by Jack
The City Council has once again fallen for another feel-good program endorsed by progressives. It didn’t take much coaxing either, just a rubber stamp of approval from the progressive community and our libs jumped on it.
Look folks, the needle program is nothing new. Its been tried and where it has there have been serious problems. Commonly called the needle exchange program or NEP for short, has been ongoing for decades and there is ample evidence that its not the answer.
The council need only do a little research to see how its worked in other communities and then they would know the NEP has a serious downside! But, not these clowns, they are die-hard liberals and you can’t get through to them with facts or logic. This acronym “NEP” is not quite correct either. You see, there is very little, if any, “exchange” going on. It’s really a needle giveaway. If there were a one to one exchange it might make a little more sense.
But, I’m not an addict so why should I care? Well, let me explain! I’m a retired narcotics officer and I spent a good part of my life fighting drug pushers. They are dangerous people, often part of a large criminal enterprise and they were being supported by hard core drug users. Is it any wonder that I’m offended that my tax dollars should be going to facilitate some drug addicted bum’s bad habit? In a way, that makes me his hostage, a codependent to a drug addict and I hate that!
Giving away syringes to drug addicts send the wrong message, we’re saying in effect government condones your addiction. And I say, well, then why bother with narcotic laws if government is going to give drug paraphernalia to drug addicts and pushers?
Okay, in fairness I will admit that its a fact that the transmission of hepatitis and AIDS might be delayed by the use of clean needles, but this requires the total cooperation of the drug abuser. We are asking him/her to make a good choice, a good decision and ONLY use a clean needle 100% of the time. Reality says, that’s too much to expect from addicts. So the NEP is not really getting us anywhere. People we still get AIDS and HEP, but maybe not quite as quickly.
Opponents of the NEP have the evidence that giving needles away does nothing to cure drug addiction, quite the opposite, it only makes it easier while putting the community at risk. This is what we need to take into consideration, what is the NEP doing to communities? Forget about the junkies and bums for a minute, what is it doing to an otherwise good community? Is crime going up? Are overdoses continuing? Is illegal drug use going up? Is violence escalating? These are the tough question that can be answered through a little investigation that the city council has yet to do!
Time after time, in the cities across America, wherever they have this needle program, the syringes are turning up in the worst possible places, like school gorunds, playgrounds, arks, sidewalks, etc. As a result, even radical San Francisco is calling for a ban on the needle giveaway program. They have learned the hard way how this creates a health problem for the entire community…funny they couldn’t have seen that coming?
Check this out- San Francisco filed a report dated April, 2019 that said in part: “Thousands of needles are scattered on city streets, most likely came the Department of Public Health’s needle exchange program.”
In Orange County, following a lawsuit initiated by the Orange County Board of Supervisors, the Superior Court found in 2018 that the harm of the needle giveaway to the public outweighed the social effectiveness of the Orange County Needle Exchange Program and enjoined (stopped) the California Department of Public Health and OCNEP from operating the program in Orange County.
The public safety of our residents comes first,” said Supervisor Andrew Do, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. “We fought to make sure our sidewalks, parks and libraries did not become hazardous waste sites. This drug needle giveaway is a serious threat to public safety.” Obviously, the liberals on the Chico City Council doesn’t share the same concern for their citizens as Orange County.
Many liberal cities are reluctantly coming to the same conclusion as Orange County. This includes New York City. NYC found it was ultimately a bad idea. It addresses only HIV and hepatitis infections and does nothing about the other criminal, medical and social aspects of drug addiction.
For example:
- Giving out clean needles does not discourage drug dependence.
- Addicts still are prone to death, perhaps not from HIV, but from overdose, collapsed veins, poisoned dope, or the violence and criminality that go along with the illicit drug trade.
- Drug-addicted mothers will still deliver drug-addicted babies.
- Sterile needles don’t address the underlying problems addicts are avoiding.
- Sterile needles offer the path of least resistance rather than address underlying psychoses.
- Drugs destroy families when all the house money is paying for drugs, lawyers and treatment.
- It does nothing to stop drug gangs from killing one another.
