This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.

Education is a very different story which ends with letting people make their own decisions after (hopefully) having more information about realistic outcomes.

I don't personally want a government preventing me from making my own choices. That line is blurry for sure, like if my decision directly negatively impacts someone else for example. But if packing up and riding the rails or sleeping in parks primarily impacts only me, the government shouldn't be able to stop me because they "know" its the wrong choice.

Well said here.

We don't have a honest discussion about the progression of addiction so the choices are not visible, until later.

The first beer is the most critical choice, yet it's made for us (in 99% of the cases) by our peers. So is it a choice really?

We're routine (addiction) prone herd animals and as long as we pretend otherwise (free will and the likes) we're stuck in repeating this.

> you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect

In retrospect? It's really not hard to determine before the fact that petty crime is not a road to good things.

We have ways to prevent people from going down this path. It's called enforcement. He was more or less allowed to steal and sleep in the parks. If there was strict enforcement, this wouldn't have been a medium term viable option. Doesn't have to be throw the person in prison for the rest of their life, but either accept help, go through the criminal justice system or figure out another way to contribute to society in a positive way. It sounds like the author at any point could have found some kind of employment, but chose this because it was viable. And society wasn't doing him any favors by looking the other way

I don't think humans are so straight forward. We have an instinctive nature to rebel that's not going anywhere, and we're all just so absurdly different, so what works for one person or family, may fail spectacularly for another. My opinion is that all you can do is be honest about things. DARE, for instance, ended up resulting in more kids trying drugs after all was said and done. It relied heavily on exaggeration and misleading statements - a lot like contemporary politics. And once people realized some of what was said was lies, the entire foundation fell apart and it all became seen as a joke.

So for instance I'll happily tell my kids that marijuana is enjoyable and relatively harmless in and of itself, yet you end up smelling bad, it ruins motivation, hurts your short-term memory, gives you the munchies, and is just generally is self-escapism, like most drugs. Gotta work on my exact pitch there, but that's the spirit of the point - honesty. They will make plenty of bad decisions in life, but I'd rather that with each one they see I was right, rather than see that I was lying or exaggerating - driving them further away from everything else I taught them.