FTA:

"Patrice Rogers, executive director of the outreach program Stop the Risk, has the goal of helping people with addictions return to their families. Rogers’ activism was initiated after her husband became addicted to heroin and died in a motorcycle accident."

"She believes that concentrating harm-reduction and prevention services, such as mobile street clinics, in Kensington only encourages people with addictions to remain."

“We’re known as the Disney World for users. If you give free food and a free shower and free needles, why should you ever leave and return home?” Rogers added. “I used to feed 200 people, but I wasn’t helping them. I was enabling them."

"There is a deep weariness with the status quo in the community, but also a kind of wariness about who is served by the plan."

“We’ve suffered enough in Kensington,” said Gilberto Gonzalez, a community activist and student recruiter at Community College of Philadelphia. “There are so many levels of injustice. There is no other part of the city that allows people to put up tents and pile up trash.”

These folks nailed it.

The city is incentivizing drug addiction in Kensington by turning a blind eye to it.

The city is bending over backwards to enable drug addiction in a specific neighborhood in the city. It's completely fucked. I have no idea what Kensingston has done to deserve this treatment from the city.

They're cleaning up parks so they're nicer for the people nodding off in them all day.

I guess it'll make the drug dealer's work experience more enjoyable too. Now that they've got federal funds beautifying their drug den.

No amount of taxpayers funds can make a neighborhood plagued by drug addiction nice to live in.

They could've spent the whole $200 million on Kensington this one year and it still wouldn't address the root issue.

No one cares how nice the park a few blocks away is when there's a junkie trying to sleep on your front steps.

She’s right!

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Enabling addicts to shoot up, even coupled with the altruistic premise that society can make it "safe" with after-the-fact treatment, is a horrific policy. It will have negative net effects every time.

No paywall:

https://www.inquirer.com/news/opioid-settlement-plan-kensington-community-public-safety-20230107.html

“We’re known as the Disney World for users. If you give free food and a free shower and free needles, why should you ever leave and return home?” Rogers added. “I used to feed 200 people, but I wasn’t helping them. I was enabling them.”

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I disagree that harm reduction isn’t worthwhile, but it needs to part of a more comprehensive solution.

"Legalize", my ass...

Harm reduction should only be one part of the work that is done. There also has to be prevention, treatment, and enforcement.

The problem is, that nobody wants to spend any money on this, except on enforcement. The solution in Philly to let it all happen in one place doesn't work. But the solution is very expensive and would need a coordinated effort across the whole city, which would also lead to more heroin being consumed outside of Kensington

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Do you live in Kensington?

Would you want the city to set up a safe injection site around the corner from your residence?

If they opened up one in Point Breeze where I live, I'd consider selling at a slight loss now to get out before the addicts took over the neighborhood.

No one wants to live around this shit and have their tax dollars go towards making their local addicts lives easier.

You have to let them hit rock bottom, enabling their addiction just keeps them stuck in it longer.

I lost my cousin to alcoholism last year, we grew up like brothers. The worst thing his parents did was not kick him out and let him spend a few hard nights on the street. They let him live with them throughout his addiction, and now he's gone. They enabled him right to the end.

The reason I'm saying all this is to provide context and show I'm not trying to be a callous asshole towards addicts. If you make the lives of addicts too easy, you keep them stuck in the cycle of addiction. You've gotta let people hit rock bottom because that's what will force them to stop.

Right now, the city is just ensuring future business for the drug dealers. The dealers are winning on every front. The city is reviving their addicts with Narcan, beautifying their drug dealing areas, the dealers are killing it rn.

Nah to both of your questions . I don’t have the time to write a longer response right now (worked last night), but that’s why I said it needs to be part of a more comprehensive solution. There can be a happy medium where we lessen the load on first responders, save a few lives, generally positive things, while still heavily dis-incentivizing users and cleaning up drug-infested areas.

I hear what you’re saying but we don’t really know how people will respond until they’re at that point. Some people are like rubber and they bounce back, but others wont and they’ll just hit rock bottom and never return.

I don’t know anything about addiction or prevention but has anyone, in city gvt or otherwise, ever put out a solid plan for something of this magnitude? There has to be some type of successful model to follow from other areas of the world, no? I feel for Kenzo residents

City officials don't give a shit about it because they'll be reelected regardless.

As for a successful model to follow just look across the Atlantic to Europe. Portugal and the Netherlands have in my opinion the most effective programs, which are based on contingency management.

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Sell me your house man, go to the suburbs....You know you wana!

You seem to have thought about this topic a lot. Curious if you’ve read and disagree with how hard drugs are handled in Portugal. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid

There’s lots of arguments and counter arguments with how to deal with large scale drug addiction. All I can say is, if the “solution” involves ignoring addicts, not providing safe materials, and continuing to plant addicts in jail….we’ll be looking at a propagation of how bad it is now.

The solution has to be well past cleaning the streets, having narcan, sanitary supplies. The solution has to be well past treating addicts and dealers as criminals.

Truth is, people of all creeds get hooked on opiates. Middle aged parents with a back injury. Businesses’ make millions legally selling these harmful drugs, yet teenagers that have no community support get sent to jail and end up killing each other for turf.

The big question, are we looking to create a better world or are we looking to create the impression of a better world. A world without addiction and a world where the addicts get shoveled off to the side appear imperceptible to a citizen on the street

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