More Seattle insanity: City Council considers buying an RV where heroin users could go inside to shoot up

This is one of the reasons I miss the ’80s. No one who wasn’t already addicted failed to understand the horror of drugs, and even the users knew better than to do it out in the open, since that would mean a drug bust and that would portend all kinds of problem in their lives. Now? Hey, the City Council might even buy an RV and let you go inside to shoot up, no questions asked:

On Tuesday, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda told Q13 News that she was not “committed” to the idea of a mobile injection site. But then on Thursday Mosqueda promoted buying a van to be used as a safe injection site after getting new details from city officials on the idea. The van would cost about $350,000. Mosqueda, who represents Seattle citywide, has always been supportive of a safe injection model. In fact, many Seattle city leaders believe it can make a difference in the fight against heroin addiction. Mosqueda says data shows that it prevents deaths and helps with outreach and that many health officials support the idea. For that reason, many council members have been fighting to bring a brick-and-mortar site for nearly two years.

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But finding the right location that meets the criteria has been challenging and perhaps one of the biggest challenges has been the pushback from many in the public. On Thursday, during the same committee meeting, City Councilmembers Sally Bagshaw and Debora Juarez asked supporters of safe injection sites to go out into the community and educate people who oppose the idea. “A particular group of people shows up at every one of my community meetings to come at me over that (issue); you can only do so much,” Juarez said.

Ah, too bad that “particular group of people” keeps complicating the plan to spend $350,000 of taxpayer dollars to buy a van for the facilitation of heroin use, all to “make a difference in the fight against heroin addiction,” you understand. What objection could these people possibly have to such a stellar plan? But wait, a few of the council members think the city should consider going even further, and actually buy the heroin for the junkies. Because this will fight heroin addiction, in the same sense that up is down and night is day.

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Insane? I’d think that would be self-evident, but I realize we’re no longer living in a rational age on this subject. Where we once believed as a society that it was crucial to warn against the dangers of doing drugs, we now consider it default human behavior and prefer to talk in terms of “managing” it and keeping it “safe,” as if it could ever be safe to shoot up heroin. How can any public official look at a constituent and think they’re helping them by facilitating their heroin use. I’d suggest you could only think that way if you’ve entirely given up on any notion that this person could hope to have a happy, meaningful productive life. Some of you are probably mad at me for referring to heroin users as junkies, but what I would tell them is that they don’t have to be junkies. They can get themselves cleaned up, swear off the use of all mind-altering chemicals and live happy, sober lives. What the Seattle City Council wants to do is merely control the circumstances under which they destroy their lives by continuing to use heroin, as they don’t have any higher aspirations than these for such people. And yet I can’t entirely blame Seattle. The prevailing American culture now accepts drug use as normal and inevitable, and considers attempts to stop people from doing it unrealistic and obtrusive. All Seattle’s doing is what liberals always do, which is to use the breakdown of society as an excuse to expand the reach of government. On the other side you have libertarians who don’t want to stop drug use because they’re afraid that doing so might involve government, and they’d rather see people bake their brains than that. And the few rational people who still think the war against drugs was and is a worthy fight have their meetings weekly in a corner booth at IHOP. Oh, sorry, IHOb. Another reason I miss the ’80s.