The Trump administration will fix this problem.
No problem.
lol
4
Someone please explain to me how people who can't afford to pay for a roof over their heads can somehow pay for heroin?
27
There is something seriously missing from this story... such as why Humboldt County has such a exorbitant homeless population compared to the population of the county. People always flocked to the Emerald triangle in search of work and many could not find it. The fact is now with legalization in California and how that is changing the pot industry, Devil's Playground would not have had near as high a population... and the estimate they gave was probably during peak harvest or pre/post harvest times. I do agree more services should be allotted to helping those get off opiod abuse though, and that there should not have to be waiting lists for this potentially life saving treatment.
3
The availability of SSI payments feeds the fire of addiction. Instead of being a lifesaver SSI increase addiction and therefore homelessness.
22
I mean the left has to admit, just for one second, that given the bifurcation of the economy, neo-liberalism of everything, the closure of asylums for the mentally ill, the printing of money by central banks pushing up house prices, that to still virtue signal by opening the doors to illegal immigrants makes no sense. First we need to look after these folks.
10
Very difficult to muster sympathy for junkies , too many other legit, non self - induced problems to rectify first.
26
An important question is why Humboldt County has an 'astonishingly high rate of opioid prescription'. Slowing the destruction of the opioid crisis is stopping the start of corporate drug companies greedy infestation through complicit doctors.
Until this flow is staunched, the crisis is akin to driving around putting out fires, instead of catching the arsonists.
5
Homelessness has become a problem of epic proportions throughout California - - from San Diego to Sacramento to Oakland. The homeless crisis in Eureka no doubt owes a lot to the city's decline as a logging/fishing port town. There's no shortage of housing in Eureka; there is a major shortage of good jobs. In places like Eureka, the working class medicates its social pain with cheap, illegal drugs; in more middle-class environs, prescription meds alleviate the effects of social and economic precariousness.
Despite it's rank as the 5th largest economy in the world, California suffers from an extreme case of income inequality - - within cities and between regions. More sparsely populated counties like Humboldt, Shasta, and Trinity in the far north of the state are amongst the state's poorest - - per capita income in Humboldt Co. is less than half that of San Mateo Co. (in the Bay Area).
Imo, California struggles with these symbiotic crises (homelessness and drugs) because California politics and governance are both enabled and limited by state's rights-based liberalism - - scoring major victories on issues like gay marriage and sexual equality while, at the same time, essentially throwing its hands up in the face of problems like poverty, racial-economic segregation, and housing. Thus, the absurd contrast of Teslas driving past tarps sheltering black tar heroin addicts - - or, like Humboldt Co., homeless tweakers sheltering on the edge of majestic redwood forests.
8
When the elected "leader" (Gov. Brown) thinks it's a high priority to waste billions on a "high speed" train from L.A. to S.F. that there is no demand for, that won't even be able to travel that fast, and that is already bedeviled by cost overruns and at least 20 lawsuits, one can hardly be surprised that the issues described in this article aren't a high priority for state government.
10
There are adults who for one reason or another are not capable of taking care of themselves. I wish we could collect funding in the form of progressive income/wealth taxes to provide for them, as we do for children. Accepting that support should require accepting some supervision too. This way, the truly needy would separate themselves out from the simply lawless. But that will never happen in a white protestant dominated culture.
6
There must be better ways to deal with the homeless situation. In Chicago, Baltimore there are intergenerational families on welfare, with roofs over heads that are paid for by the taxpayer. Why not do the same thing for the homeless in California, Washington and Hawaii?
1
We need housing. We need more homes built. We need many more homes built. Using meth to keep moving all night? We can't solve our drug problems until we solve our housing problem.
2
Great Article. I have often stated, misstated after having read this article, that California does not have an Opioid Crisis.
I want the Times to note, and pursue, the facts that California has a housing crisis PERIOD. All across the state.
Humboldt was devoured by venture capitalistic Cannabis companies who want the cache of growing cannabis where it kind of all started, locally in California.
There were always very few rentals but now there is simply a lack of housing stock.
2) Black Tar heroin is actually 100% pure heroin.
3) The Mexican cartel/China drug people with stronger drugs, heroin in particular, have targeted the US drug consumer to make up from their losses in cannabis sales.
The drug dealing is multi national.
4) I have great sympathies for law enforcement in Humboldt, and other border counties in California. They have NEVER had a break.
5) Today, the Democratic and maybe Republican candidates for Governor of California had a debate today.
They all debated housing, homelessness and their promises to fix a horrible situation.
Here's my comment - suggestion. We need the very Mexicans who are being barred from entry into the US as temp construction workers. WE do not have enough builders and construction workers to perform the necessary work to build the housing which Cities such as Sacramento from which I hale, have approved. Likewise, burned down Santa Rosa needs builders. We don't have the housing to house even outofstate builders.
6
Not only in California but everywhere in the States. One of the richest countries of the world has become one of the foulest. It cannot cope with its own problems but meddles in other countries affairs which are none of your business.
9
Afghani opium. This is what happens when the United States government protects drug growers. Where is the money going?
4
Most people with drug problems begin abusing before age 18. And the younger they begin, the more likely they are to be lifelong addicts. We can bicker about what to do with the current generation of abusers, but we should be pouring our resources into preventing the next.
I grew up in Eureka and I'm the current president of the Boys & Girls Club of the Redwoods. Our community is cash poor, bu locals give their labor generously. We're currently rehabilitating the Eureka Teen Center with labor donated by local construction companies. But always need more money for programs and staff.
12
I wish there was a better way...aren't all these needles a large part of the waste that's destroying the planet? And why are so many people homeless in such a wealthy state? I would say the same of NY & NJ. And for so many who are working hard and not drug-addicted, there is no living wage and no security. This feels like a society on the verge of total collapse. We are a nation of predators and prey.
6
It’s much easier to focus on homelessness and addiction than on much larger societal issues: lack of opportunity and lack of affordable housing. Eureka is really Anytown, USA, with a roving population of people who lack the resources to establish themselves. They are the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, and those with serious medical conditions. They are former members of the middle class who suffer some misfortune—a divorce, the loss of a job, a legal issue—which knocks them out of the orbit of “normal” society. The skyrocketing rates of drug addiction and overdose, as well as homelessness, are symptoms of a much larger disease. They are a reflection of the twisted priorities in what is supposed to be the wealthiest nation on earth. Tax cuts for billionaires combined with serious reductions to education, public housing, vocational services and public health—what sort of outcome should we expect?
7
Seems like a self-correcting problem. Meanwhile, the real victims in all this are the people caught up in a new, even more pointless "drug war", and legitimate chronic pain patients, etc.
But CA's problem isn't a "housing shortage" - it's simple human overpopulation. If we reduced human numbers worldwide to something reasonable, most of our problems would vanish, but of course nobody bothers with that. Soon enough Nature will do it for us, I suppose. Pity I wont be around to see that.
8
If you went back to the 1970's to 1990's you'd read this exact same type of write-up, but it would be focused on the inner cities. Enclaves of racial segregation, poverty and all the rest. Suburban and rural areas had a "it's their issue not ours" attitude. Guess what? Spin up to today and now the same thing is happening in (mostly) White rural America. And NOW it's a problem?
No, the problem is that since we did not so much as try (mostly) to address the human sins of our colored brothers and sisters from those earlier times, those same sins are now being visited upon everyone else. If we had developed the aid and support systems back then, as we should have as human beings, we might not be having to confront the very same issues now.
So it goes I suppose.
John~
American Net'Zen
6
How very sad — indeed tragic — it is to learn of the huge increase in the scope and magnitude of this terrible scourge in a region that was home from 1988 to 1992 whilst attending Humboldt State University in Arcata (at which NPR affiliate, KHSU-FM, I enjoyed the great privilege of being a member of the staff). Knock on any door... .
2
Sad to say, it is nearly impossible to rehabilitate a long-term drug addict. Success is very rare.
And it is interesting that Ms. Cobine thinks that housing is the primary thing that should be given to these people. She has housing due to her settlement from the car accident, yet is continuing to abuse drugs in her motel room.
Stable housing just means they will be able to abuse drugs more comfortably and in a safer environment.
Once a person abuses drugs long enough for their brain chemistry to change and to develop a physiological dependency, the odds they will ever be rehabilitated become quite small. Not impossible - but unlikely, no matter how many resources you provide.
It is a sad fact that no one seems to want to concede.
19
The opiate problem is like the gun problem: people are dying from them left and right but the authorities can't shut down the sources and they can't stop people from acquiring and using them. All we can do is bury the dead and eulogize.
2
I live in the Bay Area close to SF, not far from Santa Clara County aka Silicon Valley, where many high tech firms have their headquarters. These companies pride themselves on "doing no harm" akin to a physician's oath. However, physicians are active in healing, curing, alleviating suffering. I call upon these wealthy companies to consider donating funds for creating health clinics in our rural northern California. And why not build housing there, satellites sites for their companies, etc. Practice what they preach in our golden state.
(I was born & raised in Brooklyn, but moved to California in 1971. My husband Joseph & I raised our sons in San Jose. Many of their friends cannot afford to live in the area due to rising house prices, which are due to high salaries of these tech companies. Enough said.) Carolyn Grassi, Pacifica, CA
6
I live near Eureka. There IS a large drug problem here and in neighboring towns. My son is currently incarcerated do to heroin addiction and related criminal activity. There are scant social services available. Local sheriff and police are largely unhelpful. County jail is not quite a revolving door, but close. Mostly no help for the addicted or/ and mentally ill is available inside. We really, really do need more public resources dedicated to this scourge.
Some of this is the nature of the beast in rural America in this day and age. Lack of jobs and meaning and determination leading to a host of social ills. However, locally the situation is fueled and exacerbated by the marijuana industry. “Travelers” and “trimigrants” arrive for the scene, a quick buck, to get high. Many end up on the streets with the resident addicts and mentally ill. Few contribute anything positive to local communities. Combined, the numbers are a public nusence and overwhelm what little is available for anyone needing assisistance.
While I sympathize with much about being addicted and homeless here, I am often numbed by the experience of frequent exposure to the problem. Along with better assistance there is also a strong need for better personal responsibility. These have to go together.
Lastly, this area has its problems covered in the article, but also a lot of positive. The pictures show Eureka skid row- like most cities and towns, not the best face. Nor the whole picture.
8
A recent travel through the Tenderloin in San Francisco will present the same picture. As will a walk through so many places in cities and communities around the world. Focusing on one community just zooms in on the complex issues discussed in this article, but does not present a solution that this community and others can try. I happen to live in Eureka, have picked up used needles in the greenbelt near my home and off the street, in ally ways, and on sidewalks in nice neighborhoods. I'm not alone. Many people in our community participate in picking up after spent users, but programs that try to help those users trade in needles or discard them safely do not address the mental health aspect.
The U.S. should be pivoting to build programs that serve people who would like to access mental health programs. Getting people mental health in a housed situation would help prevent unnecessary emergency calls, unnecessary addictions, and unnecessary early deaths from preventable serious illnesses related to prolonged drug use and a lack of access to preventative healthcare. Small organizations that tackle these issues can't do it alone. It takes more than just a village to help the number of people suffering in this country. It will take a culture shift on a wide scale with backing from the powerful engine to help make these changes.
