Visually it’s still beautiful in parts, but the statistics show a lot of locals see what I have seen.
Large chunks of liberal America are being deserted for more conservative parts. Californians to Texas, New Yorkers to Florida.
It’s not hard to see why. The smell of weed on the streets is embarrassing.
The number of stoned people who work in retail and serve you, even more so.
The bloke in Victoria’s Secret who served us couldn’t add the prices together, and like so many of his colleagues was about two or three beats behind the rest of us, who simply stood waiting while he mumbled and jumbled his way through a simple underwear transaction.
Crime and security have suffered as a result. Every shop, and I mean literally every shop, has security and the level of costs they are incurring depends on what sort of shop they are.
A basic store has a security guard, possibly two. By the time you get to Neiman Marcus, a high-end department store, you are greeted as you go through the revolving doors by a woman in charge of an exceedingly large alsatian, who looks like he would: 1) bowl you over, and 2) then eat you alive.
Next to her is the large man carrying an even larger gun. Talk about setting the mood for some good retail therapy.
The signs on the windows by way of some sort of deterrent tell you whether the guards you are about to encounter are armed or not.
Now, it would be unfair to directly link all of this to the decriminalisation of weed, but there is no doubt it is part of the overall liberal view that controls a decent number of America’s larger cities.
It’s the slippery slope, and that was always the danger of the “vote yes” campaign when we had this debate a couple of years ago.
People do it anyway, people get criminal records and it’s not fair, nothing will change if you vote yes ... and so it went.
It was all a lie and San Francisco proves it.
The tragedy is we are only as strong as our weakest links, and that is essentially why we have laws and rules.
The moment you loosen those rules and laws, there will always be those who lead the charge to the bottom.
We travelled from San Francisco to New York, where similar drug laws are in play, and not surprisingly the smell is the same.
New York being New York, it’s difficult to work out how much of what you see on the streets is drug-fuelled or simply more broadly crime-related, but once again it’s loose around the edges.
The guards are everywhere and, in perhaps a lesson for Andrew Coster, the police are everywhere as well.
Unlike San Francisco, where a cop is hard to find, in New York there is a tangible safety to be felt from the fact that literally every corner has cops on it.
The sound of sirens is constant, and they take very seriously what for a big city you would think are minor matters.
The drunk, the drugged, the troubled and threatening all seem to be dealt with in an efficient fashion.
They may have got the drug laws wrong, but at least they are prepared to mop up the ensuing and entirely predictable mess.
So having lived it and seen it for a couple of weeks, the liberalisation of your basic drugs leads nowhere good.
If it was possible, before the next time we battle this legalisation debate, it’d be good if all those in favour could spend a week in San Fran to see the damage, the madness, the sadness, the pathetic and sorry state it’s become. I’d like to think a real-life example of where it leads would mean the vote was over before it started.
They have gone where about 48 per cent wanted us to go. The red flag couldn’t be more obvious.
