It was just six days previously that The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to Jose Demarco to criticize Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ decision that the City of Brotherly Love would no longer publicly fund syringe exchange programs to further enable junkies. Then, they did it again:

The mayor’s misguided decision on syringe exchange

From my experience leading the health department’s division of HIV services, I know that ending a successful evidence-based health program will only lead to a reemergence of preventable conditions.

by Coleman Terrell, for the Inquirer | Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 | 5:02 AM EDT

Right out of the box, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has made a terrible mistake that sets us back more than three decades.

Her budget proposal includes not one city dollar for syringe exchange, the first effective HIV prevention strategy our city has had. In 1992, Mayor Ed Rendell, working with ACT UP and other activists, declared a public health emergency and started Philadelphia’s exchange program.

A study by George Washington University estimated that 10,000 HIV infections were averted in the 10 years that followed. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health reports that this study and more than 100 others support the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs.

From my years as an ACT UP activist in the early ‘90s through my experience in the health department’s HIV program and directing the city’s public health preparedness, I know that cutting off a successful, evidence-based health program will only lead to a reemergence of preventable conditions.

Are two outside OpEd columns in six days enough to tell us that this is the Inquirer’s editorial position as well? Yeah, it actually is, as the Editorial Board wrote on St Patrick’s Day, saying, “Harm reduction must be part of efforts to end Kensington drug market. These services have their fair share of critics within the neighborhood, but they help keep people alive who are struggling with addiction.”

Parker has been unapologetic about making law enforcement a key part of her strategy, and few could credibly argue that policing should not play a role in the effort.

But the mayor would do well to recognize that harm reduction services that help protect people struggling with addiction until they’re ready for treatment can play a vital role in fixing what ails Kensington.

Parker’s recent moves, however, have left harm reduction providers feeling under siege when the mayor should be bringing them into the conversation about how to solve one of the city’s most intractable problems.

The Parker administration has said it will not allow any part of the $180 million coming to Philadelphia as part of a court settlement with opioid painkiller manufacturers to go to needle exchange programs. While the amount may be negligible — less than $40,000 in grants last year — the message is clear.

The Editorial Board have simply assumed that “keep(ing) people alive who are struggling with addiction” is a good thing, but doing that simply perpetuates the problem. The photo above shows all of those nice, clean, only-once-used needles littering the SEPTA tracks in Kensington. I have previously stated, in two separate articles entitled, “Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right,” that being a nice, sympathetic, and compassionate guy leads to doing the wrong things. Keeping junkies alive and (somewhat) less unhealthy doesn’t fight the drug addiction problem that has littered Kensington’s streets and sidewalks and the SEPTA elevated train station into what we have previously noted as the open-air drug market in the Kensington section of Philadelphia; with published photos of junkies shooting up right on the street in front of SEPTA’s Allegheny Avenue train station, it’s pretty difficult not to notice. The government of Mexico has actually used photos of Kensington in ads to discourage drug use in Mexico! And Philly’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, and softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner has actually filed suit to stop efforts to fight crime in Kensington and on SEPTA. But how can the city deal with junkies sprawled out on the sidewalks and alleys by further enabling them?

Mrs Mullins is right. Yeah, it can be argued that she is being insensitive and an [insert slang term for the rectum here], harshly uncaring about the people who have caused the blight which has destroyed a neighborhood, but decades of being nice and kind have not only perpetuated the problems but exacerbated them as well. We can’t really know how god, or bad, a Mayor she will turn out to be, but being harsh and aggressive shows that she is trying to get on the right track.