6
I live in the SF Bay Area and the homeless problem is extreme. In the East Bay there are large tent encampments under and along the freeways. From my personal experience with people I know with mental problems, some of whom have been homeless for periods of time, I've come to believe that there are people who will always need a structured living environment. They don't have the tools necessary for independent living. We, as a society, don't have that option on any scale to meet the need. I understand the horrific history of institutions and I'm not talking about that. I'm deeply interested in this problem and it is utterly perplexing.
9
CALIFORNIA Needs to declare the northern part of the state a disaster zone and to initiate emergency programs for housing and treatment of opioid addiction. Without such measures, the death rate in the area, already 5 times greater than elsewhere, will continue to rise tragically.
3
As should many other parts of the country including MA, NH, ME, WV, FLA, PA, NY, OH, on and on. Northern CA is not the only area heavily affected by this drug and homeless scourge. This is a national crisis.
9
Everything about this is tragic but I dont see solutions in a community that lacks a working local economy to help the addicts. It is just a matter of time before eureka becomes a ghost town of elderly who dont want to move away and addicts who are one fix away from death's door.
3
In Milan, twenty years ago while staying at a five star hotel we watched from our hotel room as workers in boots and gloves pick up the discarded needles used by the addicted. New needles were given out as well. Maybe a program developed to pick up the discarded needles with an incentive of treatment or stipend could help our forgotten population. A daily full box of discarded needles would be a credit towards help.The cost of neglecting them has weakened all of us. It is not only tragic, but also a public health crisis.
1
In all of my travels around the world, I have never run into the feral bands of street people like you see on the west coast. In particular in the cities. These small packs roaming the streets and taking over the sidewalks and the non-stop panhandling occurs no where else in the world. It's astounding to see and encounter, especially when one is a visitor. I met a European man who told me about how he flew to SF then on to Honolulu and was completely mortified by what he encountered with so many homeless. This is us now in the shocked eyes of others, who come to what they think is the nicest places only to step on a needle on the beach or a steaming heap upon Market St. Lovely country we have going here. Inconceivable in most other parts of the world. It's a serious sign of our decay among other obvious signals. Methinks it is gonna get way worse before it gets any better. Sad country.
61
"Syringe litter". What a horrific, apt phrase for inept government malfeasance.
Stop the drug use, arrest dealers, and force supervised rehab on people or jail.
Heroin or meth, take your pick. They both kill.
15
There is a strong undercurrent of drug culture here which is based in our reputation for growing cannabis. For a long time our economy floated on this black market. Unreported income kept us going, and now with legalization, the famed Emerald Triangle has taken a dive and that floating economy has now evaporated, adding insult to injury when it comes to our already complex and frankly horrendous homeless, drug, and mental health problems. The area in general is a medical desert; doctors don't stay, and the ones that do are overbooked so far out that you can't get in for months or years. If you are addicted to drugs, suffer from mental illness, or have any kind of legitimate medical issue, you very well might die in Humboldt County before you get help.
Our problems have amplified to the point of, what I believe to be, no return. I have small children now and I will be leaving the area before they are the age at which I would have to explain to them why there are groups of people sitting on our sidewalks shooting drugs into their veins in the middle of the day. People say "it's everywhere", and it is, but not quite like it is here in Humboldt County.
I am an incredibly empathetic individual but I struggle with the realization that living here has resulted in a great loss of empathy. Not only is there no help for people here who need it, but there is a growing percentage of those people who make it very clear that they do not want assistance.
We are drowning up here. Send help.
64
I totally agree. I have been traveling to this area since 1999 and I see the differences you described. Medical specialists, mental health services are nearly non existent. One must travel a 6 hours drive or take an expensive flight to San Francisco for serious, specialized medical care. It doesn't help either that only one airline serves the local airport (no competition).
3
Mr President I know you are very busy fixing a lot of things but can you please try to fix this, thank you.
5
Wherever these people have congregated, the result is the same: a tyranny of the minority. The rights, freedom, and life quality of the hard working and clean majority must be the priority. Until we embrace this truth as our guiding paradigm, we will not adequately deal with the serious problems of this very ill minority.
35
I guess everyone on the East Coast didn't hear about the economic crisis that preceded the spike in heroin use. The legalization of cannabis pushed the marijuana industry that had sustained rural Northern California for decades off of a cliff. The labyrinthine process of permitting, the legalized supply chain, exorbitant costs and the resulting economies of scale have made it impossible for any of the small to medium size former farmers to continue in the industry. This drastic change in the economy that disenfranchised a large segment of the population took less than a year to accomplish and has devastated the region.
11
Dont blame weed harvesting. Legal marijuana will eventually lead to the end of the Emerald Triangle. There are more homeless because their are less jobs because underground weed is worthless. No one can make money and so the underground is dying.
As a legal marijuana consultant I applaud the death of the Emerald Triangle. There may be more homeless there for a time but eventually they will filter out as they realize the old days are gone.
And people like me dont give jobs in my marijuana labs to addicts. If you are opiates you will be immediately fired from my facilities.
4
I am a former addict. No government program will ever make someone quit. Only the individual can quit and it comes fro. within. However, programs can keep people alive long enough to make that decision.
Chances are that someone you know is an addict. You cant make them quit but if you support them they might stay alive long enough to make the decision to quit.
It's as simple as that. Support anything to keep addicts alive until they can make the decision to quit on their own. It's not pretty and some people will never make that decision. They will die. However, it's what these people deserve.
13
The more I read about these drugs the more I am coming to the conclusion that the addiction can never be cured.
This is a problem that can never be solved once a person is addicted. Invest money in preventing people from ever starting.
Let the addicts be addicted in peace- somewhere away from the rest of us.
23
Right on!!
2
How do homeless and low income persons finance their drug use? Does opiate use cause homelessness? If homeless people had homes and food on the table, would they use opioids? How many people take opioids and not become "addicted" or otherwise not problematic? in fact, what makes this an "epidemic?" How is that determined? If nicotine is addictive and injurious to health, then why are opioids so demonized?
8
I took opioids after many dental surgeries. Never became addicted and still have some leftover from years ago.
I too wonder how homeless finance their liquor and cigs!
16
I wonder how much the homeless population has jumped up since going to Northern California, seasonally, to "trim" weed at both legal and illegal pot growing farms has become a rite of passage for every otherwise transient person I have encountered.
I suspecting some don't make it back and stayon sleeping in tent cities etc. with problems abounding. So much for the "pot goldrush". The real "goldrush" in the 1800's had similar problems.
And as far as a needle exchange claiming a 94% return rate - 6% of a million needles is a lot of needles. They are everywhere on the ground here in WNC too. One thing (plastic) needle dispensing centers certainly aren't is "Green" minded.
8
"the Chief Deputy Coroner at the County Sheriff’s Department, said he is certain that the county’s heroin-related overdoses are “way underreported.”"
Rural and suburban addiction or related deaths have been underreported for decades. Everyone was too busy pointing at crack addicts because supposedly only those godless immoral urban people became drug addicts. You know, the ones who got lectures while being hauled off to jail. Never read any pity stories about them.
10
This trope that assumes easy equivalence between crack and opioid use, and that the difference in response is racially motivated, is as tiring as it is false. There is no comparison whatsoever between the levels of violence between the two. Were entire cities being consumed by gang battles for turf to sell OxyContin, we would see a much harsher response.
Moreover, crack was the first large scale drug epidemic. Perhaps, and popular belief to the contrary notwithstanding, we can learn from past mistakes.
9
The sympathizers are so far off base with this area. Here is the harsh truth. The vast majority of people in this county are homeless because they WANT to be. They don't want to work! They don't want to have responsibility. As hard as it is for many to grasp and accept, they are homeless because it is an easier lifestyle. I have offered people a quick 10 minute job in return for a meal and they refuse to do it. Instead, they want it handed to them for free. We have a trimmigrant problem here as well that constitutes a very high % of the homeless. They come here to trim weed, and when the season is over they don't leave. They blow their money on drugs and then find it easier to panhandle. There was a couple who one of them's dad offered to fly them home to Michigan where they were from and put them both in rehab. They refused do it, instead choosing to be homeless because they didnt want to live with rules. So many try to make it seem like these are just down on their luck people when that is very much so not the case! I have a lot of sympathy for those truly down on their luck and the homeless here give them a very bad name. Instead, people here choose to enable them. It's a true shame and has made this area unsafe to raise a family. I know many who have moved away because of all this, and we are going to be hot on their tails. It's so sad because they are ruining a beautiful area.
88
This article fails to mention the sizable influx of hopefuls who come to Humboldt on the promise or hope of making good money in weed harvesting yet can't find work or housing ... and likely adds to the homeless and opiod dual crises.
16
and yet Socialism with universal health care and affordable housing is evil! this country may have been founded on individual freedom but ignored human connections and community living.
11
You're darn right it's evil. I have no desire to pay for others' irresponsibility.
10
Reader in Wash, DC: You're already paying for it. There is no choice not to pay. The only issue is what you're paying for and how much. You still pay if they die. And it's cheaper really to help people help themselves than it is to leave them to die in the streets.
Socialism does not work. Ask people in Venezuela
6
a little math. 1 million, 94 return. 6 % assumed to be trash. that is 60,000. This is not a big place. The times reported this in away not diminishes the apparent impact.
14
Yes, the population of “greater” Eureka and the Humboldt Bay basin is about 50,000.
2
So, this region of California, the putative State of Jefferson, that complains that the rest of California is some kind of socialist conspiracy, has a public health disaster on its hand. One wonders who such know-it-alls and "superior Californians" could be subject to this opioid scurge. The leaders of the secessionist movement are devoted to small government, too. So maybe we should let their small government philosophy solve their addiction problem, except so many would be harmed. Hypocrites.
8
State of Jefferson secessionists are truly a minority in the county. The majority is quite liberal.
7
I’ve always noted the lack of friendly people in Honeydew and such places... kind of illiberalism of the former hippy cafe dope growers
As a retired journalist, I salute The Times excellent coverage of the opioid addiction epidemic but mourn the paper's consistent failure of late to include the classic hand-drawn maps that, for at least the last 50 years, helped a reader place stories geographically. Where have The Times' cartographers gone? Readers shouldn't have to use Google maps to know where Jackson Heights, Eureka, Calif., or Tehran are on the map.
40
Come ON. If you know California, you MUST know that Humboldt County has had cannabis growing in its culture for more than the 41 years that I have lived in California.
They have had Cannabis parades long before Cannabis was made lawful even medical cannabis.
And not a single mention from the Times of the possiible ill effevts of the POT industry in.....you heard it right......HUMBOLT COUNTY!?
(disclaimer - I smoke. I just think the business out there is very shady and a free for all.)
4
It's not shady. It's legal, highly taxed, and tightly regulated.
