August 1, 2023 • 11 mins
The NY Times published a telling article about just how awful things have gotten in Portland due to the fentanyl crisis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's generally when the truth becomes so enormous and ugly
that the legacy media just can't cover it up anymore,
that they go ahead and write about it. And such
is the case for what's happening in Portland. As we've
made clear both of us through the years. We I
absolutely loved Portland for a long time. What a great city,
(00:23):
fun funky, full of music, great food, characters is you know,
like it was a lot like the San Francisco of
twenty five years ago, just with a little more Northwestern vibe.
Downtown Portland is to a large extent become a hell hole.
And the New York Times in a hell hole. Thank
(00:45):
you metal guy, Thank you Jack for that obscure spinal
tab reference. The title of this article is scenes from
a city that only hands out tickets for using fentanyl.
The subhead. Oregon's experiment to curb overdoses by decriminalizing small
amounts of illicit drugs is in its third year, and
life has changed for most everyone in the city of Portland.
(01:05):
That's a hell of a statement.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Life has changed for almost everyone who lives in the
city because of fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, they explained that for the past two and a
half years, organ has been trying an unusual experiment to
stem the soaring rates of addiction in overdose deaths. They've
essentially decriminalized use of hard drugs. There's a one hundred
dollars fine for personal use of hard drugs, including fentanyl,
which is killing people by the hundreds of thousands. But
(01:34):
that one hundred dollars can be waived if the person
participates in a drug screening and a health assessment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, sure enough, you're on drugs and you're not very healthy. Well,
that is a low standard to meet. The aim is
to reserve prosecutions for large scale dealers in address addiction,
primarily as a public health emergency. I will say that
though Portlandia is full of ridiculous fantasy ideas and they
(02:04):
have permitted lawlessness and violence if it comes from the left,
the idea of look, let's make it a public health
thing and not a criminal thing and see what happens
is not completely insane.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
They've run the experiment and here's the result. Measure one ten,
approved by nearly sixty percent of Oregon voters in November
twenty twenty. The pandemic had already emptied downtown Portland workers
and tourists, but writes The New York Times Times, its
street population was growing, especially after the anti police protests
that had spread around the country that summer. Within months
(02:38):
of the measure taking effect, in February of twenty one,
open air drug use long in the shadows, burst into
full view, with people sitting in circles in parks or
leaning against street signs smoking fentanyl crushed on tinfoil. Since then,
Oregon's overdose rates have only grown. Now tents of unhoused
people line many sidewalks in Portland. Months long waiting lists
(02:58):
for treatment continue to Lengthen, some politicians and community groups
are calling for Measure one ten to be replaced with
tough ventanyl possession laws. Others say no, I'll give it
more time and more resources. But then the article goes
into the accounts of several people. Here's this woman, Jennifer
works at a coffee shop and wine bar that she
(03:20):
operates with her brother. On her walk to work, she
sidesteps needles, shattered glass, in human feces. Often, she says,
someone is passed out in front of the lobby's door,
blocking her entrance. The other day, a man lurched in
laid down on a couch, stripped off his shirt and shoes,
and refused to leave.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
We got to be comfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
At four in the afternoon, the streets can feel like
Dealers Central, she said, at least twenty to thirty people
in sche masks, hoodies, and backpacks, usually on bikes and scooters.
There's no point calling the cops. Oh that's right, We're
going to bust the dealers, the big time dealers. But
now there's no point calling the cops, and they're everywhere.
Despite this street turmoil, she still likes to go for
(03:59):
stroll on her breaks. But at eleven thirty on a
Tuesday morning, I walked to the block between Target and Nordstrom.
In the middle of everything, woman's performing a sex act
on a man.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
She's keenly aware that she's witnessing a confluence of long
standing societal problems, including mental health and housing crises. Quote.
