments on all sides. Again, I’m still on the side that says the civilized western democracies of the world should do all they can to kick Putin’s lying, thieving, murdering, hacking, internationally meddling, imperialist ass back to kingdom come.
The question of whether preventing the anti-American nuclear power, Russia, in violently annexing great portions of its sovereign neighbor and American ally is a legitimate one. But I - along with many Republicans - come down on the side of not letting that lying, murdering, expansionist, corrupt, kleptocratic dictator win. And of not letting down the ally that’s fought so valiantly to protect itself from our number one enemy on the world stage.
they do here. We have entire units specifically for drug rehabilitation separate from general population (British Columbia). And yet this is the same province where these failed policies are implemented. There's no incentive to quit, especially when government agencies encourage anyone to light up with their free supply.
I'd say first of all, make there be consequences, put them in jail if that's what it takes. Stop kids from trying drugs to begin with; for all the haughty laughter from the supposed "smart" left, Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" reinforced that, societally, drug use was unacceptable.
“I can’t fucking do nothing,” he said, holding his only possessions—a newspaper, a carton of milk, and a sweater. “My body’s just so far gone. And nobody is helping me at this point.”
I live on Vancouver Island, Canada where we’ve been witnessing this madness for years. Our government’s drug policies to allow for open drug use in our neighbourhoods is now carrying over to hospitals where these idiots are allowed to carry on taking their drugs and hospital staff are being told not tp intervene.
This rot needs to be cut out so it won’t fester and spread. But the first step is to reject this societal acceptance of celebrating victimization, and acknowledge that the pursuit of excellence, and a healthy life through hard work, and diligence, must once again prevail. Sheeple gotta snap out of it.
And yet the NDP remain high in the polls. I guess East Hastings is what B.C. residents want.
I support full scale drug legalization. Government's role is to prevent crimes, not protect me from myself.
BUT
That doesn't mean government still doesn't have a role to provide order. There's a big difference between someone smoking a joint or doing a line in the privacy of their own home, and doing it on the street corner.
Or in a hospital room. Or shooting up on a school playground. We're not there yet, to uphold individual freedoms over the greater good of our community. We've seen the devastation of families and neighbourhoods based on this scourge, and until we can get it under control, it should be not be tolerated.
What’s the answer—to cut off the supply as much as possible and force them to withdraw? Will that automatically lead to sobriety and better choices? I’m asking, not challenging. I’d love to hear some practical ideas for rehabilitating these poor souls. My anecdotal evidence to the contrary is a friend who went to the methadone clinic but also developed a simultaneous drinking problem. She was a gifted person who seemed to not be able to cope without drugs. And the magnitude of this crisis is stunning. We need practical, workable ideas. Anyone got any?
Long term mandatory rehab or prison. If they are found to need other medications for psychiatric disorders then usually this is discovered in a long term rehab as they have psychologists visit and asses patients. In long term facilities they are given jobs within the facility and have full schedules with meetings, group therapy and other ppl in recovery who will call them on their bullshit.
Children need to be hammered with the certain knowledge that drugs destroy and kill. If these ppl had to face the hard consequences of their choices they might rally themselves to seek recovery. Many do but now they are accommodated in addiction so yeah, NOT gonna work.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. Ppl who find recovery must find an external power to tap into. Some find faith(not a specific single faith) some see the twelve step groups as a greater power. Whatever works but it must be from without.
Many who find recovery have relapses but some survive to start over. Some don’t.
The problem with addicts is that... they're addicts. It is a VERY difficult problem to crack. Extremely difficult. It requires at least as much money invested as we invested in the drug war over the years. And addiction will never go away. It will always be with us. Addicts will lie, cheat, steal, game the system, and laugh, cry, and destroy themselves.
The stronger the drugs, the faster the decline happens as a general rule.
Treatment or institutionalization. Dry up the supply as much as possible by closing the border, locking up/executing producers/dealers. Zero tolerance for sleeping on the streets, public drug use/defecation/sex. Read Michael Shellenberger's substack or books. Open air drug markets, cheap supply, no consequences have drawn drug abusers from across the country to places like San Francisco/LA and local neighborhoods like Kensington, causing a problem that feeds on itself.
Even if no one has a better idea, unless there is data to support that this type of program does substantial good (which I doubt), then such programs should be ended immediately.
I took 60 to 80 mg of Oxy daily for about 3 years; first to deal with chronic pain, and then because I liked it. When I decided to stop, my doctor gave me Suboxone for a few weeks and it was pretty painless. It's absolutely possible to quit with the proper support, but very hard to face withdrawal without it. The lost souls on the street could have decent lives, but we're leaving them to rot. I've known several addicts and they're not bad people, just too soft for the harshness of the real world.