Going back in time for sure. I was there in the 80's and it seemed like a scene from a Steinbeck novel, I can only imagine what it's like now. California dreamin' is an illusion unless you're made out of money. How an area of such natural beauty as NW Cal. can be harboring such despair is an indictment of the way this country operates: we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Valuing lives of people who themselves don't value them is an intractable problem, my thought is that a Civilian Conservation Corps type solution could work if useful jobs were created and healthcare provided in a boot camp atmosphere. The ones who really want help would quickly be identified and the rest, well, c'est la vie.
37
We treated crackheads in the 80s as if they were subhuman criminals. Now its time to treat opiodheads/heroinheads the same way, or else we are just racist hypocrites.
7
Learning from mistakes is a sign of intellegence, not racism.
12
The hypocrisy is so overwhelming.
I found out not long ago that a person writing non stop pity stories about the so called opioid epidemic was an opioid addict. The person got offended when commenters pointed out the hypocrisy and racism. They then shut down comments. I also had my comment deleted when I pointed out crack addicts got jail, not cushy jobs writing for top news sites.
This does explain why the media portrays these addicts in such a different way.
5
Or we can try something different.
Almost everything we do, now, is different than how it was done in the past- especially if you look back far enough.
Give it a rest.
10
Do not want to sound harsh, but there is no cure for stupid.
Give them one trip to the ER for Narcan and mandatory rehab. If they blow it, let nature take it's course.
This cycle of supporting the tattooed and toothless drug culture serves no greater interest of the society at large. These people make babies they cannot or will not raise & support responsibly and do drugs. That leaves society with a steady supply of children with no stable home and ERs with a steady supply of junkies who produce nothing but work that gets them well for their next overdose.
67
Wow, you managed to include the fact that an exchange involves ... exchanging needles and not insight your entire rederbase into a fury about how we need to start setting up "something new" that incentivizes "bring the needles back".
Eureka is something I can personally speak on though. It's never been some sort of paradise of the North ... it's always been a disgusting hellhole addled by meth, the KKK, and neo-nazis ... since you were in short pants.
Now they are addled by heroin too? Wooah is mmeeee....
9
It used to be musties hanging around the town commons in Arcata and Eureka. They were runaways. I was visiting a friend and went to the liquor store. He told me to buy what I wanted and the cheapest beer in the store. I did and when we walked out all of the runaways accosted us for a beer and a cigarette. It was a whirlwind of patouli oil and dreadlocks. Grateful dead shirts with filthy dancing bears and faded Jerry Garcia portraits. I was the cleanest human by far. My friend tossed the nasty beer in the air and then we just ran to the rental car. The toughest of the musties turned on his friends and ran with around 4 beers hidden under his nasty clothes. I partied with locals that worked for this company called 101 north. They were glass blowers that were making mostly bongs and amazing inside out pipes. The company paid over 300,000 in taxes over the previous 4 years. The DA for the USA kicked in the doors and arrested everyone. A whole industry where these homeless could have worked was closed. There was a vigil in front of the station where they were held. I saw young parents holding babies wondering where the next paycheck was coming from. You need to allow these rural areas to thrive anyway possible. Blaming everyone else for your habits doesn't work for me either. If you were living with 400 addicts that's not living. (this was back in the 90's) it has gotten so much worse.
6
Yep, all still going on strong with all the weed trimmers up there now.
1
I find many Americans’ belief that they are entitled to buy their distance and insulation from social problems to be offensive. This is our country, and these are our problems. We live in a country that provides no help to those with mental health problems, where even those with education and some resources can find it hard to secure adequate housing, where one step off the ladder can be a permanent fall. This is our reality, and it’s time to stop moralizing our problems away.
Regarding heroin addiction, knowing what we know today about the millions of opioid pills that were shipped to rural areas by pharma distributors and prescribed by unscrupulous doctors, I can’t even believe that anyone still believes the gospel of “personal responsibility”. There was a plot, purely and simply, for some to profit from the desperation and eventual death of the poor, unlucky, and vulnerable.
And by the way, I’ve lived in the less affluent parts of NYC for upwards of 40 years. I know exactly what needles in the park look like, what addicts passed out in the stairwell with needles in their arms look like. I also know what their children look like, and that they probably have parents or siblings out there somewhere too.
20
I didn't cause their problems and I don't want to clean up after them. How is that offensive?
19
I agree with CLH
4
San Francisco spent $450,000,000 last year on 6,000 homeless( SF Chronicle.) That comes out to $30,000 a person. Yet the problem is getting worse.
7
I blame the push to legalize marijuana. As more amd more states legalize weed. It opens the door to harder drugs.Just because states are making alot of money from selling pot. Does not mean that there is a higher price to pay. The human cost and the negatie effects that it has on society as a whole.
7
Charles, public health statistics clearly and consistently show that the rate of opioid deaths is lower in states that have legalized marijuana than it is in states where reefer madness still controls public policy.
This is mainly because chronic pain patients tend to reduce their opioid use or even stop entirely once they have safe legal access to marijuana.
15
Well actually, studies are showing that states that have legalized marijuana the opioid crisis is diminished.
13
Addiction is addiction is addiction...there is nothing I can state in the comments section of the NYT to illuminate that mess. But as communities break down, the nuclear family goes bust and the workplace becomes ever more hostile, the expansion of mental health providers (actual therapists who give people the tools to overcome mental illness, PTSD, etc.) should be at the forefront of any plan to combat this problem.
Ronald Reagan did a huge disservice particularly to the people of the West Coast when he closed down federally funded mental institutions. Those places were far from perfect but they did offer people in need of help a place to go while taking a considerable burden off of communities. One would think that with the advancements in mental health since the 1980’s a new version of a mental hospital - “ a holistic center” to avoid the stigma- could be very effective if done the right way. But...it will never happen because intertia and selfishness seem to be the order of the day.
Sometimes I wish I could move to Mars.
26
No fan of Reagan, but there's a little myth around him single-handedly shutting down the hospitals:
In 1967, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS Act) a so-called "bill of rights" for those with mental health problems passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly: 77-1. The Senate approved it by similar margins. Then-Governor Reagan signed it into law:
* To end the inappropriate, indefinite, and involuntary commitment of mentally disordered persons, people with developmental disabilities, and persons impaired by chronic alcoholism, and to eliminate legal disabilities... etc etc.
12
I’m speaking about his role as President when he undid Carter’s mental health initiative to “cut costs” ...but yes perhaps I am conflating that with his time as Gov. California. Regardless, he didn’t help matters.
8
Reagan did not close them; the ACLU (most liberal of all liberal organizations) SUED because they said "mentally ill folks have RIGHTS" and among those rights are the right to live outside on the street. So the mentally ill all left, and the hospitals had no patients. So they closed down.
The result is today's homelessness -- 600,000 living on the streets in California ALONE.
7
This article barely touches on the pot industry, but that has been an attractive nuisance for years... Many 'trimmigrants' come to Humboldt County looking for green gold, but instead end up smoking meth in a smelly tent. There might some locals/natives among the homeless, but I'd wager that most have traveled from elsewhere, following the weed harvest. - Eureka Native
11
Addicts -- hear this! The One Percent much prefers that you destroy your health and the well-being of your neighboring workers by taking drugs instead of organizing strikes and becoming politically active. The One Percent prefers that you whine and complain. You have choices to organize for a better life or wallow.
19
Humboldt is part of what Californians call "the lost coast". So named because it is so isolated and hard to get to. It had a healthy logging industry up to 20-30 years ago, but rampant clear-cutting left it with no forests to clear for timber.
As it began to fail, the timber industry was targeted by the financial industry for highly leveraged buyouts. The hundreds of millions of dollars in debt created by Wall Street for these companies forced them to cut at an accelerated rate. The conservationists in California tried to block this in the courts, and tried develop a shared goal with loggers who would soon be out of work, but that did not happen.
Humboldt and it's population had a sustainable, if limited, economic future, but it was gutted by the 1% for a couple of quarters of profit. The trees are gone, the jobs are gone, but the people that loved living in that natural environment are still there. The current tragedy of opioid use is the result of events decades ago.
27
How does the state force people who want to use illicit substances or who want to refuse mental health treatment to get the health care they need? It's impossible unless you have the person declared mentally incompetent. If the state provides housing to the homeless, is housing conditioned on following reasonable rules such as mandatory sobriety, no fighting with or harassing other residents, and zero tolerance for violence and theft?
Housing seems like the solution to homelessness, but how does the state provide housing to a non-compliant population that has major challenges keeping up its end of the social contract? The state has to provide safe housing, which means that people who are using or who are violent can't be in the housing, which means they go back to the streets or to jail. Maybe the answer is more mental health facilities and changes in the laws that allow the state to hold people in them against their will.
26
IF you give these folks free housing -- which I gather is the liberal message here -- they will turn such free apartments into dens of opium and crack and heroin -- dangerous and dirty. They live in squalor and filth, so the apartments will end up filthy and uninhabitable. In a few years, you'll have to bulldoze them and build the poor drug addicts NEW expensive free housing.
7
opioid addiction is a disease that is more powerful than many people understand. I would not call mandatory sobriety a reasonable condition for housing.
this is a drug they makes you lie on the ground for hours at a time and when you wake up the withdrawals are so bad it can literally kill you.
the drug is horrible, these people literally cannot stop. not only thing that feels good is the drug, and not having the drug is painful.
2
Thanks to former Rep. Mike Thompson for his remark. I worked in anti-poverty programs in Eureka for four years and was struck by how difficult it was to help people in the absence of meaningful opportunities. This is a beautiful place with good-hearted people, but they need help from a government, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, with a heart.
1
For the record, there isn't any "treatment" for heroin addiction that does not include either prescribed heroin, or a far less effective substitute. Under such "treatment" the person is at best half the person they should, cannot work or be trusted with money or serious responsibilities. So called therapy "treatment" is just a "time out" for the junkie to live on the public dime, money that ought to go to educating kids or some other real cause. "Intravenous drug use" is not "the persistent menace," Intravenous Drug USERS are the menace. They menace themselves, the public, and innocent young nonusers who they turn on to create a customer base so they can get high for free. They enrich the dealer, so he can kill more kids.
I'm really sick of the totally vacuous and ignorant approach to heroin addiction that suggests it's treatable such that we should waste money enriching so called treatment centers at public expense. If they worked that would be fine. They do not work, heroin is permanently addictive.
Required reading (and the real deal on Heroin Abuse 101) before you discuss pie-in-the-sky treatment for opiate addiction is Part 1 of Brecher's timeless "Licit and Illicit Drugs." If you can propose to waste public money on junkies, you can take the time to read this: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm
17
That is just not true, there are a lot of heroin addicts who recover and never relapse and never use again. Our family member got out of the 4th treatment with suboxone and methadone and never recovered. Every human being has a human right to treatment and many times the drug use has an underlying mental health issue as in our case, depression. Hope is not pie in the sky. 12 step programs, sober living and a sponsor are real solutions for some.
10
this is flat out wrong. naltrexone is a drug that blocks the effects of heroin in the body sick that one cannot become high off of the drug. just one example of a treatment that is not heroin-lite
6
Why is there no mention of the success of Portugal and Switzerland and the Netherlands, etc. in coping with addiction through decriminalization?
