The City Council of Lakewood, Washington may decide soon to permit marijuana retail despite wide-spread opposition.
Ironically, the Council just this past February 20 was presented with 151 pages (pp.070-221) in the way of recommendation to join what is generally called the “Big Pharma” lawsuit.
According to Heidi Wachter, Lakewood City Attorney, compelling evidence for addiction of certain pharmaceuticals was underrepresented but the product extensively marketed nevertheless by what is now viewed as the unscrupulous practices of drug manufacturers resulting in a “problem at epidemic proportions” impacting local jurisdictions in the form of, among other issues, homelessness.
To benefit from any award in damages, Lakewood must “prepare support for the impact the opioid epidemic has had on the City,” homelessness cited as an example.
Connect these dots.
The trend in unsheltered homelessness shows a steady increase over the last five years.
The last Friday in January of each year, Pierce County conducts its Point-in-Time (PIT) Count where over 200 volunteers in the wee hours of the morning, 1 – 5 A.M., seek out “homeless individuals both sheltered (emergency shelters or transitional housing) and unsheltered individuals (those sleeping outside or living in places that are not meant for human habitation).”
“The PIT count is an annual event required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the State of Washington Department of Commerce to survey individuals experiencing homelessness across the nation. The results from the PIT are reported to create a trend analysis in the mission to end homelessness in America.”
The results of the January 26, 2018 PIT Count will be available in April but the five-year trend of those in Pierce County found sleeping in cars, below bridges, along-the-road-but-in-the-woods tented-or-tarped, is up, significantly, from 120 in 2013 to 504 in 2017.
It is undeniable Lakewood has a problem with, and a responsibility to, the homeless.
In fact, two years ago this last December, the Lakewood City Council received “an entry-level primer” on homelessness. Key among the presenters was the Rescue Mission with a PowerPoint study entitled, “What if we could address the causes of homelessness and not just the systems?”
That’s a good question, one to which Paul Pastor, Pierce County Sheriff, turns to those in the know for the answer: “Experts tell us that over 70% of these people who we call homeless, have problems with mental health, with substance abuse or both.”
Opioid epidemic. Homelessness. Substance abuse.
Among the charges enumerated in the “Big Pharma” lawsuit, is this: “Obscured from the marketing was the fact that prescription opioids are not much different than heroin — indeed on a molecular level, they are virtually indistinguishable” (p.081).
And what have we heard about heroin?
In an opinion piece for The New York Times, entitled “Marijuana Has Proven to Be a Gateway Drug,” Robert L. DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health and the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, wrote in his opening statement, “It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of heroin users have used marijuana (and many other drugs) not only long before they used heroin but while they are using heroin.”
Opioid epidemic. Homelessness. Substance abuse. Heroin. Marijuana.
But what are we hearing in Lakewood from those who want to set up shop to sell marijuana?
In the same packet of information concerning the opioid epidemic, is a statement by Cynthia Macklin “who holds a state issued marijuana business license” in Lakewood.
Said Macklin, “there is no evidence that marijuana is a gateway drug and that since legalization by Washington State, opiate use within the state has decreased” (p.60).
This presents a rather obvious set of questions for amusement – a conundrum – or questions that would be amusing except for how serious a matter this is.
If Macklin is right, then Lakewood would be wrong in joining the “Big Pharma” lawsuit.
If in fact “opiate use has decreased” as Macklin alleges and Lakewood, to be successful in this class-action lawsuit, must show “sufficiently detailed documentation for the impact the opioid epidemic has had on the City,” then why head down a road that Macklin practically says is a dead end?
If Macklin is right, then the statistics are wrong.
“Between 1997 and 2011, prescriptions and sales of opioids in Washington rose more than 500 percent. In 2015, the number of overdose deaths in Washington exceeded the number of deaths from car accidents and firearms. Homelessness and crime are also associated with opiate addiction.”
Opioid epidemic. Homelessness. Substance abuse. Heroin. Marijuana. Deadly car accidents.
Are they related? Even just those last two?
“Since pot legalization, driving under influence has steadily risen,” according to Washington State officials.
In a January 16, 2018 Q13 article by Tatevik Aprikyan, “statistics show you are twice as likely to kill yourself or someone else while under influence of marijuana,” said WSP Trooper Brooke Bova.
