Joe Biden, Philadelphia, and the enabling of drug addiction

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President Joe Biden’s ‘plan’ to provide free crack pipes to addicts fell apart:

But on the same day, The Philadelphia Inquirer published this gem:

    Philly’s journey to a supervised injection site spans years as overdose rates soar

    Five years since officials announced their support for a site, efforts to open one have been mired in controversy and legal battles.

    by Aubrey Whelan and Jeremy Roebuck | Thursday, February 10, 2022

    In 2017, Philadelphia was on track to see a record-breaking overdose death toll. Calls were growing to open a supervised injection site, where people can use drugs under medical supervision and be revived if they overdose. By the end of the year, 1,217 people had died of an overdose, and city officials made the decision to sanction a site but not pay for it.

    Five years later, the city still has no site, and the deaths go on. Still, advocates see renewed hope in the fact that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden signaled this week it is reconsidering the Trump administration’s long-held opposition to such efforts. Here’s a timeline of key moments in the process:

The article continues to list 18 specific dates and events in the timeline, the most important being the last:

    February 7, 2022: In a statement first obtained by the Associated Press, Justice Department officials say they are “evaluating” supervised injection sites and discussing “appropriate guardrails” with stakeholders — signifying a shift in thinking on the sites. Goldfein, Safehouse’s vice president, says the organization is in productive talks with the federal government.

United States Attorney Bill McSwain had filed a lawsuit in 2019 to block a supervised injection site, “citing a 1986 federal law colloquially known as the “crackhouse statute.” That law makes it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison to knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of using controlled substances.”

The “crack house statute,” 21 US §856, is pretty specific:

  • a) Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful to—
    • (1) knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance;
    • (2) manage or control any building, room, or enclosure, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the building, room, or enclosure for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.
  • (b) Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 20 years or a fine of not more than $500,000, or both, or a fine of $2,000,000 for a person other than an individual.

Screenshot of chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Translation: the Department of Justice, under President Bidden and Thank-God-and-Mitch-McConnell-he’s-not-on-the-Supreme-Court Attorney General Merrick Garland, are considering not enforcing the law, a law that isn’t being enforced in some other cities, including New York. Perhaps, just perhaps, people should be asking why deaths due to drug overdoses have skyrocketed under Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner. In 2016, Mr Kenney’s first year in office, fatal opioid overdoses jumped from 561 to 752, a 34.05% increase. Just a year later, and they had jumped to 1,075, 91.62% higher than in Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) final year in office.

And now the city wants to enable further drug use by making it safer to shoot up! What a great plan!

Drug users are not somehow ‘not criminals’, no matter what District Attorney Krasner likes to think. To obtain their recreational pharmaceuticals, they have to buy them from a drug dealer, and Philadelphia’s record-setting 562 murders in 2021 were largely fueled by gang warfare, mostly drug gang warfare. Junkies buying heroin and fentanyl are a captive market which keeps the dealers in operation, and that endangers all Philadelphians.

Being the [insert slang term for the rectum here] that I am, I’ll ask the question a lot of people will not: why would we want to keep junkies alive? They are almost wholly non-productive, they frequently resort to petty crimes to finance their habits, they enable violent drug dealers, and they are a burden on our welfare systems and society in general. While one assumes that their families will mourn the deaths of individual junkies, society as a whole is better off when they go to their eternal rewards. Having ‘safe injection sites’ simply keeps alive the drags on our society, the petty, and perhaps not-so-petty, criminals who prey on other people to support their drug addictions.

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