8
Respect and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. I have empathy with people who have no where to go; however it’s time that the population that lives in the ‘public square’ show some respect by not dropping needles, protecting each other from violence, not littering, loitering, begging, etc. in other words if you live in a community invest in it by respecting the square; it belongs to the public which includes not only the homeless but children and tourists; being a drug addict or mentally ill isn’t an excuse to not pick up after yourself and then expect the public to come to the rescue. Want something...give something.
41
Addiction is a terrible disease. At the same time, it is hard to imagine if there isn't a correlation to the increase and the failure of the state government to abide by federal laws. It isn't a popular thing to say, but it is worth exploring any correlation.
The state needs to stop dispensing free needles and start using that money for crime prevention. In Santa Cruz, you don’t even have to return old needles to get new ones, and now the beaches are littered with them. Can’t imagine how upsetting it would be to be the parent of one of the children who got stuck by a dirty discarded needle while playing on the beach. I
20
Stop treating 'addiction' as a disease.Legalize all drugs and let people grow up and be responsible for their behavior. i don't want my tax money wasted on these losers. My family has disowned several 'addicts'. Life is tough, isn't it?
15
So if I got this right..Mr Shockley is smoking meth with a female in a motel in picture A, while kissing his fiance in picture B.
Tired of these addicts whining.
39
Needle exchange is a public nightmare. 6% of a million is 60,000 hypos floating around being used to introduce innocent kids to dope. How about reporting on syringes? Who makes them, and how do they become in the hands of the public? Syringes should be one use only devices, given out by prescription and destroyed after use under penalty of law.
10
Hmmm, let's do that math of people dying from heroin vs. politicians afraid of treatment centers in their neighborhoods. They do know that addicts come from all neighborhoods, right? And people are dying in all neighborhoods too.
2
Several years ago I drove through that area on a road trip. We were going to stop at a Safeway to get some food but after pulling in and seeing a bunch of imposing looking people and their aggressive dog breeds hanging out in the parking lot, we decided to drive right on. It is a California that you never see in the media depiction of our state. Really sad and I don't know what to do about it.
27
It's only the "golden state" in a few wealthy, enviable upscale enclaves -- the stuff you see in movies and TV -- the rest of the state is ugly and miserable and makes rural Mississippi or Michigan look like paradise.
2
Here's a problem that continues to persist in CA just like other parts of the country: rich liberals living in gentrified areas want to help the poor, sick, and homeless only so long as it's not in their own backyard. It's this kind of thinking that prevents us from moving society forward as a whole.
18
This article really makes me furious. Given the money we pay in taxes and our $6 billion budget surplus, we are capable of doing a better job in providing for these folks. Drug rehabilitation services will more than pay off the capital outlay for such treatment. I wonder if our state's failure to address these destitute folks is because they are poor and rural and whether Los Angeles is provided with more resources to address these issues. I hope not. It is a good question though to ask our governor the next time I see him at our favorite San Francisco Italian restaurant where he loves to dine.
5
Have you been to Los Angeles lately the size of the homeless population is staggering
1
"The homeless in town have fewer and fewer places where they can sleep without risking a ticket for loitering, or having their few possessions seized by the police. So they take meth to keep moving at night, and take heroin during the day to feed their cravings." Culturally, we have moved away from personal responsibility for our lives to always finding some other reason for our behaviors. I guess it's the police's fault there is a rise in addiction.
34
According to the story, fentanyl, which is responsible for a spike in OD deaths, is rare on the West Coast. OK. So, what's the overdose death rate in Eureka and environs? Story teases but doesn't say. Why not? If we had that piece of information, we could, at least, get some idea of just how devastating fentanyl might be. But no.
This would have been a useful piece of information in a story that reads exactly like dozens of other: Reporter spends a day or two in a rural area and writes a "Boy, heroin is bad news" story. We already know that.
10
In yesterday's news we were the 5th Largest Economy in the World. In today's news, the other reality emerges. This is the hopelessness and despair I wrote of in my comment to yesterday's article, made (if possible) even more intolerable by the smugness of so many top 20% urban Californians. It's right here in Sonoma County where I go to school, if only slightly less so in Marin where I live. This is a heartbreaking microcosm of a society with profoundly serious values problems.
6
Mr Becker, you need to hang out with a better (ethically) classed group. Smugness among the top 20%? My experience is smugness is more the attitude of the college age cohort.
I am 67 years old. I'm also, perhaps just barely, in the top 20%. What was your point?
1
Some of these cultural issues used to be addressed by the structure of a community that had jobs of varying types, a way to make a living from those jobs and healthcare that came with jobs and a religious culture that was not off in the weeds about bathrooms or abortions, but actually teaching people the value of their own life and other people's lives.
Our culture is predatory and the extremes are going to keep creating these "communities" of those who cannot find a toehold. We know that the pharmaceutical companies and handpicked doctors were a large part of creating a huge population of addicts. They even make $$ off needles. They should have to be a part of the solution.
6
I agree that it is a complex problem combining mental health, homeliness and drug addiction issues. There is not enough help and alternatives to address these issues and as reported in this paper many of the professionals, doctors and treatment centers take advantage of the needy and rip off everyone. My son a long time drug addict and often homeless used doctors as his "dealer" for years. I recently paid for his treatment at Narconon Fresh Start only to find that they didnt care, was all talk and no action and had a terrible program in general. Needless to say it was a waste of $32,000. As long as centers like Narconon's Fresh Start are allowed to operate the overall system will face a major uphill battle to improve. Just crooked money going from hand to hand.
11
I am sorry to tell you this, as losing $32K is devastating -- even though your heart was in the right place -- rehab is a waste of time. It rarely helps. Most addicts are doing drugs on their way out of a 30-90 day program. They like getting high. They do not like being sober. They will never recover.
Let's cut our losses. Give them all the drugs they want, for free and some modest space indoors to do the drugs, and if they die....it was their choice. Very sad. But it can't be helped. There is a certain Darwinian logic to all this.
4
We have a family member who just finished a three month drug rehab program, detox, therapy, psychiatric diagnosis and help finding a job and moving into a sober living home. This is what it takes for addicts to recover. They need at least three months of treatment, they need sober living homes, I can't understand why in this national epidemic there is not automatic health care coverage for homeless addicts who have nowhere else to turn. We have a no fee Salvation Army drug rehab program here in Portland, Oregon. I don't know how long that program lasts but we cannot continue to just observe homeless drug addicts and alcoholics slowly destroy themselves. They need immediate intervention.
5
I wish your family member well. My nephew, age 29, died in February 2017. He was in and out of rehab 5 times. He was on SSDI. He had never worked a day in his whole life. He got food stamps, he had 100% FREE Medicaid for all his needs -- he had a free Obamaphone and a Section 8 apartment that cost him only $40 a month. He still did drugs, over and over. The apartment evicted him. He ended up in a halfway house, for "rehabbed addicts" where he got his last dose of heroin, likely spiked with fentanyl. The body lay there, in February, in the bitter cold (this is OHIO) with the heat on....FOR FIVE DAYS before anyone got curious and looked for him. Think about that. Five days. With the heat on.
I pray your family member does better than this, but 3 months sober is just a sliver of time. Until you've made it 5 years, I consider a person to be a very bad risk.
4
Humboldt County once had vibrant lumber and fishing industries, but in the 80s vulture capitalism bought the major lumber mill and sold off its assets. Overfishing took care that industry. So now we're left with cannabis and cattle. And some lumber milling. The hope is that an expanded tax program from cannabis growers will save the region, but other areas of the country are now "growing" such that there will be a glut with considerably lower profit margins for those in Humboldt. There are many long time residents in Eureka who work hard to ensure its continued viability. The users are a lost generation. It doesn't matter how they became that way. Too much has been spent on programs for the homeless with no end in sight. There are large unpopulated areas of the state on which housing can be built
(concrete block and metal roofs, not wood) to provide shelter for the residents. Don't know the legal aspects but the homeless should be moved to this area away from areas like Eureka and they could then establish a community and self-govern. Let the homeless treat the homeless including the mentally ill among them. Not a prison exactly, but a place to call home and attempt to rebuild lives. Or bury them. But the homeless cannot be allowed to be around normal families until they're clean.
7
Where does helping stop and enabling begin? . I use meth because I dont have a safe place to sleep- give me a break. A person uses meth because a. they want to b. it is so addictive , they cant stop using. This is a disheartening problem for addicts and those who try to help them. I wish I had the answer, assuming that one exists.
11
The opioid issue will never go away, it has been here since the beginning of time. It is all about the money, someone is getting rich off it. This is only a crisis because it impacts white middle class people, our neighborhoods and people went through this in the 1970 with crack but were thrown in jail...All I can say is "how does it feel" .
7
"Another homeless man, Michael Myers, said that heroin was easier to acquire than meth or on some days, even marijuana, which is surprising in a region known as the Emerald Triangle where marijuana is widely grown."
There is no way that this could be true, given that recreational marijuana is legal in California and there are dispensaries in the Eureka area. Does the New York Times employ critical thinking before quoting people saying stuff that can't be true?
It's another cliche quote in another cliche story about a drug epidemic that has become a cliche. Replace "Eureka" with Seattle or Omaha or Miami or Boston or Tucson or Peoria or virtually any city in any state and you've got the same story, and one I've grown tired of reading in NYT. Opioid use is an important issue, yes, but running the same OMG, heroin has spread to pick-a-town is such a yesterday way of approaching the topic. Please find a better way to use finite resources than running more wow-there's-heroin-in-Mudville stories. I'd like to read more stories about innovative or unusual ways of approaching the issue.
7
Just another disease of despair taking its toll. Since the American Dream is dead for so many, I can't blame them for escaping into drugs.
1
Spelling!!
3
Sooner or later this will burn itself out, so long as old addicts die faster than new ones are created.
4
My brother works as an engineer in Eureka. He has described how it is dangerous to walk in certain remote areas (he has to for work) because of meth labs, pot growers, etc. I drive up and visit him there and even 13 years ago warned my friend to watch out for the ranting meth addicts. Sure enough, we saw two in short order wandering in the street and through the gas station area. My brother has lived there over thirty years and during that time there have been homeless drug addicts. It's probably worse now, though. It's a beautiful area with some very nice people. Just remember that when you see an article like this. Many of the homeless wandered into Eureka and the SF Bay Area from other parts of CA or the country. I read an article in a local East Bay newspaper years ago about how the homeless migrate with the weather through CA and into Arizona,etc. Polly's post earlier mentions this point and it's true that it really is a national problem.
12
What percentage of Eurekans who are homeless are actually Eurekans? What percentage of Californians who are homeless are actually Californians? For example, over a quarter of the homeless population of LA county has lived in LA county for five years or less, and that number is increasing.
Publications from around the country like to prod at California's epidemic of homelessness, but the fact is that other states are contributing to the problem. And while I support a bigger social safety net, more mental health access for low-income and homeless people, and greater access to addiction treatment, the more we make strides in this area, the more attractive we will become to people in other states that continue to do nothing--or to buy people with mental health issues bus tickets to California. This isn't a problem that one state can fix.
