Free Republic

Drug addicts near a firehouse in East Harlem have been seen pooping and shooting up outside the facility, the New York Post reported Saturday. The disturbing news comes as Democrat-controlled New York City grapples with a drug crisis and rampant crime. Battalion Chief Burgess shared his thoughts on the scene outside the Engine 35, Ladder 14 firehouse, where photos show people sitting on the ground.

CTV’s BC bureau has found a potential cause célèbre on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where enterprising YouTube documentarians sometimes like to stroll around with their iPhones and capture footage of the filth-strewn drug-zombie wasteland, putting themselves at obvious risk of robbery and violence (and occasionally depicting both) as they do so... Most of these videos have hit counts in the thousands, but one made by an American, Tyler Oliveira, has become an especially big hit. Oliveira has an entire online oeuvre of frightening mini-tours of skid rows and tent cities across North America... Well, CTV’s Isabella Zavarise heard about this extremely...

Philadelphia businesses are being forced to set up booby traps like hidden sprinkler systems to fend off drug users. Local activist Frank Rodriguez has revealed that business owners in the Kensington area of the city are having to devise tricks to keep addicts off their stoops. The neighborhood has become ground zero for the city's drug epidemic, and is frequently seen strewn with trash and addicts injecting drugs in the open. Speaking to Fox News, Rodriguez said: 'Businesses end up throwing soapy water on the ground just so it is wet and it is not a comfortable place to sit...

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city’s community partners are pulling outreach workers from Mass & Cass, an area of the city also knowns as methadone mile, amid growing concerns for public safety. Wu said the conditions around the intersection of Mass. Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard have gotten so dangerous with the increase of drug trafficking, human trafficking, and violence that some outreach organizations are pulling their teams off the streets. “Even the outreach workers who have been there day after day are not feeling comfortable.. not feeling like they can physically safely be there anymore,” said Wu. ......

If you aren’t familiar with San Francisco, it’s almost impossible to know how far the once-beautiful city has fallen or how bad a mark the homeless, drug, and crime trifecta has trashed its iconic streets. New York reporter Elizabeth Weil wanted to dispel some of the horrible myths about San Francisco for her Curbed.com story, but, much to her dismay, she found those stories are far from “fake news.” “When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself,” Weil writes. “Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that...

An Upper Manhattan subway station is a needle graveyard, with the tracks littered with hundreds of used syringes tossed by junkies after they shoot up on the platforms, straphangers say. “My husband doesn’t let me go out by myself [to the station] at night, he’s horrified,” said chef Laura Licona, 49, of the cavernous 1 Line transit hub at West 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. “The drug use has been a problem and compounded big time.” The Post recently witnessed a half-dozen junkies injecting themselves there, just a few yards away from parents and elementary school children. […] The...

Overdoses continue to skyrocket in B.C. seven years after the province declared the drug epidemic a public health emergency. Seven years after the province of British Columbia declared the drug epidemic a public health emergency, and just one month after the decriminalization of all drugs, overdoses continue to skyrocket. According to the Canadian Press, B.C. tragically set three new overdose records this March, just the second month after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government allowed the province to decriminalize all drugs starting February 1, 2023... In March, B.C. saw the most overdose calls ever recorded in one day (205), the...

SAN FRANCISCO – Providing drug users with syringes and pipes for public health purposes keeps addicts "in a state of bondage," a dealer-turned-activist told Fox News. The city has established more than 20 harm reduction centers... "They should restart rethinking their policies here because this harm reduction site, it just doesn't work," Ricci Wynne, a drug abstinence advocate and former drug dealer, told Fox News. The homeless in San Francisco "don't need more syringes, they don't need crack pipes, they don't need tinfoil."....

New York officials reach agreement to legalize marijuana Weed all about it! New York State officials have reached a deal to legalize marijuana, legislative sources told The Post on Wednesday — just hours after Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it “essential” to the state’s social and economic well-being. The reform measures will be included in the laws to be proposed as part of the state budget on April 1, the sources said The deal would allow New Yorkers over the age of 21 to legally buy and possess up to three ounces of pot for their personal use, with licensed sales...

The pods, which are made from wood and steel, were put in parks and other places, a spokesman for the city said. To shield the homeless from the wind and cold, the beds have been equipped with thermal insulation. They are also big enough for use by two individuals. There are no cameras, and when they are in use, sensors are triggered. Those behind the project, amid some delays, announced that they had eventually been rolled out just as the weather began to take a turn for the worse.

