Its not even that: it is the habit of confusing intentions with outcomes, one of the necessary consequences of which is learning to lie.
I am good, they say, because I care. I know I care because I particioate in approved symbolic actions.
And thats it. Thats the end of the process. It generally leads to aggressive delusions and hallucinations, but all are in support of the first and primary “moral” act, which is conflated with that persons srlf image, making attacks on even the stupidest and most transparently failed policies personal attacks on people whose egos were shaky to begin with. Small wonder emotionality instantly and always fills the room and makes rational dialogue—reality based policy debate oriented around measurable outcomes—impossible.
I was going to add this to my own comment but will add it to yours:
There are really two completely, or largely, separate issues here. First is whether or not a community openly filled with drug addicts, and everything that goes with that, is ir even COULD be good policy.
That answer is no. Its not healthy for the kids and families in that area, for many obvious reasons.
As this women rightly comments, this IS racism. If it were black folks they WOULD all be locked up. I do think this sort of racism is alive and well and completely embraced by the Left since it is THEIR racism. The logic is simple: since black people belong to them, they cant be racist. A common corrolary we see daily is that anyone who opposes them, even when they are obviously being racist, is racist.
It doesnt have to make sense. It just needs to touch the feels of folks. Its like ringing a Pavlovian Bell.
Another form of current anti-Black racism is unrestricted illegal immigration. Hundreds of thousands of people who are in effect trespassing in our country are being treated better than black folks, who in general will obviously be hurt first and worst by all this.
The Left doesnt care. Willful blindness and hypocrisy is part of the package. To belong, the first thing you have to rid yourself of is the habit—or even memory—of moral consistency.
The second issue is why so many people hate and destroy their lives, in such a rich country. We do have poverty and oppression, but both are so attenuated that most genuinely poor people, in genuinely oppressive countries, would laugh at this claim, and swap problems with those of our drug addicts in a heartbeat.
That issue is cultural and deeper than I will deal with here. It has to do with alienation, loss of community, and loss of a sense that the world makes sense.
Complex problems are complex. I hope you all agree with me on that. And solving complex problems requires taking them seriously, learning about them patiently over time, trying different solutions, watching, learning, then gradually improving.
Good ideas are not for sale at Amazon. Lives are not changed in a week or a month or a year. But BEGINNING that process can always start NOW for anyone, and for any community, society, or nation.
People use drugs/alcohol because they have mental health issues they are medicating away (anxiety, depression) or they have trauma they are trying to numb. Many are veterans.
They need therapy and substance abuse treatment. Harm reduction can keep them alive while they try to get sober but it was never meant to be a long term solution.
Yup. When the emotional paralysis of the leftist screeches and stooges is as disregarded as the cries of the real victims of these foolish policies then maybe rational thought, facts and sanity can be discussed and considered.
When the “help” is clearly NOT helping then it’s not achieving the objective of helping. Reality is just too much to bear for the self righteous. I hope for the sake of both addict and resident, that a return to a hand up and less hand out. Tough love and long term treatment do help.
Yeesh, these social justice warriors are very misinformed as well as blinded by their own delusions.
I am for calling addicts what they really are "junkies". Hunter Biden is their poster child except he took drugs in 5-star hotels and not on the street.
Did you laugh out loud at the objection to the term "clean"? "Our friends aren't dirty..." In fact, your friends are demonstrably dirty, as is the block they trashed.
You will notice she wasn't upset by the state of the neighborhood these creeps inhabit and what they have turned that neighborhood into. She was upset at the terminology used to describe these junkies. Typical glassy eyed left wing nutcase.
There is no reason to dehumanize and shame those with addictions. Having said that, there is no reason for them to be living on the streets with no consequences.
It’s not shaming them. They NEED to hear the truth and not have bad behavior excused. The continued indulgence and wallowing in self pity is them excusing themselves.
If you knew anything about addiction you’d know that. I do, been there and done that. The drugs lie to you and, wanting that high, you lie to yourself.
Only truth will set you free. Most addicts do have troubles they are escaping. Escaping responsibility for yourself isn’t acceptable and should not be pandered to.
Good on you. It takes will of character to kick an addiction. I used to be a heavy drinker and one day I quit, No AA, no interventions, I just quit and didn't have a drink for years.
I now, on advice of my cardiologist drink two glasses of red wine every night. I drink it while watching TV over about a four hour period. I don't even get a buzz. Every three or four months I will have a beer.
I am a freak of nature. when I make up my mind to do something, I do it. I don't vary from my self imposed path. By starving myself, I lost 35 pounds in three months. I now know what an anorexic person feels like.
The difference between me and an addict is, once I quit drinking, I didn't crave a drink, ever. Alcohol is a drug.
There was a time when the distribution of safe needles made sense to me also. I once gave a bag of insulin syringes to one of those guys on panhandling on a boulevard median. He looked inside, lit up, and ran off with the bag. My older and wiser self knows that he immediately sold those syringes for about $20 each to his addict buddies. (Yes, homeless people can have remarkable amounts of money. I gave him about 120 syringes, so do the math.) I have gone through a similar process to Shellenberger on this. What seemed to make sense, and what worked for responsible people in pain, doesn't work to manage addiction.
I never got comfortable with providing the drugs --- at least not on the street. A friend worked at a methadone dispensary, and that seemed to work well enough. Some of those people held pretty good jobs, or appeared to. Some of the people that came in collecting their doses of methadone were not addicts, I'm pretty sure of that. They made money on the side pretending to be an addict so they could sell the methadone.
I had a coworker who had a polio disability (rare, but it still happens). He had a prescription for opiates for life. He was a good worker, and pretty normal. Another man who bicycled 20 miles each way to work most days had a baclofen pump installed because of a genetic disorder that caused him so much pain. So in itself, opiates can be managed and fine.
In it, he discusses the fact that rats left alone with cocaine will die of cocaine overdoses. Rats in happy rat places with lots of other rats rarely touch it, and never overdose on it.
Hari himself does advocate for legalization. But he ALSO advocates for job training and intensive emotional and social support. Destigmatizing addiction is not intrinsically bad, but it obviously strongly tends in that direction immediately if the other factors are not in play as well. The whole thing requires an emotional intelligence that is obviously lacking.
My experience with addicts is that they become more and more self-centered, childish, abusive, manipulative, and criminal. An addict just cannot be trusted. They can do anything.
What works for addicts is that when they hit bottom, if they live, they can wake up. All that 12 step stuff is founded on taking responsibility and ending the whining. Addicts in groups with each other know all that bullcrap they pull on those around them.
There's some basic facts about this world that aren't pretty. It hurts to face it.
Societies have difficulty maintaining policies of help that work. I think that's the problem in Portugal. In Portland, the full policy was never done, they "enhanced" it with things that were not working in Portugal by then.
Societies will maintain defensive policies of putting bad people in prison, and spend huge amounts on law enforcement that raises the ante and generates hyper-violent drug gangs.
No argument here. The basic issue is that the harm reduction efforts did not include the possibility that doing this would cause an increase in addiction.
Evaluation of Portugal's experiment. Bottom line - it worked when it was well funded, and was less expensive. It crashed and is burning when defunded and replaced with NGOs that even worked for addiction as a human right.
I appreciate that your views have changed as you've gotten more information, and that you'll say it publicly. One of the reasons we have not great politicians and policy people is that those who update their opinions are accused of "flip flopping" and such. And nesting fail.
Ayn Rand was bizarre personally, but made many powerful observations. One is that “altruism is a false construct”. People do “good things” to make themselves feel better. Regardless of outcome. This is a perfect example.
Layer on that people can make good livings at “non profits”…….
IMHO, most non profits are incredible wastes of resources. And the US is riddled with them.
It’s because they do not differentiate means and goals. They have a pre-ordained prescription for every problem. For them, “harm reduction” means following the correct policy. There is no thought of checking actual results. If the result is not as desired, it simply means that the already-determined-correct harm reduction activities were not followed with enough fervor. This is why they double down in the face of obvious failures.
Ooh. That’s hitting the bullseye. Just like they keep insisting that socialism works great, it’s just that no one has tried it “correctly” but they, so much more clever, will do it right.
That's what I kept thinking but at this point I'm starting to wonder if they do have good intentions. It seems that their primary goal isn't to help others but to feel like they're doing something so they can feel good about themselves. If the focus was truly on helping others, their egos wouldn't prevent them from seeing the harm they're doing and pivoting accordingly, as Shellenberger did in San Francisco.
Virtue signaling is too generous. I see this as a cottage industry of "caring" - the woman who runs Savage Sisters is case in point - her drug addiction sent her out of the window of a two-story building wearing the a dress with branding that would later be the name of her cause. The whole story is a great marketing vehicle that I find suspect.
Exactly. And the author did zero research into how the funding is managed, and how much the "non-profits" keep for themselves.
One thing we know for sure is that any organization that has an incentive to keep people addicted will keep people addicted to stay on the gravy train.
This is an under appreciated point, Patrick. The government disburses billions to non profits to “help” addicts, homeless, etc. Yet despite employing all the “professionals “ the problem grows. So now the non profits need more resources (read: your tax dollars) to combat a growing problem. The solution? Make campaign contributions with non profit funds to your favorite progressive politician, who will in turn vote you more resources. Rinse and repeat. It’s not just a taxpayer scam, it’s a scam on our entire society.
Further, the politicians go back home and brag about all the worthless programs they are funding to "help" the victims and unfortunates and get cheered on by all of those who are participating in the gravy train. Of course, anyone who questions the results or the expenditures is a racist or a phobe and the media covers that rather than the real issues.