64
Same problem in NY, the majority of them are not NY'ers they come from PA, and Ohio panhandle then take the bus back. Seen it happen.
10
Yes, it is a NYC problem. They like are benefits that we must house the homeless. I say buy the "out of town" homeless a bus ticket back to their home state.
5
Correct Polly,
Try Berkeley! There are blocks of homeless schizophrenics because folks here are a bit more kind hearted so the come from all over. But it is not a solution for anyone. Open the asylums. Hold the shrinks accountable. Lock the addicts up cold-turkey in rehab. Rinse repeat. Its cheaper in the long run for all
2
500-700 people waiting for basic rehab services in a drug-addled area of California ... pretty pathetic for a state that just passed the UK to become the world's 5th-largest economy. How many of those people will overdose while they wait for the treatment they need to help them recover from addiction?
I know there's many addicts who really don't care about the well-being of themselves or others, and I'm sure that their presence and practice in Humboldt has had an adverse effect on tourism and the local economy. Many however are good people who would like to quit using drugs, to get their lives together, to obtain a job, start caring for their children, etc., and they won't be able to do that without proper treatment including access to suboxone and inpatient rehab facilities. Access to a medically supervised and out-of-the-way location where addicts can shoot up without fear of being arrested or overdosing, and dispose of needles hygienically, could also be of help to both the addicts and locals sick of seeing their towns trashed. Finally, affordable housing is an absolute necessity in Humboldt and the rest of California; not being able to afford housing is a huge stressor that contributes to drug use, crime, and other antisocial behavior.
There's blame to go around here, not least for the addicts themselves, but one certain thing is that this situation will not get better without significant government-led intervention.
114
having had to deal with addicts ( a daughter and step son), I learned to have no pity. The daughter has been clean 10 years, and taught us that it is up to them. Complaining that there is no treatment, she stated there is AA which is far better than Narcotics A. She said they drug dealer troll NA and users score. In the end it is up to you the addict to change your life, your friends and your environment. Move away if you have too but it is up to you. The step son, will never change, we just wait for him to die. We clean him up for a holiday and will allow him to visit but he has to be frisked before and after he leaves (steals everyone blind). He has been in prison, 8 times in rehab, was helped living in a really good half way house. Guess what after six months in the house (he had his own room) he started stealing for everyone. He got kicked out and lied. He stole information from our business and stole a client's son's identity. Sorry no pity.
52
There already is a place in EVERY city that is out of the way and perfect for shooting up. Its called the morgue and I am being dead serious.
I used to be homeless and knew many folks who would not even go to a church for a free meal because they thought police were using it as a trap to bust them for outstanding warrants. It was not true but addicts tend to run a bit paranoid.
7
Government-led, you said it, Mike. The government leads in drug enforcement. The government should lead in treatment instead.
14
The problem with the opioid (hysteria) epidemic is that nothing is being done to deal with root cause - which by the way are not Rx opioids, but illegal opioids. If reporters and politicos bothered to READ CDC and DEA reports, not just swallow press releases from CDC “Opioid Rx Guidelines” Dr. Kolodny (frm director of a McDonalds of pain rehabs and persecutor of pain patients) they’d see:
“Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths-US 2000–2014 “...as clearly stated…significant increases in death rates were driven by synthetic opioids (72.2%), most likely illicitly-manufactured fentanyl [IMF] and heroin (20.6%)...IMF production and distribution began increasing in 2013..has grown to unprecedented levels in 2016... DEA has [NOT] reported a sharp increase in pharmaceutical fentanyl being diverted from legitimate medical use to illegal uses. Given the strong correlation between increases in [IMF] and increases in synthetic opioid deaths and [UNORRELATED] stable fentanyl [Rx] rates [declining since 2010, btw], it is hypothesized that IMF is driving the...deaths. Findings from DEA state, and CDC documenting role of IMF in increases in [opioid overdose] deaths further support this hypothesis..
But still, pain patients are being persecuted for overdose deaths caused by ILLEGAL DRUGS. Why don’t you look into this, NYT?
11
You need to read last weekend's NYTimes article on Sbusys and you will want the stock market to fail immediately. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/02/magazine/money-issue-insy...
Taxpayers pay for the meds (prescribed by a few but huge business) and the rehab and the addicts pay with their lives- whether or not they die from an overdose. Who would want to be an addict??
1
First, safe housing. Then mandated job and job training to keep housing. Failure to perform in job/job training, kicked out of housing.
Within housing development, parenting classes, day care, Planned Parenthood, GED classes, gym, limited mental health-no cost. However, mandated compliance with treatment recommendations (being clean may not even be recommended!)
Goal:once mainstreamed into employment based productivity, move into mainstream society and out of housing.
I struggle with offering this to addicts when our disabled and mentally ill need the exact same services and can’t access, but it’s an option.
And focusing on “rehab” is just supporting the failed corporate welfare system. Doesn’t work. Let’s quit believing the hype, enabling addicts, and go with facts.
And I am frustrated with NIMBY thinkers -these housing units need to be mainstreamed in Old Tappan as well as the Bronx.
And totally agree with education starting in pre K on. Same with all types of violence prevention.
This requires planning, $$, and a strict compliance framework-eliminates corporate welfare and political payoffs. So forget it.
3
I don't want a drug rehab place or homeless shelter in my neighborhood
6
My either nor do I want to pay taxes to reward junkies. I will pay taxes to lock junkies in jails preferably outsourced to Mexico.
1
Our government, through the offices of the CDC and the DEA, is increasingly ripping desperately needed opioid prescriptions away from chronic pain patients, people with legitimate, documented medical disabilities.
Denying them pain relief is driving these patients either to commit suicide or turn to illegal narcotics like heroin and fentanyl. America is seeing a growth spurt in every community's addicted population thanks to misguided attempts at cutting back on available legal drugs. We cannot punish and legislate our way out of this problem, and in spite of the empty promises of medical providers there is no cure for chronic pain.
Prohibition didn't work 90 years ago, and it's not working today. Yesterday's bootleggers and organized crime syndicates have become today's drug cartels and fentanyl importers. The "war on drugs" was lost before it began. Both addicts and pain patients will regain their lives and ability to function productively only when they can freely access the opioids they need to relieve their suffering.
Until then, they are collateral damage in a misguided, pointless "war" that began and will end in failure.
99
Oh please... from my experience... opioids are no better than iboprofen in relieving pain.... and PS what did people do in the past for pain...
I am just as tired of this particule drug scene as I was with cocaine in the 80's.
I do not know -- and have not learned from this newspaper ANYTHING useful about opioid addiction.. in terms of does the addict need increasing large doses for?? what. (I preferred the opioid to iboproen because it did not upset my stomach and took the edge off.. but when the prescription ended.. that was it... NO MORE.)
Bored people, empty lives... perhaps they need supervised lives not just a place to safely inject themselves. Work meaning activity here however defined takes people outside of themselves and gives them purpose. At the moment, these people mostly are self-absorbed... Ask the social workers, jail attendants...
8
Here in Seattle, many people manage chronic pain with legally bought cookies/tinctures. Its amazing what half a brownie does for someone's arthritis.
13
I think he's talking about more than a little arthritis.
Opiates aren't needed for a little arthritis or a little back-pain ... they're needed when back pain falls under the category of "Spinal Cord Injury" ... and a patient experiences the sort of pain that ruins their teeth (bruxing), their heart (high bp), and leaves them helpless and despondent.
4
That region of California has long grown the strongest marijuana. After timbering declined pot cultivation became the regions top cash crop. So why are people getting hooked on harder drugs not grown in the Redwoods?
2
Unlike the lawful business of selling guns to citizens for sport and self protection, we don't hold the sellers responsible for any type of death by firearm, but we do recognize murder as a capital crime. Maybe it's time we recognized sellers of illegal hard drugs being complicit as accessories to murder when a death occurs from their products, and make it a capital crime, as nothing else works to stop the addiction cycle.
4
I've been sober 5 years and living in Northern Illinois where my recovery truly began. During that time I've met many opioid addicts who have died of overdoses. I can't even recall some of their names. Most of them were well educated young women from middle class families. Several had children of their own. Most were "in drug court" and living in halfway houses or had just moved out of one when they OD'd. As best as I could tell, none of them had a commitment to their own recovery.
As one sponsor put it to me, if you're getting clean or sober for a love, the law or your liver, you'll start using again once you get your lover, your liberty or your health back. I believe with all my heart that he's correct. When I see people seek recovery--as in permanent abstinence with the life skills needed to live life without resorting to chemicals in a self-destructive attempt to feel ok-- they find a way, even under very difficult circumstances. Convincing people that they can do it and getting them to stick with it is the hard part.
57
This article appears on my screen below the images of the Met Gala, where cultural, political and economic elite cavort in fancy dress and dine on gold-flecked lobster. Meanwhile a small town in rural California (the 5th largest economy in the world) clears out a tent city housing hundreds. It's increasingly difficult to differentiate our country's reality from scenes in The Hunger Games.
123
Sure. The "heroin scourge" is all about affordable housing in Humboldt County. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this "gateway" community is also capital of the "gateway" crop grown and celebrated by many of its residents. Coincidence.
2
John D, these are homeless people, so they probably can't afford Humboldt weed, now heavily taxed and mainly grown for export to the rest of the state. Sadly, heroin is cheaper. Also, as a part of legalization, we put laws on the books against smoking pot in public. A homeless person has nowhere private to smoke pot. Shooting heroin leaves no odor. You can do it in a public restroom and nobody will be the wiser.
And this article focuses on the problems of a single region. Statistically, overall, opioid overdose deaths are lower in states with legal marijuana programs than in states without them, because a great many chronic pain patients are able to reduce or even cease their opioid use when they treat their pain with pot.
Homeless heroin addicts on the street have a different set of challenges provoking their addictions. Not chronic physical pain, but more trauma on an emotional level. That kind of pain requires more than a change in medication. Those people need long term psychological and life skills therapy. along with decent jobs and housing, to get better. Just replacing the heroin with weed is not enough for that cohort, as it is for opioid users with chronic physical pain.
3
Living the dream...
2
For those individuals who want more information try reading a little about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and the Sackler billionaires. You will find the genesis of this story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Sackler
"On October 30, 2017, The New Yorker published a multi-page exposé on Raymond Sackler, Purdue Pharma, and the Sackler family as a whole.[5] The article links Raymond and Arthur Sackler's business acumen with the rise of direct pharmaceutical marketing and eventually to the rise of addiction to OxyContin in the United States. The article implies that Raymond Sackler bears some moral responsibility for the opioid epidemic in the United States.[5]"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-e...
15
I think the Sacklers, Purdue, bad doctors and others are very responsible for getting people hooked on Oxycontin and other legal opioid drugs.
However, they did not make anyone shoot up with black tar heroin, or make them cook meth or other street drugs.
1
This is just one picture of what happens in a country where the gap between the rich and the workers continues to grow and grow. Hope, housing, resources disappear, leading to the inevitable. The wealthy buy their 15th unused house. And the Pharmaceutical CEOs buy their 20th unused house.
9
End the Drug War!
