House-sitting, Ocean Beach

I've been enjoying the beach. Driving back to the Tenderloin made me angry... the sight of numerous people passed out on the sidewalks, the usual crackheads shuffling around.

These people don't need to be in prison, but they certainly make the sidewalks seem dangerous -- even though they're fairly harmless.

I've done a little thinking about what it is that disturbs me. I come from a place where people help one another out. But a drug addict is an insatiable hole in humanity. As a healthcare worker, I feel the pharmaceutical industry should be feeding that hole, rather than the law enforcement and prison industries feeding off of it. As a human, my immediate response to someone passed out on the sidewalk is to help them out. But there is no helping those who must feed their addiction as a priority over food and shelter. The sidewalks are littered with their carcasses.

Maybe the answer is army cots... I'd just as soon see army cots littering the street as people sleeping on the concrete. Of course, if you gave a junkie an army cot, he would quickly sell it for a bit of smoke.