Glad you are better now. Addiction can be so debilitating. To me, that’s why it is so critical treatment needs to be mandated in some capacity. Yet here in cities like Denver, the new-ish mayor and his team have decided that rapidly shuffling these folks into free housing (former hotels the city bought for millions of dollars apiece) is the solution with virtually no worthwhile treatment practices in place.
I'm glad you're better now. Congrats!
Cutting off the supply is a wonderful idea.
My best guess is to create some sort of Outward Bound program. Get them far away from the things that are enabling them. Have them spend weeks just walking/hiking from place to place where they know no one. If the scenery is familiar, they'll go back to what they've done. Change the scenery a bunch and many will find a chance.
You’ll just unleash that BS on rural folks. They need to be reprogrammed first.
That sometimes works. But you can’t save everyone, and we don’t owe addicts a lifetime of sympathy and resources at the expense of others who are working hard and honestly. Just as with COVID, our leaders are not stepping back and assessing the full consequences of their policies. That leaves activists with an outsized influence that their beliefs do not warrant.
Michael Shellenberger wrote an entire book on how to fix this in San Fransicko. You can also listen to podcasts he's done about the solution to this problem. It was like this in the Netherlands in the 80s and 90s and they figured it out. We just don't have the stomach yet to do what needs to be done. It takes a carrot and stick approach.
Yes, and Zurich tried “needle park” for awhile. Unlike here, when they saw the effects were mostly negative, they shut it down.
Thanks! I’ll pick up his book.
Keep illegal drugs illegal. Incarcerate drug dealers and cartels, and throw away the key.
Siphon off money we send to Iran who chant "Death to America"
Build more hospitals with psyche care and treat the addicts.
Put a hard stop on tent cities.
Are chain gangs still a thing? Because I feel like they should be a thing for drug dealers.
Maybe we should send the dealers to the Philippines. They seem to have an effective way of dealing with drug dealers.
Your "anecdotal evidence" isn't relevant here. I'm less interested in finding a solution than I am about wasting billions of taxpayer dollars by constantly keeping this laser focused on those who choose drugs. Maybe ask at the top, why drugs are being allowed to flow unencumbered into this country, might be a first step, and putting government officials in jail for allowing this to happen (it's called accountability). Next, focus on the hard data where improvements have been made in reducing this plague in communities. The welfare state mentality has to end.
Its relevance is to illustrate that drugs fuck people up so badly that someone smart enough to have gotten into medical school can—when in their relentless grip—focus with a hellbent determination on flushing their lives down the toilet. And there are always going to be those people. I care less where they end up than that they’re not ruining other people’s neighborhoods. But presumably some addicts *could* get clean and turn their lives around. And I agree 100% that cutting off the incoming supply is step #1. I very much like the idea of prosecuting those who have enabled it with bad policy, but being a cynic, I doubt its feasibility.
Bill Maher, in conversation with Matthew Perry, said something to the effect of, "doesn't matter how rich you are, if you're an addict, you're the dealer's bitch. "
If that's true, and it seems likely, the only way out is to get far away from it.
It is relevant. Unless you’ve known someone struggling with addiction, you can’t understand the problem. You have to watch someone - someone who wants to stop, someone with everything to live for - slow motion kill themselves to know how hard it is to quit. Really, we have to prevent people getting addicted in the first place and that’s a huge societal effort.
I don’t have to know anyone who’s struggling to understand that this
problem shouldn’t affect the daily lives of children getting stabbed by dirty needles on playgrounds on a regular basis or
Small business owners dealing with feces and smashed in windows on regularly. Who’s helping THEM? Stop asking us to fund your drug habit. We have all been affected by this plague. Take back our streets, and our neighbourhoods first, rather than the other way around.
I never said that if you actually understand - intimately - what addiction is, you think we don’t need to change what we’re doing. It’s because I understand addiction that I’ve been critical of allowing tent cities to form in the first place. Our friend, a mother of three with a large loving extended family, managed to be clean when she was away from her friends who used. When she got back into contact with them - or, worse, when they got back into contact with her - she invariably relapsed. It took decades, but she died of her disease. Her daughter became an addict and died young of her disease, leaving a small daughter. Our friend’s older daughter struggles and lost custody of her children. She lied endlessly to our family who supported her. And these were people with educations and means. It’s a horrifying disease and allowing addicts to live among other addicts with ample access to their drug, with a community full-on supporting their habit, is the opposite of compassion. I look at those encampments and imagine her in there and it makes my stomach knot and my blood boil. To be told shutting the encampments down is cruel makes me want to hurt somebody.
Exactly. I am in NO WAY condoning the enabling of this shit. My own niece was an addict for a while; my brother had to ban her from visiting her grandparents because she would steal anything from their houses to support her habit. She ended up in prison and finally got clean there. Out now and AFAIK staying clean--but she lost custody of her children.
And that is why I think hard-labor chain gangs would be an excellent way for dealers to spend their time in prison.
Thank you for getting it.