It is more than a cottage industry. The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver - its skid row - receives over $450M a year in government funding. The entire area is only 5 blocks. There is a whole industry of poverty pumps that make a very good living off of human misery.
It's not just virtue signaling, but that does happen, I'm sure. It's a real enough analysis that makes sense at the first level. MD's like Shellenberger would see:
- addicts overdosed due to wildly varying doses.
- addicts with heart disease caused by shooting talcum powder, lactose powder, you name it - heroin and fentanyl were cut with it. This is why 30 year old addicts get heart attacks. A cardiac surgeon who trained at Harvard told me they all did pro bono surgery on addicts before moving on to normal people.
- addicts with Hep B, HIV, and blood bacterial infections from sharing needles.
- And the BIG one. Addicts that are in need of a fix commit major crimes. They murder, maim, burglarize, steal, kidnap, you name it, an addict freaking for a fix will commit the crime.
So, it makes sense to want to do something about that. Supply needles to stop infections. Supply pharmaceutical grade drugs with standard doses to stop the heart disease and overdoses. This makes total sense.
The problem is that what makes sense doesn't always work in the real world because of other factors. So, we're learning. Shellenberger learned. It's like engineering projects. You start with some design, and then, "Oops. Gotta rethink that."
(BTW - I fought against legalization of marijuana as I could in my busy days. I sent to NPR, other places, a detailed refutation of every pro-legalization argument being made. They would not listen. No newspaper would print it as an editorial. Nobody would discuss it. I also said that legalizing marijuana would cause a rise in use of other drugs and addictions. I've been right about that.)
Future generations will look back on the legalization of marijuana with the same astonishment that they will with transgender surgeries for minors. Science has become a discretionary weapon of the left - use it when you have a case, ignore it when you don’t.
"It seems that their primary goal isn't to help others but to feel like they're doing something so they can feel good about themselves."
Nailed it!
The left never wants to use realistic terms to describe a problem nor do they want to solve tough problems. For example there are no illegal aliens they are undocumented aliens or my favorite, "new arrivals."
Those of us who use realist terms are insensitive brutes who should be castigated, canceled and scoffed at.
I like the “migrants” I’m sure there still are migratory agricultural workers and in days gone by they were necessary in harvesting crops. Not sure if that’s still the case but they had temp work visas. They came, worked for the wages and returned home. Many would come for years. They didn’t storm the border expecting to be accommodated and comforted. They didn’t seek to institute the same failed policies that brought their own countries to ruin, enjoy the benefits of our country and then espouse venomous criticism of our country. Oh course this is all way off topic so sorry for the rant.
Yes! I was thinking Cloward Piven also. The useful idiots at ground level may think that they’re doing good but others with more power may have more diabolical designs.
Progressives don't think it through to the end. Then they ignore the consequences and go on to the next problem leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. When called on it, they simply yell racist.
You’re right, Steven, and their irrational response to evidence has always puzzled me. Someone posited that progressives tend to be self-absorbed if not downright narcissists. Does anyone have a better explanation?
I would like to see a report from the Free Press (aka The Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project) that highlighted just ONE successful "progressive" effort... just ONE...
The "vote-blue-no-matter-who" Democrats have literally ruined American society. And in the pages of this publication, nearly every story highlights this reality... yet the editors never come our swinging for the real culprits...
C'mon Bari Weiss... give us ONE fucking example of where Team Blue didn't completely FUCK UP everything they touch!
The iron law of good intentions. If you pay for something, be it fatherless kids or drugs and needles, you will get more of it. I remember Kensington Avenue of the late 70's, gritty but a neighborhood. Now the city has condemned regular folks have their neighborhood become a hell hole.
The intentions aren't good. They are stupid. Democrats deserve themselves and the dystopias they create. I love reading stories about places like Kensington. These people deserve each other. And Bari and her team will still get behind the big blue machine come November...
Conservative programs haven't done much good either. These people have been with us for generations in one form or another and we still dont' know what to do about it. Have we 'failed' them or simply eliminated one other way to do it? Sounds brutal but it took Edison 15,000 filaments to find the one that kept the bulb lit. I hope we don't need to go through that many ideas before we find something that works.
I strongly suspect the answers (plural) are institutional and will not find favour with either side.
I don't disagree. What would it take for common sense problem solvers to take over and find solutions? And it would need to happen without any politics. But since that is injected into everything now....
And common sense problem solvers typically don't go into public service.
It's not a simple solution, even for non-political problem solvers. I suspect class, birth lottery (what sort of family you're born into), propensity toward substance abuse, and God only knows what mental health issues all play into it. I tend to suspect that poverty is the place to start. That's where so many pathologies come from.
But, mental health - our incredibly complex wonderful and horrible brains - have a lot to do with it too, and I'm not at all convinced today's mental health providers are any more sane than the patients - especially considering how 'wokenized' with social justice crapola the field has become. Imagine going to a therapist to be treated for depression, or anxiety, or historical trauma, and being told the problem is you need to get over your 'white privilege'.
I’m late to the party, Gray, but I think about your Good Intentions=Unintended Consequences a lot! To me it stems from exercising Compassion without Reason/Good judgement. I’m highly in favor of compassion INFORMING policies, but it cannot overrule sound judgment and wise implementation. There are SO. MANY wonderful-SOUNDING ideas for “harm reduction” of all kinds, but experience and understanding (mostly of human nature), not to mention accountability to funding sources and all those effected, must carry equal weight with all other considerations.
“I can’t fucking do nothing,” he said, holding his only possessions—a newspaper, a carton of milk, and a sweater. “My body’s just so far gone. And nobody is helping me at this point.”
I live on Vancouver Island, Canada where we’ve been witnessing this madness for years. Our government’s drug policies to allow for open drug use in our neighbourhoods is now carrying over to hospitals where these idiots are allowed to carry on taking their drugs and hospital staff are being told not tp intervene.
This rot needs to be cut out so it won’t fester and spread. But the first step is to reject this societal acceptance of celebrating victimization, and acknowledge that the pursuit of excellence, and a healthy life through hard work, and diligence, must once again prevail. Sheeple gotta snap out of it.
What’s the answer—to cut off the supply as much as possible and force them to withdraw? Will that automatically lead to sobriety and better choices? I’m asking, not challenging. I’d love to hear some practical ideas for rehabilitating these poor souls. My anecdotal evidence to the contrary is a friend who went to the methadone clinic but also developed a simultaneous drinking problem. She was a gifted person who seemed to not be able to cope without drugs. And the magnitude of this crisis is stunning. We need practical, workable ideas. Anyone got any?
For one thing, it should not be a choice of treatment or jail. It should be jail AND treatment. Get them off the street and away from people they threaten, but have well-funded progams to end their addictions. Truly, no treatment can cure someone who doesn't want to stop using, but it can help those who do. And those who won't quit can stay in jail.
I think a good start would be to divert all the money going to these non-profit "harm reduction" groups from the CDC, to the treatment programs and law enforcement.
Even if we wanted to, where I live, we don’t have the capacity to jail even half our street drug users. You’d have to have massive investment. Like you said, well-funded. But where’s that going to come from?
They seem to be able to find funding to send to Ukraine on a regular basis. Maybe if we took back some of that to fund the solution to our problems that are literally on our doorstep.
They - and this includes plenty of Republicans - want money for Ukraine so the authoritarian, corrupt, murdering Putin - with Chinese support - doesn’t profit from his war of aggression. I’m wondering what you’d like to see happen there.
I'd rather the US not have told Zelensky to not negotiate very early on. Also it would have better if after promising Russia we would not expand NATO eastward ( James Baker said that back in 1990) we would not have kept expanding it. Given we are 34 trillion in debt ( and rising) I'd say we can't afford to be the World's police force. Given we can get ZERO audits of where the money goes, I'd like to have seen some accountability for my tax dollars. So what I'd like to see happen there is a negotiated settlement where people stop dying.
Please, the war in Ukraine would have ended after a month without US politicians making sure to keep the conflict alive. Putin wants what Russia sees as theirs, the part of Ukraine where most people consider themselves Russians anyway. I believe Trump didn't exaggerate for once when he said he could end the war in 24 hours, it's basically that simple to find a deal that both countries could live with. I can't believe people in the West have forgotten everything we learned during and after the cold war about the long term interests of nations like Russia.
they do here. We have entire units specifically for drug rehabilitation separate from general population (British Columbia). And yet this is the same province where these failed policies are implemented. There's no incentive to quit, especially when government agencies encourage anyone to light up with their free supply.
Maybe instead of funding a proxy war in Ukraine we can fund actual treatment for addiction. No one aspires to become an addict. Most are ppl suffering with other psychological problems or trauma.
That must not be seen as an excuse. Maybe screening kids better for addictive tendencies and or emotional instability. Mental health is way more impactful than previously thought.
Your "anecdotal evidence" isn't relevant here. I'm less interested in finding a solution than I am about wasting billions of taxpayer dollars by constantly keeping this laser focused on those who choose drugs. Maybe ask at the top, why drugs are being allowed to flow unencumbered into this country, might be a first step, and putting government officials in jail for allowing this to happen (it's called accountability). Next, focus on the hard data where improvements have been made in reducing this plague in communities. The welfare state mentality has to end.
Its relevance is to illustrate that drugs fuck people up so badly that someone smart enough to have gotten into medical school can—when in their relentless grip—focus with a hellbent determination on flushing their lives down the toilet. And there are always going to be those people. I care less where they end up than that they’re not ruining other people’s neighborhoods. But presumably some addicts *could* get clean and turn their lives around. And I agree 100% that cutting off the incoming supply is step #1. I very much like the idea of prosecuting those who have enabled it with bad policy, but being a cynic, I doubt its feasibility.
