SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: ‘Tis the season for heroin ice cream vans

Jul 11, 2018, 4:03 PM | Updated: Jul 12, 2018, 8:32 am

heroin injection sites, drug vagrants...

Needles in a pile. (FORTOP5)

(FORTOP5)

I’m very excited to hear that the heroin ice cream trucks have taken a big step forward here in Seattle.

Seattle officials were afraid a couple of years ago that their dream of opening the first heroin injection site in the United States would be crushed. See, they’re running into some federal issues about the government establishing a brick-and-mortar place in which to inject heroin. So their brilliant idea was to put the heroin death site in an ice cream truck.

Just imagine it: we’ll drive around the city, the heroin addicts will hear the lilting music from blocks away, and with wide-eyed amazement on a summer day, they’ll look at each other, stick their heads out from their RVs and say, “The heroin van is here!” It’s going to be the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen in the United States of America.

RELATED: Dori says there is nothing safe about injection sites

The Seattle City Council of course is still going to have some legal problems. But of course we already have hundreds of heroin death RVs around the city — they’re just not operated by the government. They don’t need to spend $350,000 on the ice cream van because there are broken-down heroin RVs all over the city that they could have for a song. But of course it’s government, and we’ve got to have the best. We don’t want to have our heroin addicts shooting up in sub-standard conditions. Can we all agree on that? We have to spend money. We need to have the best of the heroin death RVs around the city.

Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda suggested the van be purchased by mid-July. Well, mid-July is in four days and people want to know when these ice cream trucks are getting up and running. But Mosqueda isn’t returning her constituents’ calls. Where is the public engagement?

How quickly are they going to kill the heroin addicts? I think that’s one of the big questions. They of course are using the euphemism “safe injection van.” If it is indeed that, would you let your child go into that van and get injected with heroin? I will continue to ask that of every dopey politician who advocates for one of these “safe injection sites.”

That’s a great message to send to kids, especially those children on the margins throughout the Puget Sound — have government tell them that heroin is safe. Why should we scare kids off heroin? Why should we make them feel like it’s a dangerous thing to do? Let’s just tell them it’s safe. And remember, Sally Bagshaw said she wanted to explore having government actually buy the heroin for the addicts. So we can tell the kids that not only can they use heroin safely, but the government will actually buy it for them.

We’re coming up to that deadline. They said they’d get this done by mid-July. Well this weekend is mid-July and we want to get this death van rolling. We need to start a social media campaign to get the word out to all the addicts around the country to “get thee to Seattle.” In Seattle, they’ll buy your heroin and give you a place to shoot up and kill yourself.

And then we need to start working with the local schools. Some of the kids may have stayed away from heroin because of the danger. But once the Seattle City Council lets the students know that there’s a safe space to do the heroin, then maybe the kids can get hooked a little earlier. And that means that they’ll be in the tarps and tents a few years sooner in life. Then you can use them to raise taxes for the homeless. It’s a wonderful plan by the City of Seattle.

Let’s get on it, Seattle City Council. Let’s get these “safe injection vans” going. It’s summertime, for crying out loud.

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Dori: ‘Tis the season for heroin ice cream vans