But it's so much the drugs, she said, right.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
As I've said many times, the idea that the housing crisis,
you know, equals ventanyl addiction. I just don't get that.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the soft headed among us, and
soft hearted might say, well, it's despair. They're turning to
the fentanyl because of despair caused by the housing crisis,
et cetera. And what I've said many times is if
you eliminate the hard drug use, you can get down
to who's really just mentally ill. And you know, honestly,
(04:53):
a lot of people are now mentally ill because they've
ruined their brains with drugs, and who are the folks
who can't care for themselves? Them will help. But the
problem is you ask anybody who's living on the street,
and we have many times what percentage of the people
are on drugs in your camp? Eighty percent, ninety percent?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, and then even when you got through all of
those and it's just people who can't afford to live there,
then you gotta live somewhere cheaper. I've never understood this,
particularly if you're talking about like Portland.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And San Francisco or San Diego.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
These are some of the most expensive cities in the world.
Lots of people would like to have lived in Portland
before it turned crappy, but.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You couldn't afford it. See, you didn't live there, right,
including people who make a damn good living. Officer David
Behar of the Portland Police Bureau patrols downtown on a
mountain bike, armed with a gun, a citation pad, and
the overdose reversal drug Narcan. He spends his shift the
resting street dealers carrying large quantities of blue fentanyl pills,
(05:48):
writes one hundred dollars citation tickets for people injecting or
smoking drugs in public, administering narcand of those nodding out,
he has to revive an overdose at least once a day.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Once a day, you're saving someone's life.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Wow. Yeah. And he talks about some of the dms
on the They have an Instagram account where they have
pictures of all the hell and chaos, and a lot
of people say, let the addicts die, they shouldn't be
Narcand he said, that's tough to read because we interact
with these people every day. I've worked on the same
person multiple times. And he talks about this guy who
used to be a drunk and he didn't counter him
(06:28):
drunk from a night at the bars and get him home.
The other day, I was biking, I look over, why
is that guy bleeding? I roll him over. It's the
same guy. He's now a fentonyl addict, etc.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, I don't know what the sweet spot is on
this whole compassion for people who have an addiction problem, disease,
whatever you want to call it, on one end, and
then on the other end, the super hardcore. You know
you made a decision no compassion. I don't know what
(07:01):
the sweet spot is in between those two, but I
think it's way too close to the first one. Like
I keep hearing, how many times have I heard this
about Hunter Biden? Well, you know he's in the throes
of addiction. Okay, fine, whatever, And how far do we
go and excusing incredibly, incredibly bad behavior.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, I know the criminal justice system doesn't excuse you
at all. Yeah, I just killed him because I was
high on meth. Well, enjoy jail.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, that's a very good point. If we've decided that
the laws don't give any leeway for that while I
was drunk. Oh okay, we didn't realize you were drunk
when that happened. Since we don't give any leeway legally speaking,
why do we so much culturally?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It's a great question, And let our neighborhoods go to hell,
be ruined, dangerous, crime ridden. So this cop says, a
big part of his job is writing these Measure one
ten tickets. He says, it's like, hey, you can't smoke
metro fentanyl on the sidewalk or the playground, and the
push back we get people could be really aggressive. They
think they're in the right because drugs are legal. I say,
(08:05):
beer is legal, but you can't drink beer in public,
which is an idiotic law, by the way, So we
cite them, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Two hours later, hilarious that you could get a oh,
what is it called open in public ticket or whatever, like.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That ye container in the park heroin, Yeah, ventinyl meth.
So we cite them and give them the drug screening card.
Then they'll say they don't want treatment, or they'll tell
us okay, I'll call the number. Two hours later we
run into them again and they're smoking or even overdosing.
Then you have Noah who says Portland is a homeless
drug addict Slice of Paradise. He was living with his
(08:41):
girlfriend in a bright orange tent on the sidewalk against
the fence of a church where they shoot and smoke
both fentanyl and meth. Keeping in mind, if you're just
tuning in, this is all from the New York Times.
