When people with strong cultural feelings begin to dig in their heels, “my side no matter what,” irreparable damage can be done to the entire society, inviting equal toxic stubbornness on the other side. That reality seems to define American politics these days. While there’s not much you can do when the premise of the retrenchment is based on irrational beliefs – other than gently and non-judgmentally (but repeatedly) convey facts from credible sources – sometimes the resentment emanates from not listening to the other side… without knee jerk negativity. And sometimes, the other side is right.
One example of this “I reject all of you” is an unwillingness to address false beliefs in one’s own culture. Tough on crime, tough on drug use mantras from the right can provoke a total and often equally harmful permissiveness from the liberal side of our political dysfunction. So today, beginning with the city conservatives love to hate, San Francisco – GOP-despised Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district – I will present several sad examples.
We are seeing increasing urban issues, “bads” that play on each other and increase the totality of modern problems. Housing affordability, post-pandemic evictions, homelessness, an increasingly lucrative market for exceptionally narcotics, plus cartels and gangs learning how to use lax governance over the internet to embrace a new drug marketing tool. As we move to decriminalize illicit narcotics, trying to shunt addicts away from warehousing in our horrific criminal justice system, we have simultaneously failed to provide treatment alternatives. For West Coast cities, in milder climate zones, it is easier to live homeless. Likewise, West Coast culture has become increasingly tolerant of drug use, slowly eroding the stigma that was once uniformly associated with drug addiction.
As reported by German Lopez in the January 31st The Morning NY Times news feed: “In San Francisco and other liberal cities, the … culture has become more tolerant of people using drugs. When I asked people living on the streets why they are in San Francisco, the most common response was that they knew they could avoid the legal and social penalties that often follow addiction. Some came from as close as Oakland, believing that San Francisco was more permissive. As Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, told me, San Francisco ‘is on the extreme of a pro-drug culture.’…
“[San Francisco’s] drug crisis is relatively new. In 2018, San Francisco’s overdose death rate roughly matched the national average. Last year, its death rate was more than double the national level… San Francisco’s change is rooted in a broader effort to destigmatize addiction. Some experts and activists have argued that a less punitive and judgmental approach to drug use would help users get treatment — a ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ attitude.
“Over time, though, these efforts in liberal cities have expanded from users to drug use itself. Activists in San Francisco now refer to ‘body autonomy’ — arguing that people have the right to put whatever they choose into their veins and lungs. They no longer want to hate the sin. They say it’s no one’s business but the drug user’s… One example of this shift: In early 2020, an advocacy group put up a billboard downtown to promote the use of naloxone, an overdose antidote. It showed happy young people seeming to enjoy a high together. ‘Know overdose,’ the billboard said. ‘Use with people and take turns.’ Here, drug use wasn’t dangerous as long as users had someone to check on them while high.
“The shift is also present in drug-related service providers in San Francisco. Michael Discepola, director of health access at the program GLIDE, said that his organization wants people to use drugs more safely. Abstinence is not always the correct goal, he argued. When one client declared that he wanted to quit drugs, Discepola explained, GLIDE suggested ‘more realistic goals.’” But the reality of unchecked and open drug use – resulting in residents’ and visitors’ stepping over unconscious people used to shooting up on their doorstep – is increasingly intolerable. In liberal Portland, Oregon, the story is similar, with a problem becoming a very serious urban crisis.
In the January 30th New York Times, journalist Michael Corkery addressed Oregon’s 90-day emergency crisis declaration: “Portland used to be known as one of the most desirable places to live in the United States. But in recent years, the city has been struggling with widespread fentanyl use on its streets, which has led to an increase in homeless encampments and crime… As many other American cities have rebounded from the pandemic, the fentanyl crisis has hampered the city’s recovery… Several key retailers, such as REI, have closed stores in Portland, while hundreds of people continue to die from fentanyl overdoses every year, often in tents or on sidewalks.
“The emergency declaration is part of a broader plan announced late last year by Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, to curb public drug use and crime in Portland and re-establish a sense of security for workers and visitors… In an executive order on Tuesday [1/30], Gov. Kotek cited the ‘economic and reputational harm’ that the fentanyl problem was inflicting on Portland and the state… ‘Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly addictive, and all are grappling with how to respond,’ the governor said in a statement…
“Many cities are struggling with the fallout from fentanyl. In Oregon, the problem was accelerated by a law voters passed in 2020 that decriminalized the use of so-called hard drugs, including methamphetamine and fentanyl, and not just marijuana, which was already legal in Oregon and many other states. At the time of its passage, Measure 110 was celebrated as a first-in-the-nation law, an attempt to recognize drug addiction as a health problem, not a crime.” Passing drug-use-tolerant laws has moved more crime and more open-needle-use unpleasantness on to ordinary city streets. Neither the residents nor the users benefit. “The emergency declaration seems unlikely to draw much political pushback, but a bigger dispute lies ahead. Gov. Kotek has said that she is proposing a change in state law to ban public drug use and to give the police more resources to crack down on drug dealing.
“Seeking to roll back Measure 110 is likely to face opposition from many addiction-treatment providers. They have argued that recriminalizing drug use will lead people to use fentanyl in private, increasing the risk of overdoses… Opioid overdoses in Oregon increased from 738 in 2021, the first year Measure 110 was in effect, to 956 in 2022… Gov. Kotek has signaled that her plan calls not just for more police involvement but also for increased services for homeless people, including more shelter capacity.” NYT
We’ve shifted mental illness and treatment options away from traditional institutions, many of which were closed in the 1970s-80s in the Reagan era, back to prisons. Both such institutions and prisons were totally inadequate to accommodate human beings that garnered little sympathy from voters. We prioritize keeping taxes low for the rich, able to escape in their private jets to their vacation home of choice, but we will not pay for the obvious solutions that have tattered the quality of life for so many city dwellers… and decimated the lives (??) of serious drug addicts. Getting those addicts off our streets and into appropriate treatment facilities should be our priority… one where a whole lot more people see their quality of life significantly improve.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the degree that we abandon “marginal people” in our nation is a testament to our social, cultural, political and religious failures of stratospheric proportions.
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