It will save lives and cost the US less money. Unfortunately the white pill makers and the enforcement community hate ideas that cut into their livelihoods, no matter the number of ruined lives.
3
Simple question: HOW?
Margo: How did we do it with alcohol?
1
We didn’t people still lose their lives from alcoholism
Yea, reading the Bible is gonna be a real big help.
5
I have lived in Eureka my entire life. At this point, I have read article after article attempting to dredge sympathy and understanding towards the homeless and/or drug using population. My natural inclination is towards understanding for those who face the challenge of addiction. However, I also feel myself torn as a citizen who has had my own personally threatening run-ins with the homeless and have heard many similar stories from fellow friends, family, and colleagues. A lot of the homeless present a constant threat to public safety and damage public and private property relentlessly. They camp everywhere, in people's back yards even, and leave their needles and trash behind. They threaten and sometimes even physically assault my fellow coworkers when asked to leave our property or when confronted for shoplifting. They bite the hand that feeds, robbing food banks and homeless organisations and using the bikes given to them as quick-getaway vehicles in robberies.
Addressing the lack of housing would be a great first start for the community in general. Even those in the lower middle class can struggle to find quality housing. But I don't think that is anywhere near a total solution and I don't have optimism that a housed drug-user will use drugs less... but just damage a unit that could be better used by a family or responsible citizen.
This is a multi-sided issue and I do hope for these individuals recovery... I just don't see how.
397
Nobody has the right to accost you on the street and threaten you. Decorum in public is critical to a functioning society. How to get from here to this goal isn't going to be easy. And yes it wall take a nation /state/county/ city and finally just our plan ole selves to see some lights out of this tunnel.
The recidisism rate of narcotic and aalpha stimulants is horrid. Many of these people are nearly broken beyond repair or beyond. The last scourge o untreatable mental illness came before the pharmolcologic Advent of antipsychotics. The prospect of housing some of these folks possibly against their will is in our future
Very sad
14
And other communities in Northern California struggle with the same or similar problems:
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/article/NP/20170215/NEWS/170219944
10
Sympathy and understanding for those folks, and sympathy and understanding for yourself, are not mutually exclusive.
Treating people like human beings while condemning the damage they cause are also not mutually exclusive.
16
A much needed outside look at Humboldt County. However there are more factors pushing this problem's complexity. One is that Humboldt is a small port town. It is a small port town in an area that is used to drug trafficking and is known to have rampant levels of corruption from the marijuana trade embedded in local government and authorities. There are some elected officials, elected on pro MJ platforms by growers, who have been ripe for blackmail--having made their own fortunes for years in the underground drug trade. The "big fish" in MJ turned over their profits in both the heroin and meth trade flowing off the North Coast. Blind eyes in local governments like the Board of Supervisors saw nothing.
Also the housing crisis was driven largely by the underground MJ trade. Any empty house was a target for a grow with a share generally going to the Landlord or the Landlord unaware until the place caught on fire (bad wiring jobs by underground electricians).
With legal MJ-- the exodus of local Mom and Pop growers creates a vacuum of citizens willing to speak up and employ the homeless population when convenient. Hence the "old school" factions for cleaning up the needles and park benches rises to power and demands the homeless be treated with all the kindness of the Trump administration--eviction.
6
I live in Eureka so can bear personal witness to this. The social problems are complex and there are no simple answers. The simplistic responses such as “ get a job” or “ stop doing drugs” do nothing to address the issues of addiction, mental health, lack of affordable housing or criminal records for petty crimes that hinder employment.
We have a homeless student population at Humboldt University due to lack of housing. The local papers have addressed this issue. These are college students working and going to school who cannot find housing so “ couch surf” or camp.
This area has so much to offer with the Pacific Ocean, towering Redwoods, and being along bird migration routes, but without social infrastructure for humans it is discouraging.
I don’t know what the answers are but rural counties need to be heard in our legislature.
14
I live near Eureka and see this first hand. Reading the comments I see the common attitudes that actively hinder solutions. Addiction is still considered by most people as a moral issue instead of a treatable disease. As a therapist friend once said, "Some symptoms are more attractive than others."
The homeless addict is nowhere to be found in Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. The most primitive needs are: air, water, food, shelter, clothing, and sleep. The homeless person has air and then scrambles for everything else. If a person has those, then the next higher need is safety. If you're homeless you are, by definition, unsafe, and the other levels of Maslow's pyramid, such as love, belonging, and esteem are unavailable.
This is why programs to put shelter first are so important and work so well. But if society deems the addict evil, unworthy of the most basic of needs, and in need of punishment. what is the solution? More punishment! "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Politicians won't fund programs that their constituents consider immoral. The loudest voices on the addiction issue still come from the self-righteous religious right.
I recommend Gabor Mate's book "In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts" for a refreshing and data driven approach. Until we can change the entrenched perception of addiction away from the good/evil paradigm to a disease framework we will just continue to enable and exacerbate the problem.
25
Addiction per se isn't a disease. These addicts choose to do meth, crack, etc. it's what happens to your body after prolonged use of such drugs. Cancer. leukemia, are diseases, meth is not.
9
The AMA and other organizations disagree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_theory_of_alcoholism
1
Margo, I think you're using a simplistic model of human consciousness here where the brain is filled with and powered by little more than sheer moral will.
It's not our moral will that makes us breath or eat. Those instincts are automatically programmed into the physical and chemical structure of the human brain. There are almost impossible for a healthy person to ignore, and impossible to ignore successfully for very long.
An addict may start out making bad choices, but those bad choices alter the brain and wire in new instincts that can be even harder to ignore than those involved in breathing and eating.
That is how addiction fits into a disease model. The brains of addicts change. This is why it can take so many tries at rehab before they get better. The brain itself has to be healed from the neurochemical programming of addiction.
6
The eternal challenge of administering, to the resistant, that which is not voluntary. (To quote the guy in the article, 'But it is what it is.') Interesting to see that to which we will apply pressure, and that to which we will not.
1
Homelessness is a major problem in this country and is a signifier of our society degenerating to the point that there will be more have nots than haves and we will have some king of revolution. If Trump was a real president he would be trying to solve these at home important problems. Drug use of this sort is directly linked to poverty and homelessness, this does not mean that these are bad people but that big business and now our government are not providing the necessary resources and jobs for everyone. We are going to be a third world country soon.
3
@bb, In many parts of our country we ARE a third world country already, have been for years. It's just spreading rapidly into all communities at a rapid rate.
6
What this article misses is that the pot industry has created a narco state in this part of California. Drugs are king, and intergenerational drug use common. It is not unusual to be stoned all day every day. You cannot find a drug free work crew. At the cost of a civil society, all elements of this county have participated and gotten rich on the drug trade from the businessman to the board of supervisors.
Only a fundamental shift in cultural values will change this reality. This area is no different than the parts of Mexico and South America that Americans like to sneer at. Once again there is collusion at every level, and the heroin swamp is part of it.
6
I wish the New York Times would do a better job at informing their readers that public health research is showing that states providing safe LEGAL access to marijuana experience lower rates of opioid deaths than do states still run by die hard prohibitionists.
2
Granted, this issue is complicated. But there are efforts (and some success) here in Eureka in trying to address this big story. I wish that the N.Y. Times might have done just a little research to uncover something positive instead of just doom and gloom. The reporter could have found the local weekly North Coast Journal on line which featured (April 5-11, 2018, vol. 29 #14) an article by Linda Stansberry entitled “The Graduates, Humboldt County’s Most Successful Addiction Treatment Program Might Be Probation.”
5
When one becomes homeless, if mental illness or drug use isn't an issue, it often quickly becomes one. It's hard to live outside in the streets, especially for women and children.
Sadly, the fentynal will arrive someday and they will be much busier not only picking up needles but more dead bodies.
Lastly, any place that depend primarily on tourism for its economy, (especially seasonally), are harder hit with drug use.
This is what you get when people no longer have a place to rent or live in. Homelessness+hopelessness=drugs. Do the math.
4
This is great. " I don't want to take my bipolar medication because it makes me drowsy but I'll shoot heroin in my veins and dip out." " Because the cops won't let me sleep in a public playground I have to take meth to stay awake." These people will create any excuse to keep their drug habit going. No one cares because they've put themselves in that position and continue to rationalize it.
33
Interesting, a place to sleep, with modest meals, a place to clean up -- there is no reason why that can't be offered... and another place to sleep. And the possibility for work... (essential)
Sixty-five years ago the hobos came to our back door in Irvington, CA. Mom gave them Dad's old clothes, coffee, rice and other dried or canned foods. We were not rich.. but we did share. I don't recall the drug epidemic starting until later but I could be wrong.
6
"An astonishingly high rate of opioid prescriptions"?! I've been to Humboldt on our way to Redwoods National Park it's a beautiful area but very poor. What is seldom mentioned in these articles about drug addiction is the gateway drug: alcohol. Even though opioid and heroin use is epidemic, MORE Americans die each year from alcoholism!
7
I am torn. These people need help and they are not getting it. On the other hand, having to step over discard needles and being harassed by people out of their minds when I walk down the street is not a way I want to live. I know of a lot of places where the people have worked very hard to keep their downtown alive; becoming junkie city will kill it.
20
The sense of entitlement that these users have astonishes me. Build me a house, rather than treatment, so my friends and I will have a nice warm place to shoot up out of sight.
Then what?
39
I am not a junkie but I do have a family member who is an alcoholic. I am grateful to the people who got her into shelters and housing, because that kept her safe and ALIVE until she was finally sick of being drunk and miserable and wanted to go to 90 days of rehab.
Addicts are not happy people. They are sick and miserable in general, caught on a treadmill of good intentions meeting the nasty symptoms of withdrawal. This is not about entitlement. It's about finding strategies that save lives, period.
7
Eureka's in good hands with Jerry Brown. He'll make the town a sanctuary city for users complete with safe injection sites and the requirement that all civil servants wear Narcan doses on their belts. They'll change the sign on the outskirts of town to read, "Welcome to Eureka where a safe junkie is a happy junkie!"
5
Eureka’s decision to not cater to transients is preferable to what goes on in the small city near me. Everything there is centered around making transients comfortable, happy and — ultimately — housed. That is the PC approach. Forget about the health, safety and hopes and dreams (housing) of the city and county residents. Owners of shops downtown are left to deal with drugged, sometimes violent transients wandering into their businesses, sometimes taking items, sometimes emptying their bladders. The police won’t come to intervene unless there is an assault taking place. Residents and tourists regularly encounter piles of used needles and drug waste, as well as human excrement. And every day new transients arrive here because they know they will be cared for.
Where does it stop? I applaud Eureka for stepping up and declaring that enough is enough. No new campgrounds. Roll up the welcome mat.
216
Wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to provide addicts with the drugs they need? They would either recover their ability to function and find employment and housing or overdose and die. Why deny them relief and then degrade and debase them? Their numbers are increasing as legal opioids become more difficult to obtain. What and who are we "protecting" with this solution?
5
This is really three issues. I don’t have any answers. I wish I did. I can only tell you that, at least where I live, none of this is being managed well.
