We need a redesigned war on dangerous and addictive drugs. A torrent of fentanyl, heroin, opioids, and legal and illegal marijuana is wreaking havoc on our schools, neighborhoods and businesses. Our courts and jails are swamped with the burdens of crimes related to drugs. Mental health challenges, already staggering, are exacerbated.  Property crime is spiking in large part because of the addicts and the criminal opportunists in the drug trade who prey on them. Vancouver apartment dwellers tell me brazen drug deals are common around their buildings ...

Fentanyl Use Is Empowering? New York City’s Health Department delivers a deadly message
Dr. Kevin Sabet, WSJ opinion piece on NYC's drug use campaign, 6/29/22

The New York City Health Department’s “Let’s Talk Fentanyl” campaign made headlines for placing posters that promoted illegal drug use: “Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely.” Amid an unprecedented overdose crisis, public health officials should acknowledge the impossibility of “using safely.” Treatment with the goal of full recovery is the way to prevent overdoses.  

 
Drug Overdose Statistics Resources:

7/28: Delay in July Report.  Not yet published.

Opioid Overdose Public Health Surveillance Update May 19th 2022

From:  https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/
SUBSTANCEUSE/OPIOIDS/Documents/monthly
_opioid_overdose_related_data_report.pdf

From: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

CDC Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts

CDC: Multi-year Drug Overdose Mortality by State

Oregon Health Authority Opioid Overdose and Misuse

CDC: Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2020

AMA: Nation’s drug-related overdose and death epidemic continues to worsen *Updated May 12, 2022

From: https://www.statista.com/chart/25342/change-in-us-drug-overdose-deaths-by-state/

WORLD HEALTH RANKINGS

"Progressive" Drug Policies Become the Equivalent of "End of Life Care" on the Streets. This is What Harm Reduction Looks Like.

Nellie Bowles loves her city of San Francisco but in the last decade, multiple forces have turned her beloved city into something she can no longer abide or even live in. One of those forces is over a decade-long victory march of progressive drug policies.

One such policy is a city-run Center for drug addicts. It's an open-air chain-link enclosure in what used to be a public plaza.

"On the sidewalks all around it, people are lying on the ground, twitching. There’s a free mobile shower, laundry, and bathroom station emblazoned with the words 'dignity' on wheels. A young man is lying next to it, stoned, his shirt riding up, his face puffy and sunburned. Inside the enclosure, services are doled out: food, medical care, clean syringes, referrals for housing. It’s basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government says it’s trying to help. But from the outside, what it looks like is young people being eased into death on the sidewalk, surrounded by half-eaten boxed lunches. A couple of years ago, this was an intersection full of tourists and office workers who coexisted, somehow, with the large and ever-present community of the homeless. I’ve walked the corner a thousand times. Now the homeless—and those who care for the homeless—are the only ones left ..."

"New York City runs ad campaign 'empowering' heroin users
The ad, which was spotted on a New York City subway reads, "Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely."
A campaign by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is encouraging addicts not to be "ashamed," rather "be empowered" that they are "using safely." The ads are showing up on subways all over town.
The ad, which was spotted on a New York City subway reads, "Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely." The campaign appears to be designed to encourage the prevention of overdoses by giving tips on how to safely use illegal and dangerous narcotics.
The ad then gives tips to prevent an overdose beginning with the first tip, which is to "avoid using alone and take turns," thereby encouraging addicts to shoot up together.
Secondly, the ad suggested to "Start with a small dose and go slowly."
Third, the ad recommended having "Naloxone on hand." Naloxone can counteract an overdose but is not always effective and often times the user is too deep in the throws of an overdose to administer properly, if at all. If the drug is effective, users should then seek medical care. However, many do not and frequently die later ... The ad is geared towards what progressives call "Harm Reduction," which attempts to normalize drug use and is extremely ineffective."

"... Social conservatives, in contrast, line up more or less with Aristotle, who insisted that political life is about more than just mutual defense and commerce. Instead, political associations exist to enable us to develop a civic friendship whereby we will discover moral excellence as a community.

For social conservatives, that Aristotelian civic friendship means there is value in turning the law to certain moral purposes beyond things like mutual defense and enforcing contracts. Instead, we hope to make law in such a way that it promotes human flourishing and prevents or discourages things that lead to decay and decline.

Given that logic, we tend to want to legally promote and affirm things like marriage and the bearing of children within wedlock. Many of us would also, for example, probably support laws that require children to attend school up to a certain age (just not necessarily a public school!).

