I was a drug addict for much of my teens and twenties. But the drugs were different then. Meth, cocaine, and heroin were devastating enough - yet what we are seeing today is something far more dangerous.
Now, fentanyl dominates the landscape. It is intensely addictive, and the question often isn’t if it will kill someone, but when. If mental health struggles already existed, fentanyl magnifies them many times over, accelerating both physical and psychological decline.
My heart breaks for those trapped in the hopeless cycle of addiction, as well as for the families, neighborhoods, and innocent people affected by the destruction that follows. Compassion matters -but so does honesty. And honestly our current form of "compassion " is hurting our community as well as the people whom are causing their own demise.
From lived experience, I believe real change only begins when individuals are faced with the consequences of their actions. Accountability, paired with opportunity for recovery, is what ultimately saves lives and restores our community.
I sincerely hope our leadership comes to recognize that balance.
And Marge -your voice is strong, even when it challenges others. Strong arguments sometimes invite personal attacks when opposing positions lack substance. Your willingness to stand firm and speak openly inspires many who may not always feel comfortable speaking up themselves. Shine on!
I understand the City of Port Angeles will come together for a workshop on April 7th on this homelessness matter. Sure they'll hear from the stakeholders, the ones that sit in the offices and crunch numbers and beg for grants. "Look what we've accomplished in the past year". The NGO's will speak about their jobs with no measurable matrix or accountability. Policy wonks will have their prepared speeches to tell us how much money they have thrown at the homeless situation. We'll see numbers that the Sheriff, PAPD, PBH and HHS. Bottom line. It isn't working. Whack-a-mole continues.
SC great notes here and I commend you for your "normal" life now. A key point of yours, is when it hits the families and neighborhoods. Then it starts to get personal. It's "someone you know". Relatives, friends, children, and 4.0 students. The drug and alcohol problem is getting closer and closer. Kids are told to walk around the campsite on the sidewalk or find a different route, the entrance to your favorite eatery is blocked by poop or a bum in it, public transportation is being avoided because some dude has decided it his home and shooting gallery for the day.. The problem is getting closer and closer.
Harm reduction compassion is not working. Arrest records and jail recycling is not working. Kicking unhoused out of the Tumwater area is not working. Frequent visit by paramedics is not working. Frequency visits by law enforcement is not working. The Narcan white knight is not working. The shelters and subsidized housing is not working. The community has reached its end.
Wow! This awakened some stuff I had put on the shelf. First, my prejudices: there were no “paras” in my day. I see them as I view PBH, corruption - ruining people’s lives in order to create a lucrative industry and a dangerous mentality.
Allow me to take you back in time to before we had two parakeet cages on 8th Street. Remember the jumpers? One was a school girl, which was the final straw for the “do something” crowd. I looked at “paras” around that time and found PA had almost one for every two teachers. Think about that, please.
There was a judge who was retiring then whose wife had sustained an eye injury as a “para.” They couldn’t get out of here fast enough to their vineyard in the Mediterranean.
I looked into teacher pay. It was mixed with administrators. I concluded the average pay for both lumped together and including benefits that included employer’s share of FICA and Medicare was $140,000 per year. No one wanted to believe it. The candidate who ran against Sheriff King told me he was meeting with some union leaders and would address it. Nothing.
Does the thought of losing benefits keep people in line?
I have been concerned with schools for decades now. God, discipline, honor, truth, and other virtues are supreme or should be, but something else could be tipping the scales, CO2. I wonder if the County Health Hag has ever tested classrooms. She doesn’t even seem to be aware it is good for bacteria.
Meanwhile the kids know the climate BS.
I don’t have anything on classrooms here, but if you visit conspAIRacy dot com, you can find some old stuff on other places. Remember: the left and Dems always have their fingers on the scale to get what they want. What do they want?
Sorry, but it is now time for one of my canned rants.
Why do you think some school officials now want later start times and 4 day weeks? Why little or no homework? It’s racist, don’t you know? Nothing to do with the fact kids have a harder time concentrating. Their homes are as bad or worse than the schools.