First, transients need a place to sleep. Many will not go into a homeless shelter (too many rules, no dogs, various other reasons). Does the city or county look the other way and allow transients to set up a squat on public land? Or do they establish, fund and maintain an official camp? Areas of concern: health and safety, sanitation, theft and destruction of public lands, duplication of services (a well-funded shelter plus an expensive camp?)
Second: the prevalence of drug addiction in this population. We have a needle exchange here, yet there are plenty of used needles in alleyways and waterways, in parks and playgrounds. Subcategory: petty theft (cash needed for drugs). Concerns: health and safety, crime, blight.
Third: mental health. This is huge. The streets here can be an open-air mental ward. The mentally ill need care, medication, supervision, protection. Some are violent (some have attacked, and even killed, innocent people here). Some are helpless and not capable of caring for themselves. Some are addicted. Concerns: health and safety, crime, compassion, the role of the state.
I am compassionate, but I look at this from the perspective of one geoup’s rights overrunning the rights of others. A small population takes the lion’s share of resources, and no one feels safe any more. We are all brought down.
3
You’re wrong in this assumption that this was the sentiment. They cleared out the Playground only because the City’s insurance provider threatened to drop them if they had one more liability claim, after numerous issues and a homeless advocate who was trespassing injured herself walking through crumbled concrete and won a lawsuit. Unfortunately we do still experience the threat of unfettered mental illness-driven or drug-addled public episodes and while I haven’t heard of any urinating inside stores some businesses have to regularly power wash the sidewalks lest their storefronts smell perpetually like urine, and often trash and human feces riddle our otherwise beautiful Old Town & surrounding business district so many tourists and locals alike frequent. While I wish I had an all-encompassing solution the fact of the matter is wishing these folks to go away, or moseying them along to another town is not realistic as we are incredibly remote. The latest local rumor is Los Angeles just shuttled their last encampment shove-out of homeless up to Humboldt with free bus tickets - there indeed was a spike in new transients afterwards - so do we just keep shooing them from town to town? They’re clearly not going to seek the help they need or make positive change as a result as they clearly don’t care their impact on others. Just food for thought from a local who is desperate to see Eureka be the lovely town it once was, and in so many ways still IS - despite all this.
12
Humboldt County and I go back a long ways from the early 70s. Please bear in mind that like other so called rural areas in the country, it has come under increased changes from other more populated and more besieged places. I recently saw a license plate in Sacramento that said BMW of McKinleyville. The same McKinleyville that used to be referred to as "Oklahoma by the Sea". United airlines has recently included non stop flights to LAX from Arcata/McKinleyville airport due to folks living in Humboldt but working in LA during the week. Higher home prices and everything scales up in this country due to increased populations. Humboldt has always typified a high quality of life to me as it really used to be isolated and thusly offered an economic horizon as compared to other parts of the state. It may very well be that way still but be careful what you define as rural now days.
3
I do not live in Eureka, but visit there on a regular basis. As you drive around town, you can see the remnants of what once was a vibrant gem of a city. Streets lined with Victorian, Queen Anne,craftsman, and mid-century architecture. With the demise of the forestry and logging business in the county, Eureka has slipped into a slow, constant depression. There are currently two industries in the county that are viable. Tourism and pot growing. The scenery and weather are an attraction for both. One contributes to the progress, safety, and community well being of the hardworking, longtime residents of Eureka. The other, not so much. The influx of transient pot growing workers and homeless from all around the country threatens the stake of those who are working tirelessly to preserve what is left of this community's glorious past. The tragic plight of the homeless and addicted absolutely need to be addressed. But let's not neglect the needs of those small town business owners, their employees and families, that toil tirelessly everyday trying to preserve their community. I wish the author of this article had presented some of the problems and frustrations that THESE people face each and everyday day. Most of rural America cannot tap into the economic wealth of the their local finance, entertainment, technology, and healthcare to throw dollars at problems as severe as these. Special attention and solutions are needed to address these unique, small community problems.
133
Until population and growth are treated as serious threats to humanity there will be no relief. These unfortunate people do not breed themselves.
10
This article saddens me so much. Humboldt, Eureka and it’s surrounding towns and beaches, are some of the most beautiful parts of California. As it’s 7 hours north of the Bay Area by car and rarely gotten to by plane, few Californians are even familiar with this area. My husband grew up there and we still have family there. The change has been happening slowly. You could see even 5 years ago, when we tried to get a roommate for my mother-in-law, a huge amount of the people up there are really drawn to the drug culture. It’s like a magnet for them, as well as those who have mental health issues and self medicate with drugs. Humboldt’s ease with the drug culture thanks to pot, has likely been a hindrance to fighting this worsening epidemic. They need to change the message up there if they are to thrive and try harder to attract free spirits and nature lovers again, not those looking for drugs. Perhaps the state legalization will help, but most communities do not tolerate what they do up there and thus the attraction. I hope for the sake of this gorgeous area and charming towns they get help for those addicted.
20
I don't get the connection between housing and "not using as much," as Ms. Shockley claims would happen. Why should anyone assume if she had an apartment she wouldn't use? Is anyone addressing the reasons why people start taking drugs in the first place? What's the attraction to being addicted? Why would anyone want to live that way? I guess I'm naive, but I just don't see the point of drugs. I can understand that a person might lose a job, or their relationship breaks up, or a thousand other reasons why people get depressed, but what's the logic to thinking, "if I start taking heroin, my life will be better"? Shouldn't we be addressing some of the reasons why people get themselves into this mess, instead of always being on the other end, after some of them are so far gone there's almost nothing to be done?
50
Addiction isn't that simple as it's a disease. Many opiate addicts started off on prescriptions. I get where you're coming from. It's frustrating to see people not helping themselves, but addiction is a disease that we need to treat vs beating people up over it as that's not the solution. Our country, as a whole, needs to up it's game on helping addicts and treating mental illness. It won't solve everything, but it would be a good place to start.
2
Intravenous drug use has been a persistent menace across rural California for decades, but longtime drug users who once sought methamphetamine .... are increasingly looking to score heroin or opioid pills instead. An astonishingly high rate of opioid prescription in Humboldt County has bred addiction, officials said, and the craving is increasingly sated by a growing market for heroin.
While meth “is still king” in Humboldt after decades of entrenched use,................"
............. AND CALIFORNIA HAS JUST JOINED THE MARIJUANA STATES. BRIGHT DECISION. Maybe the tax money they collect on pot will pay for the rehab of the opioid users. Good Luck.
9
Opioid addiction is just one of many opportunities for unintended self-destruction that our society provides its members. A certain percentage so engaged will suffer horrendous consequences. Other opportunities include: the armed forces (you may be killed, maimed, broken); drunken driving, or driving among the drunk (ditto); prescription drugs (ditto); pervasive firearms (ditto); pervasive societal biases (ditto); economic struggle (ditto); insufficient or absent health care (ditto); and so forth. (Not particularly on topic, sorry.)
8
The Times should check out Redding, which has a horrible and obvious meth problem. High-quality inpatient addiction treatment is much cheaper than hiring more cops and would save a lot of lives. These people are beaten down by life and suffering from a severe illness. It is both senseless and callous to judge them unworthy because they can’t fix themselves. When given a leg up many of these people will become productive citizens.
10
I did a road trip last summer in Oregon. On my way back to San Francisco, I drove the coastline and stopped at many of these small towns in northern California. I could not believe what I saw - especially in Eureka. It was like being in an episode of The Walking Dead with zombies crawling all over the city. I didn't want to get out of car to get gas because of what I saw at the gas station - people shooting-up on the curb and other clearly mentally ill people screaming at each other. It was as bad as downtown San Francisco.
117
How disheartening! I was thinking of a road trip from
L.A. to Oregon and specifically wanted to check out Eureka. After your experience, this no longer sounds
attractive.
9
I did a road trip up the Coast to Oregon in '95 and it wasn't much happier then. Eureka, Crescent City, Etc.
People I talked to had worked "in the woods" (lumberjacks) but had lost work. You could sense the drugs and despair at the budget motels I stayed at.
4
I disagree. I travel there frequently and it’s still beautiful and yes you will see some homeless, but no they are not crawling all over town. It would not ruin a trip there. Some towns though, like Garberville, have homeless at the entrance. Eureka, Arcata and Trinidad are all lovely and still great places to visit, and they need the normal tourism.
5
" “We have county supervisors who don’t want a treatment program located in their area.”
These are the evangelical Republican pols who dominate sparsely-populated rural county politics in an otherwise vastly blue urbanized state. Like the NRA gun-toting hunting 'ethic' that pervades open spaces and backwoods everywhere, their minds are not going to change even if all their constituents die of drug overdose. To get a greater sense of that mentality, grab a bowl of popcorn and watch "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."
7
We are losing entire generations to drugs. Interdiction hasn't worked, rehab doesn't work for the most part, just say no doesn't work. For many of these folks it's over. Perhaps warehousing with the oppurtunity for rehab being offered and sanitary needles etc to prevent the spread of disease birth control should be offered. Sounds tough, but at this point society should be spending its resources to educate the next generation both to the problems with drugs but also to provide these kids with knowledge and opportunities to have lives that are meaningful and productive. The money should come from: the military, refugee/immigrant resettlement, tax cuts for the rich etc so that the chain is broken and America Americans and its future is put first. It's a great idea to try to stop drugs coming north and that should continue but much is now produced here and stopping the demand is the corner stone. Mexico is a narco state because we are 5% of the worlds popultion using 60% of its drugs.
8
Housing is the first priority. Isn;t it the #1 priority in other human emergency situations, along with water and food? Evicting a large number of people from an encampment without having any idea of where they could go is basically saying just get out of our face.
The thing about treatment - it keeps getting thrown about as the miracle cure -- it isn't a miracle cure even when it is available. It gets people off the streets and maybe technically clean; then back to no place to live. Rehab - daily living - a job assignment of some sort - a small place to call one's own and to be responsible for -- they are all parts of what is needed.
When can we stop pretending that endemic drug addiction problems in certain areas are not deeply tied to the local economies and job prospects for people? We focus on the drugs as if they were the root problem and they are not the trigger.
9
I was thinking exactly the same thing. What the place needs is jobs. There used to be logging and fishing, but the trees are mostly gone, and the fish as well, I imagine. Relying on tourism can only get a place so far.
I spent my early childhood in the county to the south, Mendocino. It has most of the same problems as mentioned in this article - and for the same reason: no jobs. So do neighboring counties, like Lake, for example. I don't know what the solution is, but we had better find it soon.
5
I do not recall ever reading about what the addict wants. This article alludes to addicts having the desire to have affordable housing which it appears would be free housing. Then what? An indepth article on what the addict wants rather than needs would be very enlightening.
31
Janet, I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm thinking the addicts want drugs. Anybody who lives in a community like this and see the effects of drugs and thinks, "that's for me!" has made their wishes known. They may say they want: rehab, housing, free food, job training, day care, a gym membership etc, but their choices make very clear what they really want.
17
I think Ms. Cobine is correct about the need for housing. In my region, affordable housing is quite well done. Despite the meth problem, there are very few on the streets. Once people are in housing, they are certainly better off.