It's not the Posts, not the Washington Times. It's not
Armstrong and Getty's far right fascist newsletter. This is in
the New York Times. He's let's see living in a
bright orange tent on the sidewalk against the fence of
(09:03):
a church where they shoot and smoke both fentanyl and meth.
He ticked off the advantages of Portland. He can do
drugs wherever he wants, and the cops no longer harass him.
There are more dealers scouting for fresh customers moving to paradise.
That means drugs are plentiful and cheap. The downside, living
intense is no paradise, he said, especially when folks in
nearby buy tents high on meth hit him with baseball bats.
(09:25):
Then he gets into the eviction notices, et cetera, et cetera.
Measure one ten uh also did not dial back to
hatred and derision he gets from homeowners, people with jobs, refrigerators,
and paid vacations. He feels those glares keenly, not because
not least because for a time his life resembled theirs.
So now he kind of resents the fact that he's
(09:47):
a drug addicted bum who's terrifying people in their neighborhoods,
and they look at him funny. In and out of
he rehab five or six times in prison. During the
years he was able to clause way back to sobriety,
(10:07):
he worked in construction, made rent, and became a father.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I don't know how we get out of this in
the cities where it's already happened, and I don't know
how we necessarily keep it from happening other places.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Well, I would say, one of the great laboratories of democracy, Portlandia,
conduct in an experiment and it has failed miserably.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
What do you do all with all the people whose
brains are permanently ruined from drugs?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Wall Street Journal just had a big editorial, it's time
to reopen asylums, asylums.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
What else are you gonna do? What are you gonna
do with hundreds of thousands of people across the country
whose brains will never work right again because of the
newest artist coort drugs.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's either that or let them die painfully on the
street alone.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
While committing crimes that affect you.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Right, yeah, yeah, and ruin the quality of life of
all people in the town. Yeah. Hey, folks on the left,
what do you say you watched Portland? You've seen it.
Your own flagship publication is calling out the city for
being a miserable hellhole of a failed progressive experiment. What
(11:17):
now your move? Portlandy Firland HA has crumbled
It's generally when the truth becomes so enormous and ugly
that the legacy media just can't cover it up anymore,
that they go ahead and write about it. And such
is the case for what's happening in Portland. As we've
made clear both of us through the years. We I
absolutely loved Portland for a long time. What a great city,
(00:23):
fun funky, full of music, great food, characters is you know,
like it was a lot like the San Francisco of
twenty five years ago, just with a little more Northwestern vibe.
Downtown Portland is to a large extent become a hell hole.
And the New York Times in a hell hole. Thank
(00:45):
you metal guy, Thank you Jack for that obscure spinal
tab reference. The title of this article is scenes from
a city that only hands out tickets for using fentanyl.
The subhead. Oregon's experiment to curb overdoses by decriminalizing small
amounts of illicit drugs is in its third year, and
life has changed for most everyone in the city of Portland.