Seems there is an issue authorities don’t want to address. Over forty years of it. It has now created an epidemic, a mental health crisis and stupidity crisis.
Look up Berkeley Labs’ study of the impact of 1,000 ppm CO2 on learning. (Sponsored by NIH. Read their summary too). There are more serious mental and medical problems that are not discussed.
How about more fresh air for teachers and their students? Why are females taking over teaching? Why were there no adult males killed at Sandy Hook?
Why are more males affected by SIDS, autism, and ADHD?
Why are boys the first to become distracted and act up in school?
Here’s how you reduce anxiety, mental illness, ADHD, violence, and more in your school - learn what our ancestors knew. Study a school built in the 1920s after the Tenement House Acts and the Spanish Flu.
Notice they didn’t provide just one source of incoming fresh air that could be filtered/masked. They did the opposite.
High ceilings that increased the total air volume, so the exhaled CO2 remained a smaller portion of the air, lower parts per million, many tall windows that opened at top and bottom for good air circulation and to bring in fresh air and let stagnant air out. Window sills close to the floor below the level of students noses seated at desks. CO2 is 50% heavier than air and tends to go down, filling a room from the bottom up. A window opened at the bottom allowed the CO2 to escape before getting back up to nose level.
Plus, each room provided its own ventilation, so kids weren’t breathing the same air as kids in another room.
The “class size” complaints you may have heard teachers make today is really because of the CO2 and poor ventilation. The average class of 20 students now has CO2 in their air as if 46 were there.
Kids weren’t sexually confused or shooting other kids before tighter homes and schools with high exhaled indoor CO2 and poor ventilation because of climate lies.
In 1995, the CDC said to treat violence as a health issue. What did they know and hide?
Was this the beginning and excuse to over prescribe opioids?
Did Behavioral Health Pill Mills appear everywhere?
BTW, the result of tighter buildings is more energy use.
Can you guess why we were more civil when ashtrays were everywhere? Healthier too.
I was a drug addict for much of my teens and twenties. But the drugs were different then. Meth, cocaine, and heroin were devastating enough - yet what we are seeing today is something far more dangerous.
Now, fentanyl dominates the landscape. It is intensely addictive, and the question often isn’t if it will kill someone, but when. If mental health struggles already existed, fentanyl magnifies them many times over, accelerating both physical and psychological decline.
My heart breaks for those trapped in the hopeless cycle of addiction, as well as for the families, neighborhoods, and innocent people affected by the destruction that follows. Compassion matters -but so does honesty. And honestly our current form of "compassion " is hurting our community as well as the people whom are causing their own demise.
From lived experience, I believe real change only begins when individuals are faced with the consequences of their actions. Accountability, paired with opportunity for recovery, is what ultimately saves lives and restores our community.
I sincerely hope our leadership comes to recognize that balance.
And Marge -your voice is strong, even when it challenges others. Strong arguments sometimes invite personal attacks when opposing positions lack substance. Your willingness to stand firm and speak openly inspires many who may not always feel comfortable speaking up themselves. Shine on!
I understand the City of Port Angeles will come together for a workshop on April 7th on this homelessness matter. Sure they'll hear from the stakeholders, the ones that sit in the offices and crunch numbers and beg for grants. "Look what we've accomplished in the past year". The NGO's will speak about their jobs with no measurable matrix or accountability. Policy wonks will have their prepared speeches to tell us how much money they have thrown at the homeless situation. We'll see numbers that the Sheriff, PAPD, PBH and HHS. Bottom line. It isn't working. Whack-a-mole continues.
SC great notes here and I commend you for your "normal" life now. A key point of yours, is when it hits the families and neighborhoods. Then it starts to get personal. It's "someone you know". Relatives, friends, children, and 4.0 students. The drug and alcohol problem is getting closer and closer. Kids are told to walk around the campsite on the sidewalk or find a different route, the entrance to your favorite eatery is blocked by poop or a bum in it, public transportation is being avoided because some dude has decided it his home and shooting gallery for the day.. The problem is getting closer and closer.
