In January of 2021, I asked the hard question:
I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to ask: why do we want to keep junkies alive?
They have to steal from innocent people to support their habits, they cannot keep jobs to support themselves, and are nothing but a burden on society. And, heaven forfend! they probably don’t even wear their facemasks properly! Trying to get them off of drugs, so that they can become responsible members of society might make sense, but Safehouse simply enables them to keep shooting up.
The topic was the proposed “Safehouse,” a the nonprofit that, in an attempt to stem the city’s tide of opioid-related deaths, has proposed the site to provide medical supervision to people using drugs. The Usual Suspects in Philadelphia have supported Safehouse: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Mayor, and Pennsylvania Governor, Ed Rendell, all Democrats. Mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty, while somewhat coy in her current answers to the question of supervised drug injection centers, has more openly supported the idea in the past.
The idea has been tied up in court, and no such facility currently exists in the City of Brotherly Love. Now, it looks like the state is going to step in and put the kibosh on any such plans:
State Senate approves ban of supervised injection sites in Pa.
Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled state Senate passed a bipartisan bill to ban supervised injection sites anywhere in the state by a 41-9 vote. The legislation now moves to the House.
by Gillian McGoldrick and Aubrey Whelan | Monday, March 1, 2023 | 6:09 PM EDT
HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Senate voted Monday to stop any supervised injection sites from opening in the state, potentially creating a new hurdle for a nonprofit hoping to open one in Philadelphia.
The GOP-controlled state Senate passed a bipartisan bill, sponsored by state Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D., Philadelphia), to ban supervised injection sites anywhere in Pennsylvania by a 41-9 vote. The bill must pass the state House before reaching the desk of Gov. Josh Shapiro, who said he’d support banning supervised injection sites.
Governor Shapiro, the previous state Attorney General, is a Democrat, albeit not a hard-left one. Democrats control the state House of Representatives, by a bare one-vote margin, and Senator Tartaglione, who wrote the bill, is a Democrat; the bill enjoyed bipartisan support in the state Senate, and should pass the state House fairly easily . . . if Speaker of the House, Rep Joanna McClinton, who is from Philadelphia doesn’t somehow prevent it from coming to a vote.
More Democrats in the state Senate, 13, voted for the bill than against it.
The legislation is the latest attempt by a state or federal government to intervene on a nonprofit’s attempt to open a supervised injection site in Philadelphia, which is widely seen as the epicenter of the opioid epidemic.
Tartaglione, who introduced Senate Bill 165 and represents parts of Kensington, said Monday on the Senate floor that her proposal will bring state law up-to-date with current federal laws. Furthermore, her constituents don’t want a supervised injection site opened in their community, she said.
Kensington is Philly’s most drug-infested area, and parts of it are so bad that the Mexican government used street scenes in Kensington in ads warning Mexican citizens of the dangers of drug use.
The bill now goes to the House, which has a one-seat Democratic majority. Beth Rementer, a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) did not commit to vote on the bill, and said the Democratic caucus will review it once the legislation moves to the House.
I guess we’ll see: the Democrats could block it, even though a majority of Senate Democrats supported it, as does the Governor.
Safe injection sites simply enable drug use, and are a bad idea. Yes, they apparently reduce overdose deaths, but let me be brutally frank here: do we really want to reduce overdose deaths? Junkies are criminals, not just in using drugs and supporting drug dealers, but in the crimes they commit to support their habits. The life of so many of them on the streets creates hazards to the health of other people, and they are making our nation’s sixth largest city an absolute [insert slang term for feces here]hole.
Philly’s huge murder rate? Most of it boils down to gang activity, and most of those gangs are involved in the drug trade.
Safe injection centers are things no city needs. You cannot fight drug abuse by making it safer to abuse drugs.
IIRC, there are a couple of vacancies in the House and special elections scheduled to fill those seats, giving the GOP a chance to regain the majority. What’s the story with that? Or did those already take place?
The vacancies have been in very safe districts.
It is a Leftist fantasy that the gangbangers and the crazy behave the way they do because of the “System” (i.e. Capitalism). I suppose that some of the gangsters will eventually “grow up” but, for the most part, these are defective people who will need custodial care in a hospital or prison. They ain’t normal and will never be able to live a normal life. Giving them access to a normal society, just gives them access to more “victims”. The “crazy” need someone willing to treat them as a patient needing guidance and not a forgiving “friend”. It is an emotionally difficult role to accept.