5
Treatment on this country consists of a religion known as 12 step. it's unsurprising things are as bad as they are.
6
These addicts are adults, and according to the report more often move onto more potent drugs by themselves rather than seek help. For those with mental health problems (perhaps a small number of the addicts), it may be one more reason to bring back mental institutions.
1
Are we supposed to care about junkies? Are they really victims?
A bold program taken from the Japanese would be to lock them up in some sort of a humane work facility for a month and make them stop cold turkey.
Stop clutching your pearls, liberals. They will all do just fine and come out clean.
Will they continue to abuse drugs? Maybe. Probably. Then we put them in again and repeat the process until they straighten out.
Simple, isn't it?
95
It already exists. California Health and Safety code 11550 makes it illegal to be under the influence of a controlled substance. The punishment is no less than 90 days in the county jail. So the law is there but I suspect that Humboldt County is reluctant to fill their jails so don't enforce it much.
14
Are we supposed to care about diabetics? Are they really victims?
A bold program taken from the Chinese would be to lock them up in some sort of humane work facility for a month and make them stop eating sugar cold turkey.
After all, diabetics cost us $327 billion dollars a year, far more than the $36 billion that opioid and illicit drug users cost us.
10
No it isn't "simple" and if you've done any reading or research on the issue, you'd be smart enough to realize it is a complex issue, one impervious to who is a liberal or conservative.
7
I used to live in old town Eureka where this story takes place. Such a backwards, stuck, and sad place. Not sure what the solution is but whatever they're doing now isn't working. Humboldt County needs jobs and housing. If you still live there now, GET OUT.
9
While more and more people are becoming aware of this crisis, there still seems to be a lack of urgency and alarm. Virtually no one is linking the risks of other crisis's by not address this problem. One example is the spread of drug resistant infectious diseases, coupled with an aging population, an under staffed health sector, elevated obesity rates and we have all the ingredients for a perfect plague driven disaster.
16
this is NOT a new problem. People have been warned about drug use since FOR EVER. Watch Reefer Madness, Man With The Golden Arm, new movie about Chet Baker, Read about Miles Davis and OH SO MANY. If you are too broke not have a place to live, HOW can you afford dope? This is not a housing problem, but something MUCH DEEPER in our society.
7
(A.) You can get MRSA from going to the gym and not wiping down the surfaces of weightlifting or exercise machines with which you will come in contact. (B.) A substantial number of the antibiotic resistant infections (or those close to it) are contracted in hospitals. The coming plague, if there is one, will not be the fault of drug addicts leaving dirty needles around. You would be more accurate to blame Big Pharma for not investing more money in the development of new antibiotics & vaccines because they don't sell as well as drugs for high cholesterol. And you can blame the current administration's cuts in funding to the CDC, which include a 43% cut to the Public Health & Preparedness program.
5
I have sensed a certain smugness, here and elsewhere, that "the west coast's problem isn't as bad" or that "fentanyl doesn't mix as well with black tar heroin" (so that's a PLUS I guess for black tar heroin!). This was widely reported in the media for several years as a problem only for "deplorables" in flyover country, and pointed out often as a reason they voted for Trump. Ergo, they deserved so pity. Now the problem is on both coasts and every state. NOW WHAT?
2
What do folks think of Finland's approach "housing first" which seems to be very effective: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/how-finland-solved-homelessness/
47
FInland is a tiny, all-white nation that is very wealthy. Their "solution" as just to build a lot of housing and let drug addicts live in nice new housing for free. The working citizens in those areas are not happy about it, but Finland has a leftist, socialist government that does not listen to the PEOPLE.
Finland also tried "guaranteed basic minimum income" ($685 a month!) and THAT failed in two years. So I'd expect this "give free housing to drug addicts" thing to peter out as well.
6
The US pays for Finland's defense (and for a lot of other countries) so of course Finland has money for subsidizing junkies.
The billions wasted on drug interdiction need to be re-purposed for treatment. Drugs need to be decriminalized and treatment provided. Where this has been tried it has worked -- both to decrease human misery and to decrease the burden on taxpayers. The problem with this approach is that we have a gigantic industry whose jobs and profits depend on American taxpayers shoveling money at the War on Drugs.
58
Sacramento tried the decriminalization route and it is failing miserably. Addicts used to be given a choice - prison or drug court. In drug court they would be mandated to go to rehab where they had a chance to get clean. Most drug crimes are now misdemeanors and as a result drug court participation has plummeted to a trickle. The law of unintended consequences at work.
8
@ Jim, It is way more financially profitable to keep drugs illegal. From the illegal drug sales to the prison system and law enforcement, rehab, on down. Cha-ching
2
My point exactly.
The Emerald Triangle has the highest rate of opioid addiction in the State, is anyone surprised?
Circa late 1960's my beloved cousin died of a heroin overdose. He started with pot, then pills then shooting up.
The war on drugs was on and as 5th graders we were drilled on the dangers of drug use, often graphically.
I don't know of anyone in my class who ever got hooked on drugs. We all came out of health class with a healthy fear of drugs.
Treatment is needed, yes, but education too. And don't sugar coat it.
59
Your cousin didn't start with marijuana....he started like all addicts with his parents or family's booze! Alcohol IS the gateway drug, kids start drinking early and move on to other drugs.
9
They are using Heroin and Meth because it is readily available courtesy of our neighbor to the South. This what happens to your country when you share a border with a Narco State.
23
The reason that Narco State south of the border became a narco state was because of the demand from North of the border.
47
Which explains the heroin and meth problems in Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc? Simplistic explanations for complex social problems are almost always very wrong. The reasons for the existence of these addictions among those who are homeless and those who have safe places to stay are so much more complex than any "solution" such as a border wall. But collectively we never learn.
29
Good point. The NYT never acknowledges that in these articles.
3
It's hard to see the point of pouring money into rehab. There must be an acre or two away from the tourist locations where rows of tiny houses could be built. It would be more hygienic if the drug users had a place to go destroy themselves privately instead of using the entire town as their toilet and trash can. None of the people interviewed seemed to be very interested in recovery, but housing seemed to be of the utmost concern. And perhaps having a place to be safe will help the drug users want better things in their lives. But more millions in privately owned "rehab" corporations? A waste.
212
And make them build it. I have no sympathy for drug addicts they choose the life they live, they have become a drain on society and give nothing back.
26
I have no sympathy for diabetics. They choose the life they live, they have become a drain on society ($245 billion a year, google it) and give nothing back.
I have long advocated for a settlement specifically for active drug users. It is now time to address the issue that if someone wants to use drugs until they die, they should be able to do so. Give them land to set up tents well outside of city limits. And let them carry out their long demise.
6
Too many programs require people to be "clean" in order to receive drug rehabilitation services. It's unrealistic to expect a person who has become dependent on drugs to never use again. The belief that people should demonstrate their own investment in recovery by producing a clean urine sample once a week sounds good, but it's impractical. Programs must allow room for the occasional slip, the use of a less dangerous drug to curb withdrawal symptoms...If we want to help people who are suffering, we need to move beyond all or nothing thinking and be honest about what the cycle of looks like.
63
OR since these folks are all suicidal and self destructive....let them have all the drugs they want, for free, and a reasonably clean safe location to shoot up and get high. Then get out of their way, and let them take the full consequences of their actions. BONUS: Darwinian control of population
3
Very sad in human terms. I recommend they practice at being the new State of Jefferaon like so many Northern California residents desire, and handle problems of this nature without any assistance from Sacramento or from using government resources drawn from California's main population centers.
7
They are handling it by themselves, without any help from Sacramento, as they have no representation in the Assembly. The supermajority has refused to acknowledge every input from rural areas. However, unlike the notional state of Jefferson, they don't have the power to tax, and instead are paying taxes reasonable for bay area residents, not rural communities.
18
And just how would the State of Jefferson pay for this treatment?
2
Your reference to "no" representation and the "supermajority" gives it away. Be honest: you mean the northern rural area elects Republicans who don't want to do anything about the problem anyway, except for blaming it on the victims.
7
would that we use the money we waste to police the world and invade other countries here instead of overseas.. and a wall what a waste of money while america slowly strangles herself in a sea of drug abuse.. big pharma laughing all the way to the bank..
120
The Mexican Drug Cartels are the ones laughing all the way to the bank these days.
7
Big Pharma? Are you kidding? All those drugs are coming from Mexico and China. It would be better for everyone if drugs were legalized and 'big pharma' could legally sell them. You could have the FDA monitor for purity and people would know exactly what they were getting. I'd rather someone get their heroin from Bayer, made hopefully in Germany, but not China or India, where bribery and contamination are rife. Prohibition doesn't work.
23
The Cartels have bi-passed the Chinese and are now manufacturing Fentanyl just south of the border. In the last year the equivalent of 12 million doses of the drug have been seized along the interstate 5 corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles. Of course this is just a fraction of what is pouring into the country.
For all the focus on individuals faced with addiction issues needing rehabilitation services, I rarely see any discussion of those afflicted making a concerted effort at bettering their lives - through participation in remedial education or work-skills enhancement. And the comment that the homeless “rely on meth to stay awake at night” in order that their belongings are not confiscated is a cope out. Drink coffee.
I have worked hard my entire life to better myself. Nothing in life is granted to you. I support the concept of community volunteer programs for those who access tax based social services. People need to learn the concept of contributing to their self development and to their relevant communities in order to find a pathway to self sufficiency.
166
A typical "they're just lazy" response, refusing to recognize any nuance in the problem.
For one thing, the addicted aren't necessarily the homeless. Neither group is monolithic--people are homeless or addicted for a wide variety of reasons. It's like claiming that all people are rich because they're so clever and hard-working. Yes, many things in life ARE granted, such as good health.
But one big reason is mental health issues. It does no good to imperiously tell people to "just better themselves" or go get a job when they have untreated schizophrenia or bipolar disease or PTSD and lack the resources for treatment or drugs. Or have a conviction on their record that makes them unhireable regardless of their skills.
156
Through a neighbor, an instructor at a mental health/drug/alcohol program who was completing requirements for clinical psychologist, plus some of her work colleagues, I was informed that the general failure rate of patients after completing the education/therapy programs was above 90%. Failure means a return to the old habits. And these are people receiving intensive help and guidance regarding healthy lifestyle choices.
My take is that few make current decisions either to throw their lives away or work hard etc. as you say, to be productive and pursue positive goals Those decisions and orientations are made or engendered early on in life and stay ingrained in the psyche or whatever the inherent mental/emotional makeup is called.
Maybe bad parenting, over and beyond child abuse, should be a criminal offense.
16
Right. When Reagan effectively dismantled mental health institutions by de-funding them--and I am not arguing those places were without problems--people with primarily mental health issues were transitioned to the streets.
Self-medication furthered the spiral downward for many of them and compounded the problems exponentially. Chronic drug and alcohol use eventually impairs thought processing...likely at least to be one of the contributing factors leading to rehab resistance. Using meth to stay up all night because of security fears seems to be indicative of a kind of paranoia that often accompanies long-term drug use.
While there may be legitimate concerns about security, it seems there are other, healthier options out there (like sleeping in shifts with others) that would be better.
17