We have previously reported on how almost everyone supports drug addiction treatment and rehabilitation, but they prefer it to be in other people’s neighborhoods, and how even in Democrat-controlled Philadelphia, the City Council passed an ordinance which bans ‘safe injection centers in all council districts except one. We alson noted that, despite residential opposition, the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer have supported the concept of ‘safe injection centers and been opposed to efforts to ban drug treatment centers in specific neighborhoods.
Well, here they go again!
Complaints about addiction services in Manayunk show widening tensions over opioid epidemic in Philly
The tensions come at an inflection point in Philadelphia’s ongoing drug epidemic.
by Aubrey Whelan | Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT
An inspector from the city Department of Licensing and Inspections paid a surprise visit on a recent afternoon to Unity Recovery, a Manayunk-based organization that supports people in addiction.
The inspector told Unity staffers he was there to investigate a report that the nonprofit was illegally operating a syringe exchange.
Days later, an inspector from the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs visited Unity to follow up on another complaint. Unity had been accused of using state funds to distribute syringes. (Local officials in Philadelphia permit the distribution of sterile syringes to prevent the spread of HIV and other bloodborne diseases, but the practice is not legal statewide.)
If the practice is not legal statewide, but “local officials in Philadelphia (are) permit(ting)” it, are local officials in the City of Brotherly Love breaking the law?
If you hold your cursor over the article tab, at least if you are using Microsoft Edge as your browser, you will see the article’s original title, before an editor changed it: “Unity Recovery in Manayunk feels harassed after back-to-back inspections.”
Unity Recovery’s staff said that the complaints were unjustified and unfounded, and are concerned that there is heightened scrutiny of their work
The inspections come at an inflection point for efforts to reduce the harmful consequences of opioid addiction in Philadelphia’s ongoing drug epidemic. Overdose death tolls continue to reach new highs each year, but critics say newly elected Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is focused more on law-and-order concerns than harm reduction. She has proposed pulling back city funding for syringe exchanges.
Ahhh, there we have the pet phrase, “harm reduction.” Which brings us to an article in The Free Press:
Addiction Activists Say They’re ‘Reducing Harm’ in Philly. Locals Say They’re Causing It.
Addicts have turned a minority neighborhood into an open-air drug market. Residents blame the mostly white advocates for ‘destroying’ their community.
by Olivia Reingold | Monday, April 8, 2024
For three years, Sonja Bingham, a 55-year-old mother of three, started every day the same way: with a broom. At dawn, she would come out to sweep away the damage from the previous night—the syringes, the fentanyl baggies, the cigarette butts, and the half-eaten sandwiches. And sometimes as she swept, she couldn’t help but think that the city of Philadelphia would’ve never let this fly during the crack epidemic.
“They threw our black asses in jail,” says Bingham, who’s speaking to me in her living room where there’s a TV streaming the live feed of four security cameras placed throughout her property.
“Now that the color of the addicts has changed, they’re going to meet them where they are in our community and allow them to destroy it. So, now you have the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, watching how once again, our lives don’t matter.”
Her problem is not just with the hundreds of drug users camped out in Kensington—her neighborhood in northeast Philly that’s been dubbed ground zero for the city’s opioid crisis. It’s with an ecosystem of activists that call themselves “harm reductionists.”
Those who advocate for harm reduction—a Biden-endorsed policy that prioritizes users’ safety over their sobriety or abstinence—say they’re helping fix the problem. But when I visited Kensington last month, Bingham and almost a dozen other residents told me that the activists are actually the ones causing it.
Sadly, there’s a lot of race-blaming in the article, with black residents — in a majority Hispanic neighborhood: The majority of Kensington’s population are Hispanic or Latino (59.9%), consisting primarily of Puerto Rican and Dominican Americans. Of the non-Hispanic, 19% are White, 15.1% are Black, 3.6% are Asian, and 2.2% identify as two or more races — blaming white activists, while the activists defended themselves as not being mostly white:
Locals noted that many of the activists handing out sandwiches and needles in Kensington, which is a mostly minority neighborhood, are white. A spokesperson for Prevention Point, the largest harm reduction nonprofit in Philadelphia, told The Free Press that that 50 percent of their twelve-person leadership team “are BIPOC” (black, indigenous, or a person of color), and their eight-strong board has “three members identifying as BIPOC.” Sarah Laurel, the founder of Savage Sisters, which also provides harm reduction services in Kensington, describes herself as “white presenting” and says her father is Iranian.
Normally, I wouldn’t have quoted that paragraph directly, but it is just so marvelously humorous. When I see the left justifying themselves based on their race, I see racism, and when I see people self-“identifying” as some particular racial or ethnic group, all I see is idiocy. You either are or are not something.
Rachel Dolezal could not be reached for comment. 🙂
Following the last quoted paragraph come five more paragraphs, documenting how liberal Oregon and San Francisco have now rejected the formerly lenient “harm reduction” policies that they had, because harm reduction was followed by increased drug use and problems.
The article is a long one, documenting the problems that the non-junkie residents have with the drug addicts and the liberal “harm reduction” activists. Fortunately, it’s not hidden behind a paywall, so you can read it yourself.
It’s far too long for me to keep quoting it, but one more, again quoting Sonya Bingham, really hits home:
“You’re in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, you’re gonna walk past a child who probably didn’t have a hot meal, right? You’re gonna go right past them, and you’re gonna give it to some junkie on the ground? Like, what do you think your seeds are planting in the minds of our young people of their value and worth?”
I have thrice previously used the article headline “Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right“, because it’s very simply true. There have been countless times where I have noted, of lenient prosecutors, that treating criminals leniently for lesser crimes has just left them out on the streets in situations in which they commit far worse crimes that get them locked up for life, and leave innocent people mugged, murdered, or molested. Our major cities have become laboratory tests of the old saw, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
You know, I get it: there are some very well-meaning people out there, who really, really, really want to help downtrodden people, who see suffering and want to ease it. But in easing suffering, they have enabled and even spread continued suffering.