It is relevant. Unless you’ve known someone struggling with addiction, you can’t understand the problem. You have to watch someone - someone who wants to stop, someone with everything to live for - slow motion kill themselves to know how hard it is to quit. Really, we have to prevent people getting addicted in the first place and that’s a huge societal effort.
I don’t have to know anyone who’s struggling to understand that this
problem shouldn’t affect the daily lives of children getting stabbed by dirty needles on playgrounds on a regular basis or
Small business owners dealing with feces and smashed in windows on regularly. Who’s helping THEM? Stop asking us to fund your drug habit. We have all been affected by this plague. Take back our streets, and our neighbourhoods first, rather than the other way around.
I never said that if you actually understand - intimately - what addiction is, you think we don’t need to change what we’re doing. It’s because I understand addiction that I’ve been critical of allowing tent cities to form in the first place. Our friend, a mother of three with a large loving extended family, managed to be clean when she was away from her friends who used. When she got back into contact with them - or, worse, when they got back into contact with her - she invariably relapsed. It took decades, but she died of her disease. Her daughter became an addict and died young of her disease, leaving a small daughter. Our friend’s older daughter struggles and lost custody of her children. She lied endlessly to our family who supported her. And these were people with educations and means. It’s a horrifying disease and allowing addicts to live among other addicts with ample access to their drug, with a community full-on supporting their habit, is the opposite of compassion. I look at those encampments and imagine her in there and it makes my stomach knot and my blood boil. To be told shutting the encampments down is cruel makes me want to hurt somebody.
Bill Maher, in conversation with Matthew Perry, said something to the effect of, "doesn't matter how rich you are, if you're an addict, you're the dealer's bitch. "
If that's true, and it seems likely, the only way out is to get far away from it.
Michael Shellenberger wrote an entire book on how to fix this in San Fransicko. You can also listen to podcasts he's done about the solution to this problem. It was like this in the Netherlands in the 80s and 90s and they figured it out. We just don't have the stomach yet to do what needs to be done. It takes a carrot and stick approach.
I'd say first of all, make there be consequences, put them in jail if that's what it takes. Stop kids from trying drugs to begin with; for all the haughty laughter from the supposed "smart" left, Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" reinforced that, societally, drug use was unacceptable.
Treatment or institutionalization. Dry up the supply as much as possible by closing the border, locking up/executing producers/dealers. Zero tolerance for sleeping on the streets, public drug use/defecation/sex. Read Michael Shellenberger's substack or books. Open air drug markets, cheap supply, no consequences have drawn drug abusers from across the country to places like San Francisco/LA and local neighborhoods like Kensington, causing a problem that feeds on itself.
I took 60 to 80 mg of Oxy daily for about 3 years; first to deal with chronic pain, and then because I liked it. When I decided to stop, my doctor gave me Suboxone for a few weeks and it was pretty painless. It's absolutely possible to quit with the proper support, but very hard to face withdrawal without it. The lost souls on the street could have decent lives, but we're leaving them to rot. I've known several addicts and they're not bad people, just too soft for the harshness of the real world.
Glad you are better now. Addiction can be so debilitating. To me, that’s why it is so critical treatment needs to be mandated in some capacity. Yet here in cities like Denver, the new-ish mayor and his team have decided that rapidly shuffling these folks into free housing (former hotels the city bought for millions of dollars apiece) is the solution with virtually no worthwhile treatment practices in place.
Even if no one has a better idea, unless there is data to support that this type of program does substantial good (which I doubt), then such programs should be ended immediately.
The problem with addicts is that... they're addicts. It is a VERY difficult problem to crack. Extremely difficult. It requires at least as much money invested as we invested in the drug war over the years. And addiction will never go away. It will always be with us. Addicts will lie, cheat, steal, game the system, and laugh, cry, and destroy themselves.
The stronger the drugs, the faster the decline happens as a general rule.
My best guess is to create some sort of Outward Bound program. Get them far away from the things that are enabling them. Have them spend weeks just walking/hiking from place to place where they know no one. If the scenery is familiar, they'll go back to what they've done. Change the scenery a bunch and many will find a chance.
That sometimes works. But you can’t save everyone, and we don’t owe addicts a lifetime of sympathy and resources at the expense of others who are working hard and honestly. Just as with COVID, our leaders are not stepping back and assessing the full consequences of their policies. That leaves activists with an outsized influence that their beliefs do not warrant.
Long term mandatory rehab or prison. If they are found to need other medications for psychiatric disorders then usually this is discovered in a long term rehab as they have psychologists visit and asses patients. In long term facilities they are given jobs within the facility and have full schedules with meetings, group therapy and other ppl in recovery who will call them on their bullshit.
Children need to be hammered with the certain knowledge that drugs destroy and kill. If these ppl had to face the hard consequences of their choices they might rally themselves to seek recovery. Many do but now they are accommodated in addiction so yeah, NOT gonna work.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. Ppl who find recovery must find an external power to tap into. Some find faith(not a specific single faith) some see the twelve step groups as a greater power. Whatever works but it must be from without.
Many who find recovery have relapses but some survive to start over. Some don’t.
I support full scale drug legalization. Government's role is to prevent crimes, not protect me from myself.
BUT
That doesn't mean government still doesn't have a role to provide order. There's a big difference between someone smoking a joint or doing a line in the privacy of their own home, and doing it on the street corner.
Or in a hospital room. Or shooting up on a school playground. We're not there yet, to uphold individual freedoms over the greater good of our community. We've seen the devastation of families and neighbourhoods based on this scourge, and until we can get it under control, it should be not be tolerated.
The modern democrat platform would make the kkk proud. Harm the black population by increasing drugs, crime, and abortion in cities. Lower standards in schools and push segregation.
To equate the Southern Democrats of the slave era and Jim Crow with the Democrats of today is ridiculous. And Republicans, starting in the Civil Rights era, did NOT go after Black folks’ votes. They went after White racists’ votes. Look up the Southern strategy. Here, I’ll do it for you
If you learn your history from Wikipedia that would only partly explain some of your ignorant comments. The Democrats Plantation is alive and well, stronger than ever. They’ve just gotten better at assigning blame for their failed policies. The only question that remains is whether it’s intentional or not.
1) I figured the Wikipedia entry is easy to follow, but I can provide you with plenty of other sources. 2) Wikipedia is actually, generally a solid source of unbiased information - just the facts, ma’am. At the very least, it provides sources for its claims so you can double check.
What ”plantation” are you talking about? What are their failed policies? I’m not at all suggesting Democrats have never done anything wrong, just suggesting that you’re wrong.
Editing to provide sources so they don’t go above this comment. I could do this all day, but it’s more work to find things you won’t discount as leftist garbage media.
Here, I’ll give you some Dinesh D’Souza just to show you I can read conservative stuff. He says mostly what you say; that Democrats are the party of slavery and Jim Crow. It’s willfully denial of the changes in the Demoracric party in the 60’s. Even if you don’t think Republicans actually courted the racist white vote in the South, you can’t deny that it was Democrats who pushed the most anti-racist policies of the last 50 years, and Republicans who didn’t. That’s why 90% of Black voters have supported Democrats for the last four+ decades.
The "southern strategy" is old bullshit pushed by Dems who can't handle the fact that they are the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, the Confederacy, Japanese Internment camps...
I’m so sorry to have to report that it was Democrats who ended Jim Crow in the South, who allied with Martin Luther King, who passed the most sweeping voting rights and anti-poverty laws in our history, who passed Title I allocating federal funds to high-poverty (that’s mostly Black) public schools. It was not Republicans. This is a North-South issue and the parties flipped in the 60’s. Republicans have represented the Confederate-flag-flying South for 50+ years. There’s a reason Black voters have almost unanimously supported Democrats. That some are rethinking their alliance now, I can’t comments on. Anyone can vote where they see their interests represented.
Just a few links from the first page of a google search “did bill clinton have a confederate button?” Try to find one that says it’s true other than the wordless post on X
Read to the end where even this sympathetic source says they likely aren’t from the campaign. (Just like a Trump to share extensively debunked information as truth - no offense.) Your own link says the same thing. Is the scandal that HTC didn’t immediately comment but let the man in charge of her entire merchandise operation comment?
Who do you think is funding this mess? It’s a long term strategy to buy up real estate at clearance prices, kill off the undesirable masses, rent back to survivors and have the government pay the difference. The activists are useful idiots. This is a business scheme.
It's predominantly white, female, middle-class, social justice ideologues that think they know what's best. It's the same bunch that have taken over school boards.
School boards were always white, female, and middle-class. It's just that 50 years ago, the white female middle-class predominately had good heads on their shoulders.
God save us from liberal white women. Goody Oberlin, the fierce adherent of the new religion of leftism, wields her Moral Superiority like a sickle, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake.
It is amazing however, that they've also taken over the public health response and criminal justice system with refusing to prosecute. That they've managed to also defund the police, what will be opportunistic enough to fill that void?
These women are the useful idiots who are carrying out the work, but there have to also be bad-intentioned individuals/groups behind the scenes who are orchestrating and financing the whole thing. Soros is one of them.
Not directly, but someone's financing the propaganada and the countless non-profits that influence everything, from health to education. And someone's influencing the Democrats to go along with all this nonsense.
Any time I try to bring something like this up with a lefty friend, she says, “Please! no politics, let’s just be friends”. The next time this happens I will tell her my First Amendment right is more important than our friendship. It is willful blindness on her part. Lalala, don’t want to hear anything that challenges “her truth”
This article, and the photographic journalism that accompanies it, brought me to tears.
