In an article that would never, ever, have been published by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Olivia Reingold reported that addiction activists say they’re ‘reducing harm’ in Philly, but Kensington locals say they’re causing it. The newspaper has published several articles describing Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ clean-up efforts in trying to get the junkies off the streets and the drug dealers behind bars on in that infamous open-air drug market, but Friday morning’s really took the cake. The OpEd written by Theo Fountain, a drug addict in remission and former street camper in that section of the city, he’s advocating for the ‘harm reduction’ efforts by Prevention Point he says helped him to finally get off the streets.

It was in the fourteenth paragraph down that Mr Fountain admitted how he supported his drug habit:

I was arrested for participating in the typical hustles addicts support themselves through: shoplifting and dealing dope.

In other words, the “harm reduction” programs didn’t reduce harm, but simply transferred some of the harm to other people, to the stores — and others? — from whom Mr Fountain stole, and the other addicts to whom he sold dope, because the Prevention Point and similar organizations enabled Mr Fountain to stay on the streets, using drugs, longer.

Harm reduction organizations provide an invaluable service that the hospitals and jails and rehabs aren’t able to provide. They meet people where they are. In whatever condition a person is, they are treated with dignity and provided with the help they require at that moment. They don’t make demands of sick people. They nurture and support us. They don’t displace addicts or dump us in rehabs and congratulate themselves afterward.

Let’s put that a little more bluntly: the harm reduction organizations provide the addicts with clean needles, so they don’t get as sick from shooting up, and they don’t pick them up and put them in rehab, but leave them out on the streets, perhaps with a bit of food, to continue their drug-addled lifestyle.

I get it: these ‘harm reduction’ people and organizations really do think that they are helping people, but that’s because the idea of consequences seems to escape them. In another Inquirer article on Friday, we can see where some of that redistributed harm has gone:

Shoplifting has retailers putting more items behind antitheft glass but it’s driving customers away

Retailers say it’s a deterrence strategy necessary to combat theft. Shoppers say it’s an inconvenience that makes them want to buy those products elsewhere.

by Erin McCarthy | Friday, may 17, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

When Bryan Calhoun goes on a Target run, he avoids the Wynnewood store — just a few miles away from his Broomall home. He opts instead to drive to Wayne or Malvern, where fewer items are locked behind antitheft glass.

“At a place like Target, it’s fun to look around. You go in for toothpaste, and you end up with $200 worth of stuff,” said Calhoun, 55, an agency recruiter. When seemingly mundane items like socks, body wash, and detergent are behind a secure case, “it takes the fun out of the experience.”

Philadelphia consumers are often used to locked cases in pharmacies and retail stores. In recent years, some suburban shoppers say they have encountered more, too.

There’s debate among experts about whether the theft prevention tactics are warranted at a time when it’s hard to parse whether retail theft is actually on the rise. There’s little transparency from companies about how they determine which items are locked. CVS and Walgreens spokespeople told The Inquirer that they use data to drive these decisions but declined to provide numbers.

Among consumers, however, The Inquirer found consensus: The contraptions are an inconvenience, one that is often just another reason to buy those products online.

There’s more at the original.

Reporter Erin McCarthy included a photo of a “Target in Northern Liberties, (in which) both sides of an aisle containing skin care products, some of which sell for less than $10, (are) behind glass, lock, and key.” Northern Liberties is not Kensington, and is a gentrifying neighborhood of urban professionals, close to Center City, yet even that store has to keep stuff locked up.

Of course, it’s also on the Market St-Frankford El, the same SEPTA line that stops at Kensington and Allegheny, so the junkies could be making trips to shoplift! But the ‘harm reduction’ folks, as nobly intentioned as they might be, are harming blameless businesses, reducing profits, and costing working people their jobs. Redistributing harm away from the junkies and onto innocent people is not a good thing.