- A needle exchange sanctions bad behavior. It suggests that if you’re persistent enough doing the wrong thing, you’ll be rewarded with official permission to keep doing it.
And there’s more – Among the vocal opponents to the free needle plan, state Sen. Ron Rice of Newark sees needles – clean or dirty – as another destructive element in the inner city communities that he represents. He’s one of the plaintiffs in a pending suit that challenges needle exchange.
There are better ways of attacking the drug problem than legally sanctioning a clean-needle-giveaway – such as creating more opportunities for counseling, funding rehab clinics, and providing more health care coverage for uninsured drug users.
Needle-exchange programs never want to address the less tangible issues that lead people into drug dependence and how drug addicted criminal behavior impacts a community.
Oh God, what an ass the left-wing dominated city council is. Now there will be even more needles fouling Bidwell Park and the downtown. It makes me want to scream. Jack, you have cited the reality and these jerks live in a liberal fantasy. Chico is going to hell just like the rest of California.
Did they raise your taxes to cover this program?
Jennifer the answer you don’t want to hear is yes, taxes have been raised and repeatedly raised to cover the costs of giveaway programs. If we spend 10 million on a new program like a needle give away, that is 10 million not saved and not spent on mandated expenditures. As the saying goes, “you spend a million here and a million there, next thing you know you are talking about real money.” The point being Jennifer it does add up and that is why CA ranks #1 as the most taxed state in the union. California’s state level sales tax rate remains the highest in the nation as of 2018 at 7.25 percent, but some cities have 8 to 10% sales taxes to pay for special projects.
The state sales tax, income tax and property tax is just the beginning, because most of these taxes are hidden within the price of gasoline or when you buy tires or pay fees or register your vehicle, etc., but they all add up. Taxpayers in CA are heavily burdened by these taxes and we are not seeing much good come from our taxes, in particular when it comes to homeless projects.
In 2016 San Francisco reported they spent a record $241 million dollars on the homeless (which includes the needle giveaway program) and they have nothing to show for it! They can’t track results and the consensus is they’ve made matters worse because since then homeless population has gone up sharply, and this includes a lot of illegal drug abusers.
In 2018 SF City Hall reported they handed out 4.45 million needles, roughly 40% wound up discarded on the street. This year California had plans to spend over a billion dollars on the homeless, but now with this Corona virus, the spending is going to be a lot more…a lot more! And where do these millions and billions come from? It comes from the taxpayers and it hits the middle class worse than any other group. Not because they pay the most, but because that is money taken right out of a small family budget. The transients and druggies leave a wake of trash and crime behind wherever they congregate and this costs us ALL too. Last year San Francisco spent $30 million to clean poop off sidewalks, pick up dirty needles and trash from homeless areas.
Locally, we’ve spent tens of thousands to haul away the trash from encampments, not to mention the property loss from thefts which is heavily focused around illegal drug abusers. We don’t like to be part of a free needle program for darn good reasons. Are you getting the picture Jennifer? This all adds up, the jail costs, court costs, needle costs, the crime, the trash, the pollution and the sad part is, nobody is talking about how life saving money is being diverted away from the people truly deserving and in great need through no fault of their own.
Think about it Jennifer….
Seriously, where do you think the money comes from? Taxes. Taxes spent here could be spent elsewhere. Taxes spent on this repeatedly failed type of program will take money from taxes funding other programs, services and infrastructure. Where else would the money come from?
Maybe no particular local Chico taxes have been raised right now for the ill advised needle giveaway program but you can bet they will be raised here or statewide as a result of programs like this. If you cannot see that, you need to get an education on budgets, government, politics and taxation.
Like Jack said, think about it.
When you have a mayor named “Stone” what do you expect?
I hate to say it, Jack, but you’re being short-sighted. Liberal activity has to be judged on a long-range basis.
For instance: A decade or three ago, liberals told us we would be living in a new ice age by now, if we didn’t change our ways. After millions of speeches and tens of thousands of “green” laws, we not only avoided an ice age, we opened a new era of global warming. See what we can do if we really work at it?
And think of our improvements to race relations. After cross-country busing our kids to school, LBJ’s “Great Society,” and forced quotas in the public and private sectors, racism is no longer an issue in this country.