I spent the formative years of my adult life, right out of college, in Philadelphia. I love that city. It was a great place to start my career nearly 30 years ago. But it was broken then, and it is broken now. The images depicted here could have been right out of 1995, where there was still a crack epidemic and heroin was abundant. I knew many people like these addicts. Some of them are dead. The ones who got sober did so through hard work, and removing themselves from the environment that made them addicts to begin with, many leaving Philadelphia altogether. I moved to NY eventually during the same era, and it wasn't better there, except Mayor Giuliani had taken the helm and things were improving (Tomkins Square Park was still terrifying, though). The musical Rent was a big hit at the time, and I loathed it for its glamorization of drug addiction.
Here we are again. These fools who think that they are "reducing harm" by creating drug incubators in these neighborhoods are promotors of death. This will not end well.
Word on Rent. We have got to stop glamorizing this shit. If the images in this article were blasted nonstop through TikTok, young people might think twice before they pick up that needle for the first time.
I never understood the appeal of Rent. It's about self-destructive people glorifying themselves and hating the people who would save them from their suffering.
Safety and drug addiction/use do not go hand in hand. Almost 8 million syringes handed out last year!? What do these people think is happening to all those needles? Un less each and every one is safely tucked into a bio waste container then they are responsible for an epidemic of toxic needle trash.
The people handing out the needles probably drive electric cars too, and feel super virtuous about it, completely ignoring the power plant down the road that’s burning coal to recharge their batteries.
This same type of thinking labels prostitution as "sex work" trying to dignify it! It is a degradation of humanity and a perversion of sex. When someone sells their body, their soul is crying out for help. No amount of re-naming will scratch that itch.
It seems like part of the homelessness-industrial complex, or at least the same blueprint: start a non-profit, get grants and do absolutely nothing to help the people actually suffering.
Yeah; there was a program in Seattle to get housing for homeless. It took over $100M in government funding an managed to get 100 people into housing. So, more than $1M per homeless person housed (in tiny, dirty studio apartment blocks). Someone got that money. Not the homeless people.
Canada started their experiment in safe supply in Vancouver. It has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. Last week, I asked an indigenous addictions specialist on his current safe-supply take. He said, "I thought it was a good idea initially but crossed that bridge a while ago; and recently went back to bomb it." Meanwhile, Alberta is focussing on recovery projects instead and is considering forcing 'some' people into treatment.
As a former addiction counselor, I can tell you that none of what they are doing will ever work. You have to remove the drugs and separte the junkies from the drugs. Whether it's in a prison, or other institution, that is the only way to stop them from using. And, even then, when they get out, many will go right back to using. Even with job training and a guarenteed job when they get out, it will be a struggle to maintain sobriety. Everyone involved has to work to get the drugs off the street. If it means shooting the sellers, so be it. Either that, or set aside a walled-in area in a state, fill it with junkies, feed them all the junk they want and let them die. No great loss to society.
Of course. The question is, who is it going to and what are they doing with how much of it, and can they account for all of it? As you know, once the govt. has it's hand in something, it becomes a cesspit.
This is why some men fantasize about brutal vigilante justice.
This stuff isn't hard to stop. Arrest the drug-pushing gangsters and flay them alive in front of their peers.
We call that brutal and intolerable now, but in my opinion it is far superior to the alternative of allowing more children to be captured and destroyed by drugs and gangs.
Thank you, Olivia Reingold, for this excellent piece. As a recovering alcoholic and addict with 36 years of continuous sobriety, I am appalled at what harm reduction has done to many of our cities and especially to addicts. Harm reduction actually enables addicts to continue using instead of facing the consequences of their addiction. Like Michael Schellenberger I also originally supported harm reduction and needle exchanges for the same reasons he did but as I watched my city deteriorate because of its policies I joined the naysayers. Harm reduction isn’t how alcoholics and addicts come to recovery! It’s obvious to most of us in 12 Step programs. The only thing that ever got me to face my alcoholism and addiction was feeling my pain full on. I got sick and tired of feeling that endless, merciless pain. I couldn’t take it anymore so I sought help in a real recovery program, not in more drugs because I knew full well the drugs and alcohol stopped working, they stopped helping. Of course I knew the answer was getting off them, not taking more of them. Now at 36 years of being clean and sober (and yes, we addicts and alcoholics were dirty when using, filthy inside ourselves) I am absolutely convinced that harm reduction has done nothing but continue to HARM.
I am a pastor who has worked in street and related ministry in NYC for 30 years. All of the criticisms of drug use enablement written here are accurate. Enablement is a deception from evil which destroys many lives. The enablers are completely deceived by evil and do not understand addiction. There are treatment/recovery programs that work, proven for decades. Christian long term recovery programs have a significantly higher success rate. These programs know that addiction is slavery, physical, spiritual, moral, and people must be transformed in mind and heart to stay clean. I have never met an addict who disagrees that addiction is slavery. The medical and psych professions are covetous of control and deny that transformation is possible. I was a hospital chaplain here in NYC for several years, I did patient visits and held Bible studies and prayer time with the patients in the secure psych unit, many of whom were drug addicts. The nurses were strong supporters of this. When the head psych MD learned about it he told my supervisor he didn't want chaplain care in the psych unit, even though the patients wanted it.
“Those who advocate for harm reduction—a Biden-endorsed policy that prioritizes users’ safety over their sobriety or abstinence”
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Basically every Democrat policy is what you would come up with if you were one of the stupid fat kids who failed the marshmallow test.
Yes, if you are incapable of looking downstream and you are governed by impulse and emotion, giving more drugs to people having withdrawals seems like a good plan.
Every time you see "Harm Reduction", read it as "Addict Enabling".
Addicts, and addict-adjacents, and people who profit off of enabling addicts love "Harm Reduction". Because it lets the addicts keep being addicts, doesn't make anyone's life better, but does assuage the progressives' self-image ("I'm a good person; I reduce harm!") as it feeds the addict-industrial complex. Everybody wins, right?
The same applies to all who love to enable, encourage, and reward homelessness whose catchphrase is "Housing First". (I'm looking at you Gavin Newsom, and all your stupid followers.)
It's not a coincidence that homelessness, addiction, and mental illness are highly correlated.
To the people who passed the marshmallow test, it is obvious how counterproductive these progressive policies are. Progressives, they just really want those marshmallows, cause it feels good right now.
Good Intentions = Unintended Consequences
That sums up so many of the progressive platforms.
No one thinks it through to the end.
Its not even that: it is the habit of confusing intentions with outcomes, one of the necessary consequences of which is learning to lie.
I am good, they say, because I care. I know I care because I particioate in approved symbolic actions.
And thats it. Thats the end of the process. It generally leads to aggressive delusions and hallucinations, but all are in support of the first and primary “moral” act, which is conflated with that persons srlf image, making attacks on even the stupidest and most transparently failed policies personal attacks on people whose egos were shaky to begin with. Small wonder emotionality instantly and always fills the room and makes rational dialogue—reality based policy debate oriented around measurable outcomes—impossible.
Isn't it sweet how the left dreams up these unrealistic, goofy terms like "harm reductionists.”
Like Gray said, "Good Intentions = Unintended Consequences."
There is an old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
We see here the left's favorite argument if you criticize their phony program, "You are a racist."
I was going to add this to my own comment but will add it to yours:
There are really two completely, or largely, separate issues here. First is whether or not a community openly filled with drug addicts, and everything that goes with that, is ir even COULD be good policy.
That answer is no. Its not healthy for the kids and families in that area, for many obvious reasons.
As this women rightly comments, this IS racism. If it were black folks they WOULD all be locked up. I do think this sort of racism is alive and well and completely embraced by the Left since it is THEIR racism. The logic is simple: since black people belong to them, they cant be racist. A common corrolary we see daily is that anyone who opposes them, even when they are obviously being racist, is racist.
It doesnt have to make sense. It just needs to touch the feels of folks. Its like ringing a Pavlovian Bell.
Another form of current anti-Black racism is unrestricted illegal immigration. Hundreds of thousands of people who are in effect trespassing in our country are being treated better than black folks, who in general will obviously be hurt first and worst by all this.
The Left doesnt care. Willful blindness and hypocrisy is part of the package. To belong, the first thing you have to rid yourself of is the habit—or even memory—of moral consistency.
The second issue is why so many people hate and destroy their lives, in such a rich country. We do have poverty and oppression, but both are so attenuated that most genuinely poor people, in genuinely oppressive countries, would laugh at this claim, and swap problems with those of our drug addicts in a heartbeat.
That issue is cultural and deeper than I will deal with here. It has to do with alienation, loss of community, and loss of a sense that the world makes sense.
Complex problems are complex. I hope you all agree with me on that. And solving complex problems requires taking them seriously, learning about them patiently over time, trying different solutions, watching, learning, then gradually improving.
Good ideas are not for sale at Amazon. Lives are not changed in a week or a month or a year. But BEGINNING that process can always start NOW for anyone, and for any community, society, or nation.
One solution I could think of is to vote Democrats out of power, but I really mean vote them out up and down the ballot NOW! NOV 2024🇺🇸🇺🇸
People use drugs/alcohol because they have mental health issues they are medicating away (anxiety, depression) or they have trauma they are trying to numb. Many are veterans.
They need therapy and substance abuse treatment. Harm reduction can keep them alive while they try to get sober but it was never meant to be a long term solution.
Good comments UF.
Yup. When the emotional paralysis of the leftist screeches and stooges is as disregarded as the cries of the real victims of these foolish policies then maybe rational thought, facts and sanity can be discussed and considered.
When the “help” is clearly NOT helping then it’s not achieving the objective of helping. Reality is just too much to bear for the self righteous. I hope for the sake of both addict and resident, that a return to a hand up and less hand out. Tough love and long term treatment do help.
