SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Councilmember wants to explore buying heroin for addicts

Jun 8, 2018, 6:30 PM

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Supporters of safe injection sites like Insite in Vancouver, BC. Seattle and King County aim to establish similar locations. (KIRO 7)

(KIRO 7)

Yesterday was one of the most evil, unbelievable days of Seattle’s history. In the Seattle City Council’s most recent discussion on its proposed mobile heroin death site, Councilmember Sally Bagshaw suggested that the city government “explore” supplying free drugs for addicts. You want taxpayers to buy heroin for addicts?

I don’t know any place — even Vancouver’s heroin death sites — where the government actually buys the drugs for people.

This is where we’re headed. I’m laughing in lieu of crying or screaming. Every heroin addict in the country is going to run here if they hear that the government is not only allowing heroin use, is not only building them wet houses to shoot up in, but is actually handing out heroin like free candy.

RELATED: There is nothing safe about injection sites

I am so sick and tired of hearing these Seattle City Council members talk about “saving lives” with these death sites. It’s not even remotely close to being about saving lives. It is about money. It is about creating a new level of local government.

The mobile death site is a big RV — which will be the first time ever in our region that anyone has ever injected drugs in an RV, of course (sarcasm). It costs the city government $8.1 million, plus another couple million a year for staffing. And yes, they want to create about 14 new jobs so government workers can help people kill themselves with heroin.

They see this as a wonderful way to expand the footprint of government. That is all this is about. It is not about saving lives. The people who are in recovery from addiction know that.

A listener who recovered from heroin emailed me to tell me that an addict has to hit rock-bottom to make the decision to turn their life around and get clean. He said that providing them with a place to inject heroin only enables them and makes the opioid crisis much worse.

I know that he’s right, because I’ve talked to a lot of people who are in recovery. And I know that is the common thing — that you have to hit rock-bottom to want to change. And this is the insanity of our politicians. The government enabling addicts is the worst thing you can do for those people. You can’t build them a place in which to inject drugs — it is a criminal thing to do. If you are the parent of an addict and you bring them into your house to save their life, will you let them keep using heroin? Of course not. A loving parent does not do that.

Does a loving government do that? There’s no such thing. Government does not love. Politicians do not love. Politicians use and enable, and they see addiction as a way to grow government. If you enable, of course you’re going to become a national magnet for drug cartels and drug users. We have the worst property crime of the 20 biggest cities in America because all of the addicts have to steal to feed their addiction. Do you think a mobile death site will help any of this?

You could save those millions by sticking some bureaucrats in the RVs that area already all over the city and having them help the addicts who are already in there to shoot up. It won’t cost you a penny, apart from the bureaucrats’ salaries. And you can put the RVs on the blocks of the Seattle City Council members so they can sit on their porches and get a good view of their policies at work.

In the pursuit of expanding government, we have pure, soulless evil running this city right now.

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Dori: Councilmember wants to explore buying heroin for addicts