If Deputy Prosecutors in the Pierce County Office of the Prosecuting Attorney and members of the Keller Rohrbach law firm cannot show that Lakewood, among many others, is feeling the impact of what they say is “the worst man-made epidemic in modern medical history,” because opioid use is up, not down as Macklin claims, then Lakewood would be foolish to embark on a fool’s errand.
If more than 300,000 Americans have not lost their lives to an opioid overdose, as the lawsuit claims, “more than five times as many American lives as were lost in the entire Vietnam War”; if on any given day, 145 people will not in fact die from opioid overdoses in the United States as the lawsuit states; if opioid overdose is not “the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 25 and 60,” then pursuing such litigation is completely absurd, hopelessly pointless and a useless and fruitless mission.
Of course, on the other hand, if Macklin is wrong and the aforementioned DuPont is right, let alone all the entities nationally – including Lakewood – that want to hold irresponsible and reckless the promoters of a product believed to be responsible for such societal ills – and all while these unscrupulous marketers “deliberately downplay the significant risks of addiction” – then this begs a question of a far timelier nature.
“Like nearly all people with substance abuse problems, most heroin users initiated their drug use early in their teens, usually beginning with alcohol and marijuana,” writes DuPont.
“There is ample evidence that early initiation of drug use primes the brain for enhanced later responses to other drugs. These facts underscore the need for effective prevention to reduce adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana in order to turn back the heroin and opioid epidemic and to reduce burdens addiction in this country.”
Here, then, is that question, one that the Clover Park School District board has already answered (unanimous); as has the Lakewood Planning Commission in a vote of 4 to 2 just this February 21; as have hundreds of Lakewood residents in submitting their signatures to the Planning Commission in opposition to marijuana retail locally:
When will the Lakewood City Council connect the dots and come to the same conclusion?
Picture Source: Homeless for Hemp, an honestly-connected article
Cannabis is not a gateway drug, you’re grasping at straws.
If there are pot shops people don’t need to know drug dealers – which is how they move on to harder stuff.
Steve, would you be a proponent of the legalization of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine?
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon
At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Two issues are combined in this article — drugs and homelessness. I would like to see Lakewood’s homelessness issue addressed. There are many reasons for peoples’ finding themselves homeless — drug usage is just one. While we debate the connection between drugs and homelessness, more and more people become homeless. I would like to see the Lakewood city council take on the problem and come up with some positive solutions, like housing. We have several underutilized spaces in Lakewood that could provide a location for several kinds of social service connected housing, ranging from an overnight shelter to longer-term transitional housing as well as small apartments for more permanent living. Catholic Community Services and Mercy Housing offer a solution to homelessness in downtown Tacoma. Their models can be utilized here. By the way, Mercy Housing provides supported family and senior housing – families and seniors also experience homelessness.
I would like to see Lakewood do something positive for its homeless citizens. By doing this, we benefit both them and ourselves.
First step: Don’t approve marijuana retail. Second step: Hire the homeless – https://thesubtimes.com/2018/02/27/letter-hire-the-homeless/
Kris, how exactly do we benefit ourselves?
By helping the homeless you’re helping to build a stronger community. Leaving Lakewood citizens who have problems alone and letting them remain homeless doesn’t make Lakewood any better.
It’s called the golden rule – goole it.
Steve, what would make Lakewood better would be for the homeless to leave Lakewood for another place, say Seattle or Portland.
Or if people like you all moved to Idaho.
Something to ponder that has a relationship to homelessness and government programs to “help” them: the cost of illegal immigration. Take California for example. They spend $23,000,000,000 on welfare for illegal immigrants. Based upon a legal population of 36,900,000 that comes to about $625 in taxes for every man, woman and child in the state! There are an additional estimated 2,350,000 illegal aliens in California which comes to about a cost of $10,000 per every man, woman and child here illegally. Just think of what could be done with that kind of funding for unfortunate citizens here legally in this country. Washington numbers are not as severe as those of California but every citizen taxpayer dollar should go to pay for programs to support citizens not illegal aliens.
How much per capita do they pay in tax for corporate welfare/incentives and tax breaks?
More than $625 a year.