You too
For one thing, it should not be a choice of treatment or jail. It should be jail AND treatment. Get them off the street and away from people they threaten, but have well-funded progams to end their addictions. Truly, no treatment can cure someone who doesn't want to stop using, but it can help those who do. And those who won't quit can stay in jail.
Maybe instead of funding a proxy war in Ukraine we can fund actual treatment for addiction. No one aspires to become an addict. Most are ppl suffering with other psychological problems or trauma.
That must not be seen as an excuse. Maybe screening kids better for addictive tendencies and or emotional instability. Mental health is way more impactful than previously thought.
Jail does nothing. They will get out and start using again. Drug treatment with trauma therapy is the best answer.
I think a good start would be to divert all the money going to these non-profit "harm reduction" groups from the CDC, to the treatment programs and law enforcement.
Even if we wanted to, where I live, we don’t have the capacity to jail even half our street drug users. You’d have to have massive investment. Like you said, well-funded. But where’s that going to come from?
They seem to be able to find funding to send to Ukraine on a regular basis. Maybe if we took back some of that to fund the solution to our problems that are literally on our doorstep.
They - and this includes plenty of Republicans - want money for Ukraine so the authoritarian, corrupt, murdering Putin - with Chinese support - doesn’t profit from his war of aggression. I’m wondering what you’d like to see happen there.
Please, the war in Ukraine would have ended after a month without US politicians making sure to keep the conflict alive. Putin wants what Russia sees as theirs, the part of Ukraine where most people consider themselves Russians anyway. I believe Trump didn't exaggerate for once when he said he could end the war in 24 hours, it's basically that simple to find a deal that both countries could live with. I can't believe people in the West have forgotten everything we learned during and after the cold war about the long term interests of nations like Russia.
I'd rather the US not have told Zelensky to not negotiate very early on. Also it would have better if after promising Russia we would not expand NATO eastward ( James Baker said that back in 1990) we would not have kept expanding it. Given we are 34 trillion in debt ( and rising) I'd say we can't afford to be the World's police force. Given we can get ZERO audits of where the money goes, I'd like to have seen some accountability for my tax dollars. So what I'd like to see happen there is a negotiated settlement where people stop dying.
I’m curious when you heard Zelensky wavering on full resistance and zero capitulation to Russia’s invasion of his sovereign country. When did the U.S. have to urge him to keep fighting?
Consider this: Mexico invades the U.S. claiming the entirety of Texas was annexed illegally, that it has always been part of Mexico, and that the 42% of Texans who are Hispanic want to be part of Mexico. When our allies get tired of helping us, for the sake of peace the U.S. should say to the Mexican dictator (who regularly has his opposition murdered, on his own soil and that of any other country, plus has convinced his people via his vast, state-owned propaganda machine, that he’s protecting Mexico from America’s Nazi government, plus has his eyes on New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California), okay fine, you can have 40,000 square miles running from the eastern border with Louisiana and the Gulf, including Houston, with a generous carve-out for Corpus Christi. and, yes, you can keep the land south of San Antonio that you violently annexed 10 years ago, during which operation you shot down a commercial aircraft, killing all 269 people aboard including 62 Americans, but whatever. Like, you’d support that? Or what?
Editing to add that the question of the timing and manner of offering Ukraine NATO membership, the finances, and gauging when Ukraine might just have to cry uncle even though that’s a truly terrible outcome - for Ukraine, NATO, and the U.S. - are hard, hard, hard. There are absolutely legitimate arguments on all sides. Again, I’m still on the side that says the civilized western democracies of the world should do all they can to kick Putin’s lying, thieving, murdering, hacking, internationally meddling, imperialist ass back to kingdom come.
We won't ever getting an accounting. Ukraine is the largest washing machine in the world.
Can you provide evidence for that?
....all the trillions of dollars poured into a conflict with little to no importance for US interests?
The question of whether preventing the anti-American nuclear power, Russia, in violently annexing great portions of its sovereign neighbor and American ally is a legitimate one. But I - along with many Republicans - come down on the side of not letting that lying, murdering, expansionist, corrupt, kleptocratic dictator win. And of not letting down the ally that’s fought so valiantly to protect itself from our number one enemy on the world stage.
Editing to add a link to a civil, informed debate on this topic between two men who diametrically disagree. https://carnegieendowment.org/programs/americanstatecraft/debatingnato
Do they get any treatment in jail, or do they have to withdraw cold turkey?
My experience is that it varies wildly by jurisdiction here in the US, which is a problem.
they do here. We have entire units specifically for drug rehabilitation separate from general population (British Columbia). And yet this is the same province where these failed policies are implemented. There's no incentive to quit, especially when government agencies encourage anyone to light up with their free supply.
I'd say first of all, make there be consequences, put them in jail if that's what it takes. Stop kids from trying drugs to begin with; for all the haughty laughter from the supposed "smart" left, Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" reinforced that, societally, drug use was unacceptable.