Yeesh, these social justice warriors are very misinformed as well as blinded by their own delusions.
Time to let the adults take charge.
Very well said.
I am for calling addicts what they really are "junkies". Hunter Biden is their poster child except he took drugs in 5-star hotels and not on the street.
Did you laugh out loud at the objection to the term "clean"? "Our friends aren't dirty..." In fact, your friends are demonstrably dirty, as is the block they trashed.
Yeah, that irony was painfully obvious. They spread filth like cancer and bring all manner of disease with them.
I gotta wonder if she really thought that through. Head scratcher for sure.
You will notice she wasn't upset by the state of the neighborhood these creeps inhabit and what they have turned that neighborhood into. She was upset at the terminology used to describe these junkies. Typical glassy eyed left wing nutcase.
There is no reason to dehumanize and shame those with addictions. Having said that, there is no reason for them to be living on the streets with no consequences.
It’s not shaming them. They NEED to hear the truth and not have bad behavior excused. The continued indulgence and wallowing in self pity is them excusing themselves.
If you knew anything about addiction you’d know that. I do, been there and done that. The drugs lie to you and, wanting that high, you lie to yourself.
Only truth will set you free. Most addicts do have troubles they are escaping. Escaping responsibility for yourself isn’t acceptable and should not be pandered to.
Good on you. It takes will of character to kick an addiction. I used to be a heavy drinker and one day I quit, No AA, no interventions, I just quit and didn't have a drink for years.
I now, on advice of my cardiologist drink two glasses of red wine every night. I drink it while watching TV over about a four hour period. I don't even get a buzz. Every three or four months I will have a beer.
I am a freak of nature. when I make up my mind to do something, I do it. I don't vary from my self imposed path. By starving myself, I lost 35 pounds in three months. I now know what an anorexic person feels like.
The difference between me and an addict is, once I quit drinking, I didn't crave a drink, ever. Alcohol is a drug.
Like I said, I am a freak of nature.
You are sounding like you are PC and wouldn't call a deaf person deaf.
“Banning harm reduction is genocide” - see, even worse than being merely racist.
The real criminals here are the government who is enabling this by giving them $10 million to be more successful at being drug addicts.
Yes, when I read that I immediately thought of the Hamas terrorists and their enablers on college campuses. Hang 'em all, I say.
There's an old saying, "Hanging is too good for them."
There was a time when the distribution of safe needles made sense to me also. I once gave a bag of insulin syringes to one of those guys on panhandling on a boulevard median. He looked inside, lit up, and ran off with the bag. My older and wiser self knows that he immediately sold those syringes for about $20 each to his addict buddies. (Yes, homeless people can have remarkable amounts of money. I gave him about 120 syringes, so do the math.) I have gone through a similar process to Shellenberger on this. What seemed to make sense, and what worked for responsible people in pain, doesn't work to manage addiction.
I never got comfortable with providing the drugs --- at least not on the street. A friend worked at a methadone dispensary, and that seemed to work well enough. Some of those people held pretty good jobs, or appeared to. Some of the people that came in collecting their doses of methadone were not addicts, I'm pretty sure of that. They made money on the side pretending to be an addict so they could sell the methadone.
I had a coworker who had a polio disability (rare, but it still happens). He had a prescription for opiates for life. He was a good worker, and pretty normal. Another man who bicycled 20 miles each way to work most days had a baclofen pump installed because of a genetic disorder that caused him so much pain. So in itself, opiates can be managed and fine.
Johan Hari's talk is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs
In it, he discusses the fact that rats left alone with cocaine will die of cocaine overdoses. Rats in happy rat places with lots of other rats rarely touch it, and never overdose on it.
Hari himself does advocate for legalization. But he ALSO advocates for job training and intensive emotional and social support. Destigmatizing addiction is not intrinsically bad, but it obviously strongly tends in that direction immediately if the other factors are not in play as well. The whole thing requires an emotional intelligence that is obviously lacking.
My experience with addicts is that they become more and more self-centered, childish, abusive, manipulative, and criminal. An addict just cannot be trusted. They can do anything.
What works for addicts is that when they hit bottom, if they live, they can wake up. All that 12 step stuff is founded on taking responsibility and ending the whining. Addicts in groups with each other know all that bullcrap they pull on those around them.
There's some basic facts about this world that aren't pretty. It hurts to face it.
Well, maybe bottom needs to include jail. As I say, it's a complex problem. Bad feeds bad, and at some point Good simply become naivete.
Societies have difficulty maintaining policies of help that work. I think that's the problem in Portugal. In Portland, the full policy was never done, they "enhanced" it with things that were not working in Portugal by then.
Societies will maintain defensive policies of putting bad people in prison, and spend huge amounts on law enforcement that raises the ante and generates hyper-violent drug gangs.
Sigh. That's just how we humans roll.
No argument here. The basic issue is that the harm reduction efforts did not include the possibility that doing this would cause an increase in addiction.
Evaluation of Portugal's experiment. Bottom line - it worked when it was well funded, and was less expensive. It crashed and is burning when defunded and replaced with NGOs that even worked for addiction as a human right.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/
Absolutely correct. When you have all carrot and no stick, this is what you get.
Most people in recovery would agree with you. Those behaviors you describe are symptoms of the "disease."
I appreciate that your views have changed as you've gotten more information, and that you'll say it publicly. One of the reasons we have not great politicians and policy people is that those who update their opinions are accused of "flip flopping" and such. And nesting fail.
Exceedingly well said!
Ayn Rand was bizarre personally, but made many powerful observations. One is that “altruism is a false construct”. People do “good things” to make themselves feel better. Regardless of outcome. This is a perfect example.
Layer on that people can make good livings at “non profits”…….
IMHO, most non profits are incredible wastes of resources. And the US is riddled with them.
It’s because they do not differentiate means and goals. They have a pre-ordained prescription for every problem. For them, “harm reduction” means following the correct policy. There is no thought of checking actual results. If the result is not as desired, it simply means that the already-determined-correct harm reduction activities were not followed with enough fervor. This is why they double down in the face of obvious failures.
Ooh. That’s hitting the bullseye. Just like they keep insisting that socialism works great, it’s just that no one has tried it “correctly” but they, so much more clever, will do it right.
Riiiight.
Good point.
That's what I kept thinking but at this point I'm starting to wonder if they do have good intentions. It seems that their primary goal isn't to help others but to feel like they're doing something so they can feel good about themselves. If the focus was truly on helping others, their egos wouldn't prevent them from seeing the harm they're doing and pivoting accordingly, as Shellenberger did in San Francisco.
Seems like so much virtue signalling.
Virtue signaling is too generous. I see this as a cottage industry of "caring" - the woman who runs Savage Sisters is case in point - her drug addiction sent her out of the window of a two-story building wearing the a dress with branding that would later be the name of her cause. The whole story is a great marketing vehicle that I find suspect.
Exactly. And the author did zero research into how the funding is managed, and how much the "non-profits" keep for themselves.
One thing we know for sure is that any organization that has an incentive to keep people addicted will keep people addicted to stay on the gravy train.
This is an under appreciated point, Patrick. The government disburses billions to non profits to “help” addicts, homeless, etc. Yet despite employing all the “professionals “ the problem grows. So now the non profits need more resources (read: your tax dollars) to combat a growing problem. The solution? Make campaign contributions with non profit funds to your favorite progressive politician, who will in turn vote you more resources. Rinse and repeat. It’s not just a taxpayer scam, it’s a scam on our entire society.
Further, the politicians go back home and brag about all the worthless programs they are funding to "help" the victims and unfortunates and get cheered on by all of those who are participating in the gravy train. Of course, anyone who questions the results or the expenditures is a racist or a phobe and the media covers that rather than the real issues.
It is more than a cottage industry. The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver - its skid row - receives over $450M a year in government funding. The entire area is only 5 blocks. There is a whole industry of poverty pumps that make a very good living off of human misery.
Nobody wants that to stop.
It's not just virtue signaling, but that does happen, I'm sure. It's a real enough analysis that makes sense at the first level. MD's like Shellenberger would see:
- addicts overdosed due to wildly varying doses.
- addicts with heart disease caused by shooting talcum powder, lactose powder, you name it - heroin and fentanyl were cut with it. This is why 30 year old addicts get heart attacks. A cardiac surgeon who trained at Harvard told me they all did pro bono surgery on addicts before moving on to normal people.
- addicts with Hep B, HIV, and blood bacterial infections from sharing needles.
- And the BIG one. Addicts that are in need of a fix commit major crimes. They murder, maim, burglarize, steal, kidnap, you name it, an addict freaking for a fix will commit the crime.
So, it makes sense to want to do something about that. Supply needles to stop infections. Supply pharmaceutical grade drugs with standard doses to stop the heart disease and overdoses. This makes total sense.
The problem is that what makes sense doesn't always work in the real world because of other factors. So, we're learning. Shellenberger learned. It's like engineering projects. You start with some design, and then, "Oops. Gotta rethink that."
(BTW - I fought against legalization of marijuana as I could in my busy days. I sent to NPR, other places, a detailed refutation of every pro-legalization argument being made. They would not listen. No newspaper would print it as an editorial. Nobody would discuss it. I also said that legalizing marijuana would cause a rise in use of other drugs and addictions. I've been right about that.)
Future generations will look back on the legalization of marijuana with the same astonishment that they will with transgender surgeries for minors. Science has become a discretionary weapon of the left - use it when you have a case, ignore it when you don’t.
"It seems that their primary goal isn't to help others but to feel like they're doing something so they can feel good about themselves."
Nailed it!
The left never wants to use realistic terms to describe a problem nor do they want to solve tough problems. For example there are no illegal aliens they are undocumented aliens or my favorite, "new arrivals."
