Reply to How can we strengthen our laws.to have severely mentally ill in the District committed?

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Reply to "How can we strengthen our laws.to have severely mentally ill in the District committed?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's not that we need to have them committed -- it's that we have to pay for them. When Reagan was elected president, the streets became flooded with the mentally ill that society no longer wanted to pay for. You can thank Ronald Regan for ruining our society by pretending that NOT caring about others was a virtue rather than the other way around.[/quote]

You know Reagan hasn't been president since 1988? 31 years ago?

The rise of homeless in the 1970s and 1980s is directly linked to the explosion of hardcore drug usage in the United States, starting in the 1970s, which was exacerbated by the closing of the state mental institutions (at the demands of the liberals and the ACLU who wanted them replaced with group homes). The vast majority of the homeless have substantial drug abuse problems, which is usually why they are homeless and which is why the group home model was an utter failure.

I'm not sure how the problem can be effectively addressed. In 19th century America there was a national problem with vagrancy too, but the drug abuse of the time was alcohol (it was one of the major motivations behind the Prohibition, which few people know these days). I don't think most of us are unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless, but we are probably sensible enough to know that giving them money will only go directly to the drugs/alcohol, and it's difficult to institutionalize people against their will due to the civil rights laws. What to do? [/quote]

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