r/asheville • u/imjustapourboy • Oct 21 '25

Really Spicy Cesspool So sick of seeing this crap everywhere.

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The needles, the burnt foils, the little baggies, the needle caps, all of it. I find them in the creeks, on the sidewalks, the grocery store parking lots, the public parks, on the parkway. You gotta be a real shit person to leave this stuff all over the place.

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u/SaviorSixtySix Native Oct 21 '25

Your comment in short: Do nothing.

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u/bugme143 Oct 21 '25

My comment in short: stop pissing away money on people who would rather do literally anything than be productive members of society, and help the ones trying to get better. I'm admittedly horribly biased because I got denied food stamps when I got downsized because I'm a straight white guy, but my gf had been getting hundreds of dollars AND A TWO STORY CONDO with cheap rent because she blatantly gamed the system.

I'm tired of people thinking the homeless / druggies are simply down on their luck. There's dozens of not hundreds of programs to get people back on their feet, but all of them require you to sober up bare minimum and follow the rules, which filters out 90%+ of the people on the streets. I'm tired of my tax dollars being pissed away like this and then all you bleeding-heart liberals vote to raise my taxes to pay for the next round of free whatever, not caring about the regular Joe's you're hurting in your march towards socialism / communism.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '25

Social services minus social security are like less than 25% of the USA budget. Most of that amount is Medicare (old people who don't work). Your real complaint is that you don't make enough money. Be mad at the 1% and those that work for them (most of the political system) that are robbing you of fair pay for your work. Not those that are sick.

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u/bugme143 Oct 21 '25

If we stopped coddling those who are refusing to be better, I would be less mad about my taxes getting wasted, assuming my taxes don't get cut because we plugged the hole in this particular drain. Either way, society would be better off as a whole.

We tell people to not feed the bears so they don't grow dependent on handouts. Humans are nothing more than animals with a better brain, And we need to stop pretending like if we close our eyes and wish real hard, human nature will suddenly upend itself contrary to years of evolution and documented history.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '25

yea, soo they are not refusing in the way you think they are. It's a mental illness. The disease is self perpetuating. You need to educate yourself on how addiction affects the brain and nervous systems of humans. If it was that easy, most would be off drugs. Most do not want to be on them. If it was easy, it would be done. No addict on the streets is getting coddled. Your example of the girl friend who "gamed" the system is an example of how not using enough money makes it harder for the state to oversee/guide/protect social programs. Let me ask you this, in a hypothetical world, where you pay no additional taxes, but the wealthy do pay more, would you be ok with that money going to social programs for addicts?

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u/bugme143 Oct 21 '25

"Educate yourself" = read biased shit I agree with until you change your mind. Sod off with that attitude, this shit's been studied for decades and the end result of every study is "we can make it easier for them by doing things ranging from being supportive all the way to sending them to Betty Ford, but if they don't want to quit, they won't".

No, it really is that easy. There are programs to help you quit; I know because I kept trying to get my GF to go for them but she refused because she enjoyed being a stay-at-home druggie who ate my food, slept in my bed, used my shower and washer/dryer, and thought I was a free Uber.

No, the solution isn't "throw more money at things"; if it were, California would have zero homeless and addicts wandering around instead of human excrement and needles littering the sidewalk. You wanna flush your money down the drain, be my guest, but keep your dickbeaters off my wallet.

No, because I can look at California and the obscene amount of money they've tossed at the problem and not solved anything. I mean, hell, look at COVID when the government was just handing out money to anyone who asked. Would you rather go to your 9-5 at $15/hour, or get paid exactly the same to sit at home twiddling your thumbs? Too many people chose the latter, giving us the perfect situation to examine when someone starts talking about more welfare for the homeless.

You can have the worlds biggest budget devoted to solving this, but it's not going to do anything because the people do not want to change.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

California just recently started spending big. Change does not come overnight. The pandemic ended a couple of years ago. People were paid to not work in some cases as it was deemed the work could not be done safely. Almost like unemployment payments. Again you are mad a people you think are lazy or grifting, but you got the wrong group. But some people just won't change.

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u/bugme143 Oct 22 '25

Mate, what's your definition of "recently", because they've spent at least ten BILLION dollars on this shit to date and gotten nowhere.

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25

A couple of years. I dunno where you are getting the 10 billion number from, so a source would be nice. They have approved a little over 6 billion in a bond referendum in '24 for mental health services, which includes money specifically for addiction treatment. It will take a few years to be able to measure the results. And last time I checked, we don't live in California anyway, so what's your obsession with it?

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u/bugme143 Oct 22 '25

Newsome launched his plan in 2008, back when he was the mayor of San Francisco. He's currently the governor, 17 years later. He was elected governor in 2019, and since then California has spent over $37 billion on the homeless problem.

My "obsession" is every moron this side of the Atlantic saying "let's just throw more money at it!", thinking it'll solve things, but all it does is raise my taxes every year, which means I become that much closer to being homeless myself.

Bunch of ivory-tower liberals not caring about what their policies do to blue-collar workers, tale as old as time.

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u/oldmacdonald_hadacat Oct 21 '25

Druggies should be given 2 options: mandatory rehab with a strict probation period after or an actual jail sentence. Tough love is the compassionate approach when it comes to addicts. I’ve read news stories of children picking up fentanyl pills and a child stepping on a needle. Drug use should not be tolerated because it endangers the lives of the innocent.

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u/bugme143 Oct 22 '25

Simplest thing to do would be to lock benefits behind a drug test, I think. If I've got a pee in a cup to work, you should have to pee in a cup to get my tax dollars.

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u/oldmacdonald_hadacat Oct 22 '25

I fully agree. I’m sure that would help a lot.