Those of us who use realist terms are insensitive brutes who should be castigated, canceled and scoffed at.
Or maybe they have just figured out one more way to scam the govt and it has nothing to do with feeling good about themselves.
I like the “migrants” I’m sure there still are migratory agricultural workers and in days gone by they were necessary in harvesting crops. Not sure if that’s still the case but they had temp work visas. They came, worked for the wages and returned home. Many would come for years. They didn’t storm the border expecting to be accommodated and comforted. They didn’t seek to institute the same failed policies that brought their own countries to ruin, enjoy the benefits of our country and then espouse venomous criticism of our country. Oh course this is all way off topic so sorry for the rant.
Moral narcissism !!!
Cloward Piven strategy: Good intentions are not part of the plan. Destruction is the goal.
Solving problems eliminates the need for "solutions providers"
And it shuts down their income stream.
Yes! I was thinking Cloward Piven also. The useful idiots at ground level may think that they’re doing good but others with more power may have more diabolical designs.
Excellent point.
Progressives don't think it through to the end. Then they ignore the consequences and go on to the next problem leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. When called on it, they simply yell racist.
You’re right, Steven, and their irrational response to evidence has always puzzled me. Someone posited that progressives tend to be self-absorbed if not downright narcissists. Does anyone have a better explanation?
Nope. That about sums it up. They’re smarter than you, you just haven’t realized it yet.
Rules for radicals. That’s right out of the handbook.
You sure about the "good intentions" part? I'm not.
I would like to see a report from the Free Press (aka The Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project) that highlighted just ONE successful "progressive" effort... just ONE...
The "vote-blue-no-matter-who" Democrats have literally ruined American society. And in the pages of this publication, nearly every story highlights this reality... yet the editors never come our swinging for the real culprits...
C'mon Bari Weiss... give us ONE fucking example of where Team Blue didn't completely FUCK UP everything they touch!
The iron law of good intentions. If you pay for something, be it fatherless kids or drugs and needles, you will get more of it. I remember Kensington Avenue of the late 70's, gritty but a neighborhood. Now the city has condemned regular folks have their neighborhood become a hell hole.
Why would they, once you getting Federal $$$$$ it’s a no brainer just continuing the same bullshit everyday.
The intentions aren't good. They are stupid. Democrats deserve themselves and the dystopias they create. I love reading stories about places like Kensington. These people deserve each other. And Bari and her team will still get behind the big blue machine come November...
And they call it progress.
Conservative programs haven't done much good either. These people have been with us for generations in one form or another and we still dont' know what to do about it. Have we 'failed' them or simply eliminated one other way to do it? Sounds brutal but it took Edison 15,000 filaments to find the one that kept the bulb lit. I hope we don't need to go through that many ideas before we find something that works.
I strongly suspect the answers (plural) are institutional and will not find favour with either side.
I don't disagree. What would it take for common sense problem solvers to take over and find solutions? And it would need to happen without any politics. But since that is injected into everything now....
And common sense problem solvers typically don't go into public service.
It's not a simple solution, even for non-political problem solvers. I suspect class, birth lottery (what sort of family you're born into), propensity toward substance abuse, and God only knows what mental health issues all play into it. I tend to suspect that poverty is the place to start. That's where so many pathologies come from.
But, mental health - our incredibly complex wonderful and horrible brains - have a lot to do with it too, and I'm not at all convinced today's mental health providers are any more sane than the patients - especially considering how 'wokenized' with social justice crapola the field has become. Imagine going to a therapist to be treated for depression, or anxiety, or historical trauma, and being told the problem is you need to get over your 'white privilege'.
Yes, this is really happening.
Good intentions are a mask. These are not unintended consequences, these are the goal. WHY!???
I’m late to the party, Gray, but I think about your Good Intentions=Unintended Consequences a lot! To me it stems from exercising Compassion without Reason/Good judgement. I’m highly in favor of compassion INFORMING policies, but it cannot overrule sound judgment and wise implementation. There are SO. MANY wonderful-SOUNDING ideas for “harm reduction” of all kinds, but experience and understanding (mostly of human nature), not to mention accountability to funding sources and all those effected, must carry equal weight with all other considerations.
Thomas Sowell wrote a book about it. I think it's called Visions of the Anointed...
It reminds me of a Jordan Peterson quote "Compassion is not a virtue, it's a response".
I believe the virtue is empathy.
I'm beginning to think it's intended. All of it. The chaos, filth, crime, mayhem.
That would be a sad state of affairs. I wouldn't doubt it.
“I can’t fucking do nothing,” he said, holding his only possessions—a newspaper, a carton of milk, and a sweater. “My body’s just so far gone. And nobody is helping me at this point.”
I live on Vancouver Island, Canada where we’ve been witnessing this madness for years. Our government’s drug policies to allow for open drug use in our neighbourhoods is now carrying over to hospitals where these idiots are allowed to carry on taking their drugs and hospital staff are being told not tp intervene.
This rot needs to be cut out so it won’t fester and spread. But the first step is to reject this societal acceptance of celebrating victimization, and acknowledge that the pursuit of excellence, and a healthy life through hard work, and diligence, must once again prevail. Sheeple gotta snap out of it.
What’s the answer—to cut off the supply as much as possible and force them to withdraw? Will that automatically lead to sobriety and better choices? I’m asking, not challenging. I’d love to hear some practical ideas for rehabilitating these poor souls. My anecdotal evidence to the contrary is a friend who went to the methadone clinic but also developed a simultaneous drinking problem. She was a gifted person who seemed to not be able to cope without drugs. And the magnitude of this crisis is stunning. We need practical, workable ideas. Anyone got any?
For one thing, it should not be a choice of treatment or jail. It should be jail AND treatment. Get them off the street and away from people they threaten, but have well-funded progams to end their addictions. Truly, no treatment can cure someone who doesn't want to stop using, but it can help those who do. And those who won't quit can stay in jail.
I think a good start would be to divert all the money going to these non-profit "harm reduction" groups from the CDC, to the treatment programs and law enforcement.
Even if we wanted to, where I live, we don’t have the capacity to jail even half our street drug users. You’d have to have massive investment. Like you said, well-funded. But where’s that going to come from?
They seem to be able to find funding to send to Ukraine on a regular basis. Maybe if we took back some of that to fund the solution to our problems that are literally on our doorstep.
They - and this includes plenty of Republicans - want money for Ukraine so the authoritarian, corrupt, murdering Putin - with Chinese support - doesn’t profit from his war of aggression. I’m wondering what you’d like to see happen there.
I'd rather the US not have told Zelensky to not negotiate very early on. Also it would have better if after promising Russia we would not expand NATO eastward ( James Baker said that back in 1990) we would not have kept expanding it. Given we are 34 trillion in debt ( and rising) I'd say we can't afford to be the World's police force. Given we can get ZERO audits of where the money goes, I'd like to have seen some accountability for my tax dollars. So what I'd like to see happen there is a negotiated settlement where people stop dying.
Please, the war in Ukraine would have ended after a month without US politicians making sure to keep the conflict alive. Putin wants what Russia sees as theirs, the part of Ukraine where most people consider themselves Russians anyway. I believe Trump didn't exaggerate for once when he said he could end the war in 24 hours, it's basically that simple to find a deal that both countries could live with. I can't believe people in the West have forgotten everything we learned during and after the cold war about the long term interests of nations like Russia.
Do they get any treatment in jail, or do they have to withdraw cold turkey?
they do here. We have entire units specifically for drug rehabilitation separate from general population (British Columbia). And yet this is the same province where these failed policies are implemented. There's no incentive to quit, especially when government agencies encourage anyone to light up with their free supply.
My experience is that it varies wildly by jurisdiction here in the US, which is a problem.
Jail does nothing. They will get out and start using again. Drug treatment with trauma therapy is the best answer.
Maybe instead of funding a proxy war in Ukraine we can fund actual treatment for addiction. No one aspires to become an addict. Most are ppl suffering with other psychological problems or trauma.
That must not be seen as an excuse. Maybe screening kids better for addictive tendencies and or emotional instability. Mental health is way more impactful than previously thought.
Your "anecdotal evidence" isn't relevant here. I'm less interested in finding a solution than I am about wasting billions of taxpayer dollars by constantly keeping this laser focused on those who choose drugs. Maybe ask at the top, why drugs are being allowed to flow unencumbered into this country, might be a first step, and putting government officials in jail for allowing this to happen (it's called accountability). Next, focus on the hard data where improvements have been made in reducing this plague in communities. The welfare state mentality has to end.
Its relevance is to illustrate that drugs fuck people up so badly that someone smart enough to have gotten into medical school can—when in their relentless grip—focus with a hellbent determination on flushing their lives down the toilet. And there are always going to be those people. I care less where they end up than that they’re not ruining other people’s neighborhoods. But presumably some addicts *could* get clean and turn their lives around. And I agree 100% that cutting off the incoming supply is step #1. I very much like the idea of prosecuting those who have enabled it with bad policy, but being a cynic, I doubt its feasibility.
It is relevant. Unless you’ve known someone struggling with addiction, you can’t understand the problem. You have to watch someone - someone who wants to stop, someone with everything to live for - slow motion kill themselves to know how hard it is to quit. Really, we have to prevent people getting addicted in the first place and that’s a huge societal effort.
I don’t have to know anyone who’s struggling to understand that this
problem shouldn’t affect the daily lives of children getting stabbed by dirty needles on playgrounds on a regular basis or
Small business owners dealing with feces and smashed in windows on regularly. Who’s helping THEM? Stop asking us to fund your drug habit. We have all been affected by this plague. Take back our streets, and our neighbourhoods first, rather than the other way around.
