West Coast cities are letting drug addicts kill themselves
Zachary Faria
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Liberals in the biggest cities on the West Coast have made it easier for drug addicts to die from overdoses based on the fallacy that letting drug addicts destroy their own lives is some form of compassion.
Seattle saw 589 drug overdose deaths in 2022, a 72% increase from the year before. In 2021, a record 193 homeless people died in Multnomah County, Oregon, home of Portland, a 53% increase from the year before, and the majority of deaths were from drug overdoses. Methamphetamine was the leading cause of overdose deaths in Portland, and fentanyl was the fastest-growing killer. Most of the overdose deaths in Seattle were the result of fentanyl.
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Meanwhile, San Francisco has seen just under 2,000 overdose deaths over the last three years, with fentanyl being responsible for 72% of them. According to the city, “preliminary data shows that overdose death rates among blacks are more than five times the citywide rate.” The city has only brought overdose deaths down 14% from the all-time high of 2020.
Go city by city, and you can see that the Democrats in charge of each set out to make it easier for drug addicts to fall further and further into the throes of addiction. Seattle created “safe-injection sites,” encouraging drug addicts to continue shooting up so long as they were under supervision. Portland decriminalized most hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin.
San Francisco also created a grand $3.5 million safe-injection site that it was forced to shut down after 11 months when it became clear the center was simply drawing drug addicts to a residential neighborhood where they menaced residents on a daily basis. The city then spent another $500,000 to have two “researchers” walk around the neighborhood a couple of times to conclude that the 126% increase in emergency calls around that drug center wasn’t that big a deal.
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In all three cities, the thought process has been the same. They decriminalized hard drugs so as not to ruin people’s lives through drug-related incarceration, only to encourage them to ruin their lives through addiction instead. These left-wing cities claim they promoted drug rehabilitation programs at their “safe” injection sites, but in reality, drug addicts were not eager to take them up on that offer when these centers allowed them to shoot up whenever they wanted.
All three cities have incentivized drug addicts to continue (or even increase) their drug use, and all three are dealing with record overdose deaths as a result. This “compassionate” reform is anything but, yet there is little appetite among these West Coast Democrats to change course and start caring for people in earnest.