Americans are Still Falling into Cultural Ruptures Left Over from the Sixties
I’m a hippie-loving native San Franciscan who saw her first Dead show in 1981. (Greek Theater it was awesome.)
A subsection of teens and young adults high on West Coast streets in the mid-2020s descend from 1960s drop-out drug culture. We have permissiveness baked into our cultural value system. Unsheltered addiction is not going to be fixed by housing policy; we need to reorient our laissez-fair ethos around consumption.
The trio in the first photo passed through San Francisco from Ohio in 1967. The young man on the right came from New York State almost sixty years later. Are politicians ready to talk about the replenishable cohort succumbing to our drug culture?
The Standard: Is ‘drug tourism’ driving homelessness — or is it an easy scapegoat? by David Sjostedt February 10, 2025