I never said that if you actually understand - intimately - what addiction is, you think we don’t need to change what we’re doing. It’s because I understand addiction that I’ve been critical of allowing tent cities to form in the first place. Our friend, a mother of three with a large loving extended family, managed to be clean when she was away from her friends who used. When she got back into contact with them - or, worse, when they got back into contact with her - she invariably relapsed. It took decades, but she died of her disease. Her daughter became an addict and died young of her disease, leaving a small daughter. Our friend’s older daughter struggles and lost custody of her children. She lied endlessly to our family who supported her. And these were people with educations and means. It’s a horrifying disease and allowing addicts to live among other addicts with ample access to their drug, with a community full-on supporting their habit, is the opposite of compassion. I look at those encampments and imagine her in there and it makes my stomach knot and my blood boil. To be told shutting the encampments down is cruel makes me want to hurt somebody.
Thank you for getting it.
You too
Bill Maher, in conversation with Matthew Perry, said something to the effect of, "doesn't matter how rich you are, if you're an addict, you're the dealer's bitch. "
If that's true, and it seems likely, the only way out is to get far away from it.
Keep illegal drugs illegal. Incarcerate drug dealers and cartels, and throw away the key.
Siphon off money we send to Iran who chant "Death to America"
Build more hospitals with psyche care and treat the addicts.
Put a hard stop on tent cities.
Are chain gangs still a thing? Because I feel like they should be a thing for drug dealers.
Maybe we should send the dealers to the Philippines. They seem to have an effective way of dealing with drug dealers.
Michael Shellenberger wrote an entire book on how to fix this in San Fransicko. You can also listen to podcasts he's done about the solution to this problem. It was like this in the Netherlands in the 80s and 90s and they figured it out. We just don't have the stomach yet to do what needs to be done. It takes a carrot and stick approach.
Yes, and Zurich tried “needle park” for awhile. Unlike here, when they saw the effects were mostly negative, they shut it down.
Thanks! I’ll pick up his book.
I'd say first of all, make there be consequences, put them in jail if that's what it takes. Stop kids from trying drugs to begin with; for all the haughty laughter from the supposed "smart" left, Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" reinforced that, societally, drug use was unacceptable.
Treatment or institutionalization. Dry up the supply as much as possible by closing the border, locking up/executing producers/dealers. Zero tolerance for sleeping on the streets, public drug use/defecation/sex. Read Michael Shellenberger's substack or books. Open air drug markets, cheap supply, no consequences have drawn drug abusers from across the country to places like San Francisco/LA and local neighborhoods like Kensington, causing a problem that feeds on itself.
I took 60 to 80 mg of Oxy daily for about 3 years; first to deal with chronic pain, and then because I liked it. When I decided to stop, my doctor gave me Suboxone for a few weeks and it was pretty painless. It's absolutely possible to quit with the proper support, but very hard to face withdrawal without it. The lost souls on the street could have decent lives, but we're leaving them to rot. I've known several addicts and they're not bad people, just too soft for the harshness of the real world.
I'm glad you're better now. Congrats!
Glad you are better now. Addiction can be so debilitating. To me, that’s why it is so critical treatment needs to be mandated in some capacity. Yet here in cities like Denver, the new-ish mayor and his team have decided that rapidly shuffling these folks into free housing (former hotels the city bought for millions of dollars apiece) is the solution with virtually no worthwhile treatment practices in place.
Even if no one has a better idea, unless there is data to support that this type of program does substantial good (which I doubt), then such programs should be ended immediately.
The problem with addicts is that... they're addicts. It is a VERY difficult problem to crack. Extremely difficult. It requires at least as much money invested as we invested in the drug war over the years. And addiction will never go away. It will always be with us. Addicts will lie, cheat, steal, game the system, and laugh, cry, and destroy themselves.
The stronger the drugs, the faster the decline happens as a general rule.
Cutting off the supply is a wonderful idea.
My best guess is to create some sort of Outward Bound program. Get them far away from the things that are enabling them. Have them spend weeks just walking/hiking from place to place where they know no one. If the scenery is familiar, they'll go back to what they've done. Change the scenery a bunch and many will find a chance.
That sometimes works. But you can’t save everyone, and we don’t owe addicts a lifetime of sympathy and resources at the expense of others who are working hard and honestly. Just as with COVID, our leaders are not stepping back and assessing the full consequences of their policies. That leaves activists with an outsized influence that their beliefs do not warrant.
You’ll just unleash that BS on rural folks. They need to be reprogrammed first.
Long term mandatory rehab or prison. If they are found to need other medications for psychiatric disorders then usually this is discovered in a long term rehab as they have psychologists visit and asses patients. In long term facilities they are given jobs within the facility and have full schedules with meetings, group therapy and other ppl in recovery who will call them on their bullshit.
Children need to be hammered with the certain knowledge that drugs destroy and kill. If these ppl had to face the hard consequences of their choices they might rally themselves to seek recovery. Many do but now they are accommodated in addiction so yeah, NOT gonna work.
Addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful. Ppl who find recovery must find an external power to tap into. Some find faith(not a specific single faith) some see the twelve step groups as a greater power. Whatever works but it must be from without.
Many who find recovery have relapses but some survive to start over. Some don’t.
absolutely medieval crackdown on dealers. criminalize and divert users. arrest NGO members that try to defy the law
And yet the NDP remain high in the polls. I guess East Hastings is what B.C. residents want.
I support full scale drug legalization. Government's role is to prevent crimes, not protect me from myself.
BUT
That doesn't mean government still doesn't have a role to provide order. There's a big difference between someone smoking a joint or doing a line in the privacy of their own home, and doing it on the street corner.
Or in a hospital room. Or shooting up on a school playground. We're not there yet, to uphold individual freedoms over the greater good of our community. We've seen the devastation of families and neighbourhoods based on this scourge, and until we can get it under control, it should be not be tolerated.
“Luxury Beliefs” strike again.
The modern democrat platform would make the kkk proud. Harm the black population by increasing drugs, crime, and abortion in cities. Lower standards in schools and push segregation.
DEMOCRATS were the KKK. So many don’t know that
Before they changed parties when the Democrats made it clear they weren’t welcome and Republicans said “Psst! Hey! Over here!”
Democrats enslaved, tortured and killed Black Americans 200+years
Republicans? They went after their VOTE
Big difference in most Americans minds
To equate the Southern Democrats of the slave era and Jim Crow with the Democrats of today is ridiculous. And Republicans, starting in the Civil Rights era, did NOT go after Black folks’ votes. They went after White racists’ votes. Look up the Southern strategy. Here, I’ll do it for you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
If you learn your history from Wikipedia that would only partly explain some of your ignorant comments. The Democrats Plantation is alive and well, stronger than ever. They’ve just gotten better at assigning blame for their failed policies. The only question that remains is whether it’s intentional or not.
1) I figured the Wikipedia entry is easy to follow, but I can provide you with plenty of other sources. 2) Wikipedia is actually, generally a solid source of unbiased information - just the facts, ma’am. At the very least, it provides sources for its claims so you can double check.
What ”plantation” are you talking about? What are their failed policies? I’m not at all suggesting Democrats have never done anything wrong, just suggesting that you’re wrong.
Editing to provide sources so they don’t go above this comment. I could do this all day, but it’s more work to find things you won’t discount as leftist garbage media.
https://www.facingsouth.org/2021/01/political-scientist-angie-maxwell-countering-long-southern-strategy
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/14/331298996/why-did-black-voters-flee-the-republican-party-in-the-1960s
Here, I’ll give you some Dinesh D’Souza just to show you I can read conservative stuff. He says mostly what you say; that Democrats are the party of slavery and Jim Crow. It’s willfully denial of the changes in the Demoracric party in the 60’s. Even if you don’t think Republicans actually courted the racist white vote in the South, you can’t deny that it was Democrats who pushed the most anti-racist policies of the last 50 years, and Republicans who didn’t. That’s why 90% of Black voters have supported Democrats for the last four+ decades.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20210414/111451/HMKP-117-JU00-20210414-SD003.pdf
The "southern strategy" is old bullshit pushed by Dems who can't handle the fact that they are the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, the Confederacy, Japanese Internment camps...
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/06/23/1992-confederate-flag-button-comes-back-to-bite-hillary-216984/
Democrats ruin everything they touch. Everything. This publication proves it week after week...
I’m so sorry to have to report that it was Democrats who ended Jim Crow in the South, who allied with Martin Luther King, who passed the most sweeping voting rights and anti-poverty laws in our history, who passed Title I allocating federal funds to high-poverty (that’s mostly Black) public schools. It was not Republicans. This is a North-South issue and the parties flipped in the 60’s. Republicans have represented the Confederate-flag-flying South for 50+ years. There’s a reason Black voters have almost unanimously supported Democrats. That some are rethinking their alliance now, I can’t comments on. Anyone can vote where they see their interests represented.
Just a few links from the first page of a google search “did bill clinton have a confederate button?” Try to find one that says it’s true other than the wordless post on X
https://www.swtimes.com/story/news/2020/07/09/fact-check-confederate-flags-on-democratic-campaign-buttons/42379197/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-gore-92-confederate/
https://www.truthorfiction.com/bill-clinton-used-confederate-buttons-in-1992-presidential-campaign/
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1021665/donald-trump-jr-bill-clinton-confederate-flag-button/
Read to the end where even this sympathetic source says they likely aren’t from the campaign. (Just like a Trump to share extensively debunked information as truth - no offense.) Your own link says the same thing. Is the scandal that HTC didn’t immediately comment but let the man in charge of her entire merchandise operation comment?
Complete nonsense.