Locally, you have to admit that the nuclear bomb ban in Chico has worked perfectly.
So give the needle exchange program some time, Jack. I’ll bet in 30 or 40 years, you, nor Pie, nor I will have anything bad to say about it.
It is my goal to beat that 30 years. But I know it taint gonna happen. I probably won’t last 30 months and frankly I tire of this mortal coil.
C.J. I’m glad I won’t be around to see it, but I might be around long enough to see a few council members run out of town! lol
A decade or three ago, liberals told us we would be living in a new ice age by now, if we didn’t change our ways.
This is not true. There were a few articles in the 70s theorizing “global cooling” but this was never a scientific consensus, nor was there any political momentum over the issue anything close to the scientific consensus and political momentum over global warming. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/11/the-science-trump-got-wrong-in-the-post-interview/
OK. Only Hollywood, the NYT etal, along with some of the MSM were predicting a new ice age. I’ll give you that one.
I’m assuming you agree with me on the rest of my my assessments of the idiotic progressive solutions to racism and local nuclear warfare.
Don’t answer. You’re not good at it.
What a weird way to say “I was wrong, thanks for the correction.”
Anyway, since I’m so bad at answering, I’m sure I’ll be really bad at showing how LBJ’s Great Society was actually a great success. But this article shows a lot of evidence that it actually cut poverty in half. I’m sure you’ll help me understand why this is wrong. You’re just so much better at providing evidence and data than I am, and at making rational conclusions based on said data!
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/economic-security-programs-cut-poverty-nearly-in-half-over-last-50
So you think a good answer is to drag up a statistical analysis that proves Twain’s comment on statistics. The Great Society destroyed generations of black families by running the fathers out of the homes. Keep ‘em separated and dependent, right? Only a lame-brain liberal would call that a success.
I take it back. Keep answering. It makes you look intellectual.
Can you show why the methodology used in the CBPP’s statistics is flawed? You didn’t provide any competing statistics on black fatherhood–you just made a general claim with nothing to back it up. I’d also add that correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation–even if stats do show that black fatherhood became more of an issue after the Great Society (and you haven’t shown that they do), that doesn’t necessarily prove that the Great Society is responsible for this phenomenon–another explanation could be the tough-on-crime laws that became popular in the 70s and 80s. Thanks for the compliment; intellectual discussion is fun!
No comment needed.
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
‘Relax’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’
–The Eagles
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/02/21/on-leaving-the-golden-state/
This is where the rubber is going to meet the road.
“And as a physician, the first instances of medication shortages are now happening in earnest. A memo from the hospital’s pharmacy committee arrived yesterday. It specifically named the following drugs – IV antibiotics such as gentamicin, tobramycin and streptomycin – IV drips from the ICU dobutamine, dopamine, and norepinephrine – and the following pill medications – diltiazem, verapamil, amlodipine, losartan, valsartan and irbesartan. Also mentioned were all of the usual narcotic opioids used for pain – morphine, dilaudid, hydrocodone and fentanyl among others. The memo stated that while there was stock in the hospital on all of these at this moment — the intermediate suppliers had sent warnings that supplies were quickly diminishing — and that further supplies from the manufacturer were not going to be reliable into the foreseeable future. Therefore, we were strongly urged to immediately begin making sure that every prescription was appropriate — and to replace it with something else if possible.
Well, some of these things are not replaceable. Some of them are — but with much more dangerous alternatives. And just try doing surgery without morphine — I dare you. All I can say is you have been warned. This is here — this is now and this is real and very likely to get much worse. Shipping all your critical drug manufacturing to another very unreliable country is so dumb that only the elites could have thought of it. And all you snowflakes thinking that we can just magically build factories here immediately — well you are oh so wrong. First of all — manufacturing drugs on a large scale takes immense engineering, and will not be done on a whim. Secondly, when we exported all our manufacturing away, all the jobs went away as well. There is a human know-how that is critical to this kind of enterprise, and that went away when the factories went to China. And it takes years — maybe decades — to get that back.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/china-apocalypse-buddhist-prophecy-locusts/
Mmmm… I take one of those drugs! Good thing I will soon be off it.