MINNEAPOLIS—Overseeing sober living homes for newly recovering drug addicts is difficult in the best of times. But the endless shutdowns have created conditions that are challenging for healthy people, let alone those who are fresh out of rehab, vulnerable, and still reeling. Matt Royce, 35, oversees seven sober-living homes in Minneapolis. All of his houses, each holding between 9 and 13 people, have been “pretty full the whole time.” No overdose deaths had occurred in his homes in almost three years, but last summer he lost two people, while another three were revived from overdoses with opioid-blocker Narcan. Depression has...

In the 1990s, it was our collective national will to do what was necessary, however distasteful to some, to rescue our society from catastrophe.As the nation prepares for the incoming Biden-Harris administration the new president promises will be “the most progressive in history,” many drug policy practitioners wonder with trepidation what this will mean for the country’s drug crisis. Record levels of methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl, not to mention surging tonnage of cocaine and black market marijuana, are pouring across our borders at the hands of ruthless Mexican drug cartels, directly fueling ever-increasing overdose deaths and crime. So leftists’ stated...

On May 3, 2020, without warning or public comment, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began dumping into luxury hotels near a Upper West Side residential neighborhood what would ultimately become a 730-man army of broken, derelict, homeless adult men in various stages of disintegration and crisis. On July 27, the mayor sent the most aggressive of these men—283 in total—to the Lucerne Hotel for quarter.In response to Covid-19, the mayor moved the men from downtown homeless shelters, where they had access to critical social services, to the hotels, where services are illusory. The Department of Homeless Services...

San Francisco has become plagued by homelessness, addiction, and property crime. In this short documentary, I investigate what went wrong—how one of the world's most prosperous cities has become a haven of public disorder. Learn more at www.christopherrufo.com and follow me on Twitter @realchrisrufo.

Controversy is ensuing in San Francisco after the city decided to give alcohol, marijuana, and methadone to homeless addicts in hotels during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report. Last Friday a man who describes himself on Twitter as “Formerly homeless addict in #recovery advocating for the #truth about homelessness and drug addiction. Faith, Hope and Love. SF Native. Tweets are my own.” tweeted to the city. He wrote: “I just found out that homeless placed in hotels in SF are being delivered Alcohol, Weed and Methadone because they identified as an addict/alcoholic for FREE. You're supposed to be offering...

Convincing potential COVID-19 patients to stay in quarantine is taking a controversial turn in Shoreline. King County officials are giving addicts beer, cigarettes - and until recently marijuana - so they won't leave a recovery center. Officials with the Department of Human and Community Services call it harm reduction and point out no tax payer money is being used. Some neighbors said it makes sense. Others called it a big mistake. The Shoreline facility is set up for people suspected of having COVID-19 but who can't quarantine at home, or they don't have a home. Some also have addictions and...

Senator Bernie Sanders believes that the super-rich and large corporations are actively working against working class Americans and in an interview with CBS News compared some of the ultra-wealthy to drug addicts. Ending corporate greed was the theme of a five-stop, two-day swing through Iowa this week - marking his return to a first in the nation state since suffering a heart attack 25 days ago. "There's always been greed in this country - no question about it. But I think 40, 50 years ago, the big money interest in this country made a decision that they were going to...

April 17 (UPI) -- In one of the largest federal crackdowns on opioids yet, prosecutors said in an indictment Wednesday investigators uncovered a vast illegal prescription scheme in which physicians traded painkillers for sex and money. The federal indictment involves 350,000 illegal prescriptions in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama and West Virginia. "That is the equivalent of one opioid dose for every man, woman and child in the five states in the region that we've been targeting," Brian Benczkowski, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department, told The Washington Post. "If these medical professionals behave like drug dealers, you can rest...

Just days after the tragic death of fashion icon Kate Spade, new government research sheds light on a disturbing increase in suicides in the United States. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that suicide rates have risen dramatically across most of the country in the past three decades. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. and is one of just three leading causes that are on the rise. The rate of suicide in the U.S. rose nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2016. In 2016, nearly 45,000 Americans age 10 or...

The governor of Colorado does our nation a grave disservice by misleading the public about the impact of marijuana on his state in the April 9 interview in Rolling Stone magazine. Neither the governor's statements, nor the smoke rising from 4/20 events, can hide the fact that drug use and addiction, especially among youths, are a growing public health concern in communities across Colorado and the nation. ... According to the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Colorado is a national leader among 12-17-year-olds in: (1) Last year marijuana use; (2) Last month marijuana use; and (3) The...