(01:05):
That's a hell of a statement.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Life has changed for almost everyone who lives in the
city because of fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, they explained that for the past two and a
half years, organ has been trying an unusual experiment to
stem the soaring rates of addiction in overdose deaths. They've
essentially decriminalized use of hard drugs. There's a one hundred
dollars fine for personal use of hard drugs, including fentanyl,
which is killing people by the hundreds of thousands. But
(01:34):
that one hundred dollars can be waived if the person
participates in a drug screening and a health assessment.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, sure enough, you're on drugs and you're not very healthy. Well,
that is a low standard to meet. The aim is
to reserve prosecutions for large scale dealers in address addiction,
primarily as a public health emergency. I will say that
though Portlandia is full of ridiculous fantasy ideas and they
(02:04):
have permitted lawlessness and violence if it comes from the left,
the idea of look, let's make it a public health
thing and not a criminal thing and see what happens
is not completely insane.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
They've run the experiment and here's the result. Measure one ten,
approved by nearly sixty percent of Oregon voters in November
twenty twenty. The pandemic had already emptied downtown Portland workers
and tourists, but writes The New York Times Times, its
street population was growing, especially after the anti police protests
that had spread around the country that summer. Within months
(02:38):
of the measure taking effect, in February of twenty one,
open air drug use long in the shadows, burst into
full view, with people sitting in circles in parks or
leaning against street signs smoking fentanyl crushed on tinfoil. Since then,
Oregon's overdose rates have only grown. Now tents of unhoused
people line many sidewalks in Portland. Months long waiting lists
(02:58):
for treatment continue to Lengthen, some politicians and community groups
are calling for Measure one ten to be replaced with
tough ventanyl possession laws. Others say no, I'll give it
more time and more resources. But then the article goes
into the accounts of several people. Here's this woman, Jennifer
works at a coffee shop and wine bar that she
(03:20):
operates with her brother. On her walk to work, she
sidesteps needles, shattered glass, in human feces. Often, she says,
someone is passed out in front of the lobby's door,
blocking her entrance. The other day, a man lurched in
laid down on a couch, stripped off his shirt and shoes,
and refused to leave.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
We got to be comfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
At four in the afternoon, the streets can feel like
Dealers Central, she said, at least twenty to thirty people
in sche masks, hoodies, and backpacks, usually on bikes and scooters.
There's no point calling the cops. Oh that's right, We're
going to bust the dealers, the big time dealers. But
now there's no point calling the cops, and they're everywhere.
Despite this street turmoil, she still likes to go for
(03:59):
stroll on her breaks. But at eleven thirty on a
Tuesday morning, I walked to the block between Target and Nordstrom.
In the middle of everything, woman's performing a sex act
on a man.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
She's keenly aware that she's witnessing a confluence of long
standing societal problems, including mental health and housing crises. Quote.
But it's so much the drugs, she said, right.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
As I've said many times, the idea that the housing crisis,
you know, equals ventanyl addiction. I just don't get that.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the soft headed among us, and
soft hearted might say, well, it's despair. They're turning to
the fentanyl because of despair caused by the housing crisis,
et cetera. And what I've said many times is if
you eliminate the hard drug use, you can get down
to who's really just mentally ill. And you know, honestly,
(04:53):
a lot of people are now mentally ill because they've
ruined their brains with drugs, and who are the folks
who can't care for themselves? Them will help. But the
problem is you ask anybody who's living on the street,
and we have many times what percentage of the people
are on drugs in your camp? Eighty percent, ninety percent?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, and then even when you got through all of
those and it's just people who can't afford to live there,
then you gotta live somewhere cheaper. I've never understood this,
particularly if you're talking about like Portland.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And San Francisco or San Diego.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
These are some of the most expensive cities in the world.
Lots of people would like to have lived in Portland
before it turned crappy, but.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You couldn't afford it. See, you didn't live there, right,
including people who make a damn good living. Officer David
Behar of the Portland Police Bureau patrols downtown on a
mountain bike, armed with a gun, a citation pad, and
the overdose reversal drug Narcan. He spends his shift the
resting street dealers carrying large quantities of blue fentanyl pills,
(05:48):
writes one hundred dollars citation tickets for people injecting or
smoking drugs in public, administering narcand of those nodding out,
he has to revive an overdose at least once a day.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Once a day, you're saving someone's life.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Wow. Yeah. And he talks about some of the dms
on the They have an Instagram account where they have
pictures of all the hell and chaos, and a lot
of people say, let the addicts die, they shouldn't be
Narcand he said, that's tough to read because we interact
with these people every day. I've worked on the same
person multiple times. And he talks about this guy who
used to be a drunk and he didn't counter him
(06:28):
drunk from a night at the bars and get him home.