Please state sources of your assertion regarding marijuana NOT a gateway drug and >$650 per capita for corporate welfare. Heroin has been illegal since 1924 and marijuana since 1937…..long before Nixon. Annual per capita cost for corporate welfare is about $255 but for that the tax payer gets something: cheaper food, jobs, expanded tax base, higher pay. For the $89,000,000,000 in welfare spent on illegal aliens what do tax payers get? Crime, increased poverty, under the table employment, $$$ sent out of country. Given a choice I think I’ll take corporate welfare.
Source(s): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29430806
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/cums-sdc022018.php
And I’d rather spend my money helping out people than investors.
“Heroin has been illegal since 1924 and marijuana since 1937…..” And how has that worked out? We have a heroin epidemic, and even before legalization pot users seemed to keep supplied without too much trouble. My take – serious drug users need help, not tossed in jail. Europe has had some success in at least decriminalizing some drugs. Portugal, for example, has decriminalized about 30 drugs, requiring those who are arrested for possession to instead undergo a rehab program. Not sure how well it’s working out but at least it’s a different approach.
Steve,
Without investors, you and the rest of us will all be homeless.
Investors create jobs, buildings, products, opportunity, support families, create inventions, make progress, accomplish all kinds of things that make our planet a better place.
That is much better than those who sit on their duff all day thinking about what they have to do to get some more dope.
The free enterprise system is just one of America’s blessings. Realize it or not, business is your friend.
Joseph Boyle
Corporate welfare and tax breaks are not ‘free enterprise’, they are socialism.
If you think all homeless people ‘sit on their duff all day thinking about what they have to do to get some more dope’, then you’re severely out of touch. Maybe that is why you are so confused?
Marijuana is a gateway drug to a lot more than just other drugs. How about a gateway to lower education, lower income, increased psychiatric illness, reduced ambition/drive, increased upper respiratory problems, increase of heart attack/high blood pressure risk, second hand smoke risks, increased fetus mortality, abnormal infant development and so on. You might want to take a look at all the wonderful things marijuana is a gateway to………..https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/where-can-i-get-more-scientific-information-marijuana-abuse.
Gateway to lower education and lower income… maybe that’s why cannabis surpassed alcohol sales in Aspen, CO this year? https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/marijuana/aspen-marijuana-sales-top-liquor-sales-for-first-time
Cannabis is used across all income brackets and social statuses.
It’s healthier and more wholesome than alcohol and other recreational drugs – why not spend your time fighting something that is truly harmful to society, like fast food?
Steve – I agree, and it’s funny you mention Aspen. Just today, on our annual ski trip, I drove along the “green mile” – a stretch of US HWY 6 paralleling I-70 between Vail and Avon Colorado that has countless recreational pot shops. This is Colorado’s high-rent ski district and I’d guess their customers are far from low-income, judging from the local housing and the Gulfstreams arriving at the Vail airport…..
That’s a beautiful drive! Those huge ski lodges (or maybe just mansions?) built into the sides of the mountains out there in CO are crazy. The rivers through there are gorgeous in the summer, too.
WOT
Haaa! The rich will always have more money than what they know what to do with. Some will snort it; some will smoke it. The poor don’t have those options and money that should go to food instead goes up their nose or in smoke. News flash of the day for Lakewood’s pot heads who believe pot is all good! You can’t make this stuff up…..and don’t have to when you’re surrounded by stoners. http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2018/02/28/stoned-driver-crashes-250000-ferrari-seconds-after-getting-in.html
It’s almost like supercars are dangerous whether you’re stoned or not: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motoringvideo/11978478/Driver-crashes-1million-Ferrari-moments-after-leaving-dealership-in-Hungary.html
Sounds like regular cars are dangerous when you’re stoned.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335863/8-cyclists-killed-drug-driver-horror-crash-Italy.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/09/driver_high_on_marijuana_when.html
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/cully-stimson/stoned-drivers-are-killing-more-and-more-innocent-victims
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/crime–law/patrol-marijuana-driver-system-crash-that-killed-greenon-boys/bQ7mVpZfgaNDWqBigGslJN/
and……..808000 more hits when you Google “marijuana driver kills”. A victimless crime so just legalize it? Tell that to the families of these and many other victims. But I guess that doesn’t matter to stoners…….they just gotta have their joint.