Harm reduction compassion is not working. Arrest records and jail recycling is not working. Kicking unhoused out of the Tumwater area is not working. Frequent visit by paramedics is not working. Frequency visits by law enforcement is not working. The Narcan white knight is not working. The shelters and subsidized housing is not working. The community has reached its end.
When there are no consequences for bad behavior, that behavior will never change. It's that simple.
Skylar, the “para.”
Wow! This awakened some stuff I had put on the shelf. First, my prejudices: there were no “paras” in my day. I see them as I view PBH, corruption - ruining people’s lives in order to create a lucrative industry and a dangerous mentality.
Allow me to take you back in time to before we had two parakeet cages on 8th Street. Remember the jumpers? One was a school girl, which was the final straw for the “do something” crowd. I looked at “paras” around that time and found PA had almost one for every two teachers. Think about that, please.
There was a judge who was retiring then whose wife had sustained an eye injury as a “para.” They couldn’t get out of here fast enough to their vineyard in the Mediterranean.
I looked into teacher pay. It was mixed with administrators. I concluded the average pay for both lumped together and including benefits that included employer’s share of FICA and Medicare was $140,000 per year. No one wanted to believe it. The candidate who ran against Sheriff King told me he was meeting with some union leaders and would address it. Nothing.
Does the thought of losing benefits keep people in line?
I have been concerned with schools for decades now. God, discipline, honor, truth, and other virtues are supreme or should be, but something else could be tipping the scales, CO2. I wonder if the County Health Hag has ever tested classrooms. She doesn’t even seem to be aware it is good for bacteria.
Meanwhile the kids know the climate BS.
I don’t have anything on classrooms here, but if you visit conspAIRacy dot com, you can find some old stuff on other places. Remember: the left and Dems always have their fingers on the scale to get what they want. What do they want?
Sorry, but it is now time for one of my canned rants.
Why do you think some school officials now want later start times and 4 day weeks? Why little or no homework? It’s racist, don’t you know? Nothing to do with the fact kids have a harder time concentrating. Their homes are as bad or worse than the schools.
Seems there is an issue authorities don’t want to address. Over forty years of it. It has now created an epidemic, a mental health crisis and stupidity crisis.
Look up Berkeley Labs’ study of the impact of 1,000 ppm CO2 on learning. (Sponsored by NIH. Read their summary too). There are more serious mental and medical problems that are not discussed.
How about more fresh air for teachers and their students? Why are females taking over teaching? Why were there no adult males killed at Sandy Hook?
Why are more males affected by SIDS, autism, and ADHD?
Why are boys the first to become distracted and act up in school?
Here’s how you reduce anxiety, mental illness, ADHD, violence, and more in your school - learn what our ancestors knew. Study a school built in the 1920s after the Tenement House Acts and the Spanish Flu.
Notice they didn’t provide just one source of incoming fresh air that could be filtered/masked. They did the opposite.
High ceilings that increased the total air volume, so the exhaled CO2 remained a smaller portion of the air, lower parts per million, many tall windows that opened at top and bottom for good air circulation and to bring in fresh air and let stagnant air out. Window sills close to the floor below the level of students noses seated at desks. CO2 is 50% heavier than air and tends to go down, filling a room from the bottom up. A window opened at the bottom allowed the CO2 to escape before getting back up to nose level.
Plus, each room provided its own ventilation, so kids weren’t breathing the same air as kids in another room.
The “class size” complaints you may have heard teachers make today is really because of the CO2 and poor ventilation. The average class of 20 students now has CO2 in their air as if 46 were there.
Kids weren’t sexually confused or shooting other kids before tighter homes and schools with high exhaled indoor CO2 and poor ventilation because of climate lies.
In 1995, the CDC said to treat violence as a health issue. What did they know and hide?
Was this the beginning and excuse to over prescribe opioids?
Did Behavioral Health Pill Mills appear everywhere?
BTW, the result of tighter buildings is more energy use.
Can you guess why we were more civil when ashtrays were everywhere? Healthier too.
conspAIRacy.com/evilcdc.html