The other day, I was biking, I look over, why
is that guy bleeding? I roll him over. It's the
same guy. He's now a fentonyl addict, etc.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, I don't know what the sweet spot is on
this whole compassion for people who have an addiction problem, disease,
whatever you want to call it, on one end, and
then on the other end, the super hardcore. You know
you made a decision no compassion. I don't know what
(07:01):
the sweet spot is in between those two, but I
think it's way too close to the first one. Like
I keep hearing, how many times have I heard this
about Hunter Biden? Well, you know he's in the throes
of addiction. Okay, fine, whatever, And how far do we
go and excusing incredibly, incredibly bad behavior.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, I know the criminal justice system doesn't excuse you
at all. Yeah, I just killed him because I was
high on meth. Well, enjoy jail.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, that's a very good point. If we've decided that
the laws don't give any leeway for that while I
was drunk. Oh okay, we didn't realize you were drunk
when that happened. Since we don't give any leeway legally speaking,
why do we so much culturally?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
It's a great question, And let our neighborhoods go to hell,
be ruined, dangerous, crime ridden. So this cop says, a
big part of his job is writing these Measure one
ten tickets. He says, it's like, hey, you can't smoke
metro fentanyl on the sidewalk or the playground, and the
push back we get people could be really aggressive. They
think they're in the right because drugs are legal. I say,
(08:05):
beer is legal, but you can't drink beer in public,
which is an idiotic law, by the way, So we
cite them, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Two hours later, hilarious that you could get a oh,
what is it called open in public ticket or whatever, like.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
That ye container in the park heroin, Yeah, ventinyl meth.
So we cite them and give them the drug screening card.
Then they'll say they don't want treatment, or they'll tell
us okay, I'll call the number. Two hours later we
run into them again and they're smoking or even overdosing.
Then you have Noah who says Portland is a homeless
drug addict Slice of Paradise. He was living with his
(08:41):
girlfriend in a bright orange tent on the sidewalk against
the fence of a church where they shoot and smoke
both fentanyl and meth. Keeping in mind, if you're just
tuning in, this is all from the New York Times.
It's not the Posts, not the Washington Times. It's not
Armstrong and Getty's far right fascist newsletter. This is in
the New York Times. He's let's see living in a
bright orange tent on the sidewalk against the fence of
(09:03):
a church where they shoot and smoke both fentanyl and meth.
He ticked off the advantages of Portland. He can do
drugs wherever he wants, and the cops no longer harass him.
There are more dealers scouting for fresh customers moving to paradise.
That means drugs are plentiful and cheap. The downside, living
intense is no paradise, he said, especially when folks in
nearby buy tents high on meth hit him with baseball bats.
(09:25):
Then he gets into the eviction notices, et cetera, et cetera.
Measure one ten uh also did not dial back to
hatred and derision he gets from homeowners, people with jobs, refrigerators,
and paid vacations. He feels those glares keenly, not because
not least because for a time his life resembled theirs.
So now he kind of resents the fact that he's
(09:47):
a drug addicted bum who's terrifying people in their neighborhoods,
and they look at him funny. In and out of
he rehab five or six times in prison. During the
years he was able to clause way back to sobriety,
(10:07):
he worked in construction, made rent, and became a father.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I don't know how we get out of this in
the cities where it's already happened, and I don't know
how we necessarily keep it from happening other places.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Well, I would say, one of the great laboratories of democracy, Portlandia,
conduct in an experiment and it has failed miserably.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
What do you do all with all the people whose
brains are permanently ruined from drugs?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Wall Street Journal just had a big editorial, it's time
to reopen asylums, asylums.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
What else are you gonna do? What are you gonna
do with hundreds of thousands of people across the country
whose brains will never work right again because of the
newest artist coort drugs.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's either that or let them die painfully on the
street alone.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
While committing crimes that affect you.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Right, yeah, yeah, and ruin the quality of life of
all people in the town. Yeah. Hey, folks on the left,
what do you say you watched Portland? You've seen it.
Your own flagship publication is calling out the city for
being a miserable hellhole of a failed progressive experiment. What
(11:17):
now your move? Portlandy Firland HA has crumbled
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Joe Getty
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