Yes we need to remind everyone of that. Also the party of slavery and Jim Crow
Who do you think is funding this mess? It’s a long term strategy to buy up real estate at clearance prices, kill off the undesirable masses, rent back to survivors and have the government pay the difference. The activists are useful idiots. This is a business scheme.
Everything the leftists touch, turns to shit. Question is, are they THAT stupid or is it all intentional?
It's predominantly white, female, middle-class, social justice ideologues that think they know what's best. It's the same bunch that have taken over school boards.
School boards were always white, female, and middle-class. It's just that 50 years ago, the white female middle-class predominately had good heads on their shoulders.
God save us from liberal white women. Goody Oberlin, the fierce adherent of the new religion of leftism, wields her Moral Superiority like a sickle, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake.
It is amazing however, that they've also taken over the public health response and criminal justice system with refusing to prosecute. That they've managed to also defund the police, what will be opportunistic enough to fill that void?
These women are the useful idiots who are carrying out the work, but there have to also be bad-intentioned individuals/groups behind the scenes who are orchestrating and financing the whole thing. Soros is one of them.
I don't imagine anyone is financing well-meaning Karens at local school boards or doctors/therapists campaigning for safe injection sites.
Not directly, but someone's financing the propaganada and the countless non-profits that influence everything, from health to education. And someone's influencing the Democrats to go along with all this nonsense.
Any time I try to bring something like this up with a lefty friend, she says, “Please! no politics, let’s just be friends”. The next time this happens I will tell her my First Amendment right is more important than our friendship. It is willful blindness on her part. Lalala, don’t want to hear anything that challenges “her truth”
I don’t have anything to do with my lefty acquaintances anymore.
Intentional
My exact question nearby.
This article, and the photographic journalism that accompanies it, brought me to tears.
I spent the formative years of my adult life, right out of college, in Philadelphia. I love that city. It was a great place to start my career nearly 30 years ago. But it was broken then, and it is broken now. The images depicted here could have been right out of 1995, where there was still a crack epidemic and heroin was abundant. I knew many people like these addicts. Some of them are dead. The ones who got sober did so through hard work, and removing themselves from the environment that made them addicts to begin with, many leaving Philadelphia altogether. I moved to NY eventually during the same era, and it wasn't better there, except Mayor Giuliani had taken the helm and things were improving (Tomkins Square Park was still terrifying, though). The musical Rent was a big hit at the time, and I loathed it for its glamorization of drug addiction.
Here we are again. These fools who think that they are "reducing harm" by creating drug incubators in these neighborhoods are promotors of death. This will not end well.
Word on Rent. We have got to stop glamorizing this shit. If the images in this article were blasted nonstop through TikTok, young people might think twice before they pick up that needle for the first time.
These images are stark and terrifying. The most brutal I have seen in any medium. They need to be seen everywhere.
Major kudos to Ashley Gilbertson, the photographer.
Fearless and raw!
I never understood the appeal of Rent. It's about self-destructive people glorifying themselves and hating the people who would save them from their suffering.
I guess when consumption went out of style, we had to find some other hideous condition to romanticize.
Here in Seattle, allowing this descent into living hell unfettered is touted as "compassion". SMH. This will not end well indeed.
Attention minorities: your values, beliefs and preferences and don’t matter; white liberals will decide all things on your behalf.
Safety and drug addiction/use do not go hand in hand. Almost 8 million syringes handed out last year!? What do these people think is happening to all those needles? Un less each and every one is safely tucked into a bio waste container then they are responsible for an epidemic of toxic needle trash.
The people handing out the needles probably drive electric cars too, and feel super virtuous about it, completely ignoring the power plant down the road that’s burning coal to recharge their batteries.
“I’m HELPING!”
And Junkies are soo into that.
Something to remember when people start talking about decriminalizing drugs.
This is a good argument AGAINST The Libertarian Party.
This same type of thinking labels prostitution as "sex work" trying to dignify it! It is a degradation of humanity and a perversion of sex. When someone sells their body, their soul is crying out for help. No amount of re-naming will scratch that itch.
Yes, and the johns get off with a slap on the wrist. A misdemeanor that police won’t even bother with.
Harm prevention is a business, all businesses need clients, the junkies are the clients, more junkies, more jobs for harm preventioners.
It seems like part of the homelessness-industrial complex, or at least the same blueprint: start a non-profit, get grants and do absolutely nothing to help the people actually suffering.
Yeah; there was a program in Seattle to get housing for homeless. It took over $100M in government funding an managed to get 100 people into housing. So, more than $1M per homeless person housed (in tiny, dirty studio apartment blocks). Someone got that money. Not the homeless people.
Truth.
Canada started their experiment in safe supply in Vancouver. It has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. Last week, I asked an indigenous addictions specialist on his current safe-supply take. He said, "I thought it was a good idea initially but crossed that bridge a while ago; and recently went back to bomb it." Meanwhile, Alberta is focussing on recovery projects instead and is considering forcing 'some' people into treatment.
As a former addiction counselor, I can tell you that none of what they are doing will ever work. You have to remove the drugs and separte the junkies from the drugs. Whether it's in a prison, or other institution, that is the only way to stop them from using. And, even then, when they get out, many will go right back to using. Even with job training and a guarenteed job when they get out, it will be a struggle to maintain sobriety. Everyone involved has to work to get the drugs off the street. If it means shooting the sellers, so be it. Either that, or set aside a walled-in area in a state, fill it with junkies, feed them all the junk they want and let them die. No great loss to society.
All for it!
One question to ask is, who's profitting from this program? When you know that, every other question will be answered.
It's always about the money
Of course. The question is, who is it going to and what are they doing with how much of it, and can they account for all of it? As you know, once the govt. has it's hand in something, it becomes a cesspit.
This is why some men fantasize about brutal vigilante justice.
This stuff isn't hard to stop. Arrest the drug-pushing gangsters and flay them alive in front of their peers.
We call that brutal and intolerable now, but in my opinion it is far superior to the alternative of allowing more children to be captured and destroyed by drugs and gangs.
We don't have the balls to take that sort of effective action any more. Too bad. It would work
It's definitely preferable to watch our children succumb to the allure of drugs and destroy their lives. Especially if they are black or brown lives.
It's like the classic trolley problem - as long as I'm not the one killing them, I'll let them die.
As a recovering addict I agree. But, in prison or jail you can still get it. If they want help then help them. If they don't, you move them along.
I wish you the best of everthing on your continuing recovery. Stay strong.
Thank you, Olivia Reingold, for this excellent piece. As a recovering alcoholic and addict with 36 years of continuous sobriety, I am appalled at what harm reduction has done to many of our cities and especially to addicts. Harm reduction actually enables addicts to continue using instead of facing the consequences of their addiction. Like Michael Schellenberger I also originally supported harm reduction and needle exchanges for the same reasons he did but as I watched my city deteriorate because of its policies I joined the naysayers. Harm reduction isn’t how alcoholics and addicts come to recovery! It’s obvious to most of us in 12 Step programs. The only thing that ever got me to face my alcoholism and addiction was feeling my pain full on. I got sick and tired of feeling that endless, merciless pain. I couldn’t take it anymore so I sought help in a real recovery program, not in more drugs because I knew full well the drugs and alcohol stopped working, they stopped helping. Of course I knew the answer was getting off them, not taking more of them. Now at 36 years of being clean and sober (and yes, we addicts and alcoholics were dirty when using, filthy inside ourselves) I am absolutely convinced that harm reduction has done nothing but continue to HARM.
Thank you for your bravery as an example to others. Stay strong!
I am a pastor who has worked in street and related ministry in NYC for 30 years. All of the criticisms of drug use enablement written here are accurate. Enablement is a deception from evil which destroys many lives. The enablers are completely deceived by evil and do not understand addiction. There are treatment/recovery programs that work, proven for decades. Christian long term recovery programs have a significantly higher success rate. These programs know that addiction is slavery, physical, spiritual, moral, and people must be transformed in mind and heart to stay clean. I have never met an addict who disagrees that addiction is slavery. The medical and psych professions are covetous of control and deny that transformation is possible. I was a hospital chaplain here in NYC for several years, I did patient visits and held Bible studies and prayer time with the patients in the secure psych unit, many of whom were drug addicts. The nurses were strong supporters of this. When the head psych MD learned about it he told my supervisor he didn't want chaplain care in the psych unit, even though the patients wanted it.
“Those who advocate for harm reduction—a Biden-endorsed policy that prioritizes users’ safety over their sobriety or abstinence”
—————————————————
Basically every Democrat policy is what you would come up with if you were one of the stupid fat kids who failed the marshmallow test.
Yes, if you are incapable of looking downstream and you are governed by impulse and emotion, giving more drugs to people having withdrawals seems like a good plan.
Dem policy never considers what could possibly go wrong. Every single dem policy is exactly this: a predictable tragic result.
Exactly.
Every time you see "Harm Reduction", read it as "Addict Enabling".
Addicts, and addict-adjacents, and people who profit off of enabling addicts love "Harm Reduction". Because it lets the addicts keep being addicts, doesn't make anyone's life better, but does assuage the progressives' self-image ("I'm a good person; I reduce harm!") as it feeds the addict-industrial complex. Everybody wins, right?
The same applies to all who love to enable, encourage, and reward homelessness whose catchphrase is "Housing First". (I'm looking at you Gavin Newsom, and all your stupid followers.)
It's not a coincidence that homelessness, addiction, and mental illness are highly correlated.
To the people who passed the marshmallow test, it is obvious how counterproductive these progressive policies are. Progressives, they just really want those marshmallows, cause it feels good right now.
This is a perfect illustration of what Rob Henderson calls a Luxury Belief and its effect in the real world on real people.