Posted on 03/30/2023 8:41:22 AM PDT by george76
Seattle is installing fentanyl detectors on city buses after operators have gotten sick from fumes emitted by passengers' drugs.
The city this week began installing detectors on buses and trams in King County, the Seattle Times reported. Over 50 bus operators filed worker compensation claims for drug and chemical exposure in 2022, according to the Times. Many of the drivers became so sick they needed to stop driving and seek emergency medical treatment.
The city is installing the detectors as part of a University of Washington study whose researchers hope to "better understand drugs that are being smoked on the buses and trains." Symptoms of fentanyl exposure include dizziness and breathing difficulties.
While officials from the Washington Poison Center downplayed the risk of secondhand fentanyl exposure, local transit union president Kenneth Price noted to the Times that if the drug is dangerous enough to kill its users, it is likely potent enough to hurt those who are nearby. Typically, people smoke fentanyl by placing a pill on aluminum foil and heating it with a lighter, then sucking the vapor through a straw. It smells like engine oil mixed with peanut butter.
Seattle's detectors will monitor public transit air for heroin, methamphetamine, and oxycodone as well as fentanyl.
Price wants city transit agencies also to post QR codes inside vehicles for passengers to scan and report public drug use directly to authorities. He hopes these codes could alert legislators to the scope of the problem.
Progressive cities across the country are grappling with public drug use thanks to their soft-on-crime policies. Businesses are fleeing San Francisco due to the city's rampant "open-air drug market." Democrats are increasingly brushing off concerns about drug use and other crime, claiming these are just normal aspects of urban life.
When bloated left-wing governments reach the contradictions and consequences of their own decisions...
Seattle and Washington state politicians should have to take public transit until the problem is cleaned up.
At least we can be thankful that people aren’t using tobacco, which, as we all know, is produced and distributed by dark capitalist forces.
People in Seattle have not been riding the buses due to the fentanyl use. They better install these things on the light rail, too, if they want people to use it.
I know a guy who was born in and lived his whole life in Seattle and owned a condo there.
He took the bus to work—until a few years ago—when he bailed out on the city and state.
The reason—he couldn’t deal with the bus ride anymore—too many crazy druggies.
I agree with the poster who noted every Seattle politician should be required to ride the city buses every day.
Am in this dystopian city now. The once great American cities and their history detailing the brave and industrious people who built them are just about gone. Replaced by worthless parasites pissing on the work of great people
WHY are they allowed to SMOKE on a bus?????
They need to do the same for pot, when I was riding DART light rail to work, you could smell the pot constantly, and it was the real stinky kind.
We are nearing peak insanity...
1. instruments on busses to monitor public transit air for heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone, zinc fentanyl.
2. posting QR codes inside vehicles for passengers to scan and report public drug use directly to authorities
These are signs of very unserious government that wastes money on useless nostrums to make citizens believe “they are doing something - they care about us” without doing any of the real, tough work needed to end this scourge. These namely-pamby, liberal feel-good “solutions” are a joke.
Start with executing a thousand drug dealers, then a thousand more, and keep going until the problem stops.
> WHY are they allowed to SMOKE on a bus????? <
I don’t live in Seattle (thank goodness). But in a big city near me, the cops rarely respond to people smoking on the bus, not paying their fares, etc. Those offenses are too small to dispatch the police.
The bus drivers know this. So they usually just ignore the offense. Also, a driver who tries to enforce the rules is liable to be attacked.
As a side note, Giuliani was right. If you ignore the small crimes, you’re going to get more of the big crimes. So ignore the small crimes at your own peril.
This is one of those “moments of clarity” which troubled people sometime experience, but governments of course never do.
If you reach the situation where your city is so bad that your own government union employees are getting sick from ambient drugs - its time to question your entire value system and existence.
So what happens when the detector goes off? The bus stops and everyone walks?
Wouldn’t it be more productive (and maybe cheaper) to hire transit cops?
75% King County voted for Biden. I’ll assume a majority of them were onboard with Biden’s immigration and boarder policy and they still want open borders. These morons cannot see the relationship between the open boarder and fentanyl use/addiction. Their solution to fentanyl used on buses is to install expensive detectors. It doesn’t stop the fentanyl. It will stop the buses.
Seattle PD staffing was at a 30-year low and are incapable of responding to the the most basic crimes. Exactly how long do you think it will take for police to respond when a fentanyl detector goes off on a bus?
Here is a case of sheer lunacy of the left. Their policies always fail. Seattle is going to waste more money, by not delivering basic transportation services and stretching the police even thinner. How’s that Defund the Police working for you? People won’t be able to get to work. They will lose hours and Seattle loses more tax revenue. People are poorer. People are less safe. Cops are more stretched and more will quit, leading to people being even more less safe.
Those that have the ability to leave Seattle will leave, which further reduces tax revenue. Hopefully when that happens the only people left in Seattle are the ones who voted for Biden. They will live in a bankrupt city, with rampant crime and no basic government services.
Sucks to be you.
“...Giuliani was right” — the “Broken Windows Policy”.
WHY are they allowed to SMOKE on a bus?????
...........................................
Who’s going to stop them?
Why aren’t the enviroturdrollers going after the drug cartel fentanyl air polluters?
Seattle and Washington state politicians should be tried convicted, and sentenced to prison (WA State doesn't have a death penalty).
Ok but then what if it detects drugs? Thanks to left wing polices, open drug use is not a crime that is enforced in Seattle. Thus, the issue.
> So what happens when the detector goes off? <
You’re not supposed to ask those kinds of questions. Remember, progressives only do what feels good at the moment. There is never any thought of what follows.
It’s just like the laws mandating electric vehicles. “Where will all the additional electric power needed come from?” - that’s another question you’re not supposed to ask.
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