Welcome, junkies! (continued)
One challenge in following the news in Portland is that every so often you come across a headline that is so ridiculous that for a while you think it must be satire. So it is with this one: "Multnomah County Will Distribute Tin Foil and Straws to Fentanyl Smokers."
No, it's not the Onion. It's real. By handing out fentanyl smoking supplies, the "thinking" goes, you'll talk people out of injecting drugs, which is supposedly more dangerous. Oh, and other places are doing it, and we can't miss out on the fun.
Good Lord. Really? Are they out of their minds? We aren't doing enough already to attract every desperate junkie in the country to Portland? Sleep anywhere you want, relieve yourself on the street, three free meals a day, no consequence for drug possession, no consequence for property crime, and hey, now the county will even supply you a fresh blue-smoking kit any time you need one.
Forget the Rose Festival. Forget the Blues Festival. We are now into the year-round Fent Festival, where young people come to die.
Not long ago, we were told that if only we elected Julia Brim-Edwards to the county board, this kind of breathtaking stupidity would stop. Well, JBE was sworn in nearly a month ago, and we're still seeing unbelievable stories like this.
At Multnomah County, the stupid never stops. In fact, it's getting worse.
Drive out the wheeler
ReplyDeleteJack bogdanski for Mayer
ReplyDeleteThe homeless junkies are not the problem. It is obvious that public funding is not being audited.
ReplyDeleteDichotomy.
DeletePut a bird on it!
ReplyDeleteAt least Dud Wheeler is speaking out against Multnomah County’s latest insane policy
ReplyDeleteWheeler’s criticism of the county: “They’re worse than us.”
DeleteMultnomah County is hopeless. There is no path that leads it back to even a semblance of sanity.
ReplyDeleteI thinks I've figured out what the problem is. They have misinterpreted what the name Multnomah means. Instead of "damp place" the actual interpretation, they think it means "camp place". Maybe we could bring in some local shamans and have a ritual to cleanse that thought out of their minds.
ReplyDeleteIt would take a heart of stone not to laugh aloud about Portland’s future
ReplyDeleteI don't know who the county chair is, but they need to put the head of the county health department in front of cameras and microphones at 9am tomorrow to explain themselves. All I've seen online this weekend is "somewhere, someone once said this was a good way to get them in for services". If you don't believe they're already availing themselves of every service available, you haven't been around any state offices. Or the emergency room at your local hospital. Good LORD, are they there. This sounds like a policy someone advocated in a high school paper, got an A, and recycled twice in college, for two more As. So it MUST be a good idea!
ReplyDeleteSomeone online brought up the Klingon thing from a few decades ago and mentioned how as dumb as it sounded, it was defensible. This is sheer lunacy.
This is an idea someone like Mayor Pete would float at 8am and disavow by happy hour.
Deletejust announced they suspended implementation. We'll see if it lasts....
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wweek.com/news/2023/07/10/multnomah-county-reverses-plans-to-distribute-tin-foil-to-fentanyl-smokers/
It's now been suspended, but only after making national headlines yet again about how Portland is a lawless hellhole with Fentanyl flowing through the streets like candy, and people freebasing on the corner of Broadway and West Burnside.
ReplyDeleteWhoever dreamed up and then implemented this should be shown the door, yesterday. How many millions of dollars of drug paraphernalia has been purchased in advance for this initiative with tax dollars, instead of buying stuff to actually HELP people addicted to this poison?
There's at least a little logic to needle exchange as that directly reduces or eliminates the risk of transmission of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C. There is no such justification for this crap.