We believe in promoting or supporting these things (marriage, childbearing within wedlock, education) via the instrument of law because we believe they are fundamentally good for people and are good for our culture. Indeed, you will often hear social conservatives citing studies that show that individuals who successfully graduate from high school, get married, and delay childbearing until after marriage are extremely unlikely to live in poverty. The research also shows that children who grow up in traditional, two parent households, in the aggregate, tend to perform better in school, have less behavioral problems, are less likely to commit crimes, and are less likely to depend on public assistance when they grow up. For those reasons, and not merely as a matter of religious preference as others often believe, social conservatives support using the law to bolster social arrangements that improve human flourishing."

Misdemeanor Decriminalization (Journal Article Free Download)
Alexandra Natapoff, Vanderbilt Law Review, May 2015

Abstract
As the United States reconsiders its stance on mass incarceration, misdemeanor decriminalization has emerged as an increasingly popular reform. Seen as a potential cure for crowded jails and an overburdened defense bar, many states are eliminating jail time for minor offenses such as marijuana possession and driving violations, replacing those crimes with so-called "nonjailable" or "fine-only" offenses. This form of reclassification is widely perceived as a way of saving millions of state dollars-nonjailable offenses do not trigger the right to counsel-while easing the punitive impact on defendants, and it has strong support from progressives and conservatives alike. But decriminalization has a little-known dark side. Unlike full legalization, decriminalization preserves many of the punitive features and collateral consequences of the criminal misdemeanor experience, even as it strips defendants of counsel and other procedural protections. It actually expands the reach of the criminal apparatus by making it easier-both logistically and normatively-to impose fines and supervision on an ever- widening population, a population that ironically often ends up incarcerated anyway when they cannot afford fines or comply with supervisory conditions. The turn to fine-only offenses and supervision, moreover, has distributive implications. It captures poor, underemployed, drug-dependent, and otherwise disadvantaged defendants for whom fines and supervision are especially burdensome, while permitting well-resourced offenders to exit the process quickly and relatively unscathed. Finally, as courts turn increasingly to fines and fees to fund their own operations, decriminalization threatens to become a kind of regressive tax, turning the poorest populations into funding fodder for the judiciary and other government budgets. In sum, while decriminalization appears to offer relief from the punitive legacy of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, upon closer inspection it turns out to be a highly conflicted regulatory strategy that preserves and even strengthens some of the most problematic aspects of the massive U.S. penal system.

Seattle just became the largest city in the country with a hands-off policy for people who consume natural psychedelics. Yesterday the city council unanimously approved a resolution that says "the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of anyone engaging in entheogen-related activities should be among The City of Seattle's lowest enforcement priorities." It urges the Seattle Police Department to "move toward the formal codification and adoption of that practice as departmental policy."

The new policy, which is similar to the one approved by Washington, D.C., voters last November, applies to "any living, fresh, dried, or processed plant or fungal material, including teas or powders, that may contain currently scheduled or analog psychoactive indolamines, tryptamines, or phenethylamines, including, but not limited to, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca tea, mescaline, and iboga." It covers "cultivation" and "sharing" of such "entheogens" as well as possession, which already was covered by a general city policy of refraining from arresting drug users ...

Decriminalization of Drug Use
Current Opinion in Psychiatry (PubMed.gov), Jul 2018

"Studies reporting on the positive outcomes of decriminalization remain scarce. The evidence needs to be more widespread in order to support the case for decriminalization."

President Donald Trump has expressed willingness to interfere in the West Coast’s seemingly intractable “homelessness” problem: “Donald Trump said he might ‘intercede’ to ‘clean up’ homelessness in San Francisco and Los Angeles, noting that world leaders ‘can’t be looking at that.’”

“That,” our noxious streets, certainly are a shame, only some of us have forgotten how to feel shame — or compassion. The “homelessness”crisis, which is really the opioid crisis dressed up in class warfare language, is manufactured. It was created, to a large extent, by the local judiciary, but also abetted by state laws and executive inaction.

A casual look at the city might leave one with the impression that the war on drugs has failed, with the decrepit people wondering the streets of San Francisco in a various states of delirium with large patches of skin falling off of them can be taken for a proof. On that assumption, of the failure of the war on drugs, outgoing District Attorney George Gascon traveled to Portugal to take a look at how the Mediterranean nation successfully decriminalized all drugs. Gascon wants to replicate the Portuguese experience here.

While investigating a Vancouver, Washington man for the possession and distribution of child pornography, police discovered that Stephen Sharp had taken a video of himself urinating into the milkshake mix at a local Arby’s where he worked as a night shift manager.

According to the Vancouver Police Department, their Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit had begun an investigation into 29-year-old Sharp’s possession and distribution of photos and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of children. On at least one occasion, such imagery was downloaded within proximity of an Arby’s located at 221 NE 104th Ave.

Sharp confessed to downloading and distributing child pornography and having a sexual interest in children during an interview with detectives on May 10.
A search warrant was subsequently executed on his digital devices, where a DECU digital forensics investigator found a video of Sharp urinating in a container of milkshake mix from Arby’s.