Biden Crack Pipes for Black People
If you haven’t heard about this, then you live in the future. This incident was like 5 seconds on media radar, it just had such an insane headline going on. We do the clean needle thing, so it’s not like it can’t be a real thing.
Thanks to the media attention, however, Joe Biden’s Crack Pipes for Equity initiative has been officially denounced. Let’s work backwards here. Jen Psaki says that the funds for Substance Abuse Harm Reduction were not going to be used to purchase crack pipes.
As usual, Jen Psaki was lying. Sort of.
After a historic amount of funding was designated for use in Harm Reduction, it was discovered that a significant portion of the funding was going towards….drug related stuff. Sorry, this keeps sounding simple in my head, but there’s several layers to work through.
There’s basically two major components we’re dealing with here. Not in a technical sense, but in a practical one. Let’s first look at the Drug Kits being provided. What these are, they are kits that contain alcohol wipes, plastic mouthpieces for pipes, and other such things…I assume. It might legit just be the two things for pipes. Of equal or greater value is the information provided. Very basic and practical information at reducing the harm of substance abuse. To us. Not to the drug addicts, but to the rest of us. People forget this.
So anyway, these kits aren’t super expensive. They’re far cheaper than Narcan, to be sure. In any case, we’ve got information and sanitation wipes provided in a way that doesn’t demean or condescend the individuals it targets. There’s no crack pipes, no lighters, no meth pipes, no weed pipes…honestly, there’s no pipes in these kits at all.
There will not be kits containing crack pipes provided by the federal government. Sorry, black people.
“But Rocky!”, you say, “What’s the other component?”.
Oh yes, that. As you know, the government loves not doing anything as much as they love spending money and hoping for the best. Naturally, this means that a vast amount of this money is going to state and local governments, organizations, and programs.
What this means is that, depending on where you live, you might still get a crack pipe kit, but it’ll be from the Detroit City Council, not US Department of Health. How anyone could make the connection from that to Joe Biden approving funding for crack pipes is beyond me. Just because his party approved funding that was going to be used in certain markets to supply crack pipes to people…..well, anyway, moving on.
So what about the portion of the funds that doesn’t involve drug paraphernalia?
….well, it wouldn’t be a total shock to see everyone get punished just for Jen Psaki to save face. However, odds are, nothing is going to change. The White House is not directly funding crack pipes, only indirectly. And only in areas that want it to happen. Pretty much they’ll just deflect questions about it and carry on.
I was going to say something about Seattle pre-ordering theirs, but that reminded me of a very important thing. The Biden Drug Kits will contain test strips. You’ll be able to test your drugs for the presence of things that aren’t the drug you want. Which is great, because now we can stop shaming the oppressed Mexicans that are cutting poorly refined meth with fentanyl, and place the blame where it belongs - on the people that OD’d because they didn’t test their drugs prior to injection.
That’d almost be funny if it wasn’t probably part of the plan. But yeah, the funding for harm reduction is real and it will most likely, at least in Seattle, be used to provided meth pipes. There’s still hope, black people!
Some thoughts here.
We already do the clean needle thing, so there is certainly a precedent set here. The clean needles definitely work to prevent the spread of disease amongst normal society (which brings up a lot of questions of its own…). Alcohol wipes may not have as much of an impact, but they’re way cheaper and can sanitize any surface, not just pipes.
The D.A.R.E. program was all about abstinence and demonizing drugs…with the end result being a significant increase in drug use. Therefore, it’s safe to say that free supplies and information can’t do any worse. I’m also just now realizing that the booklets contain accurate information. It took nearly a century, but they’re starting to tell the truth about drugs. Well goddamn, slap my fupa.
The overall amount spent is only like $30 million, probably less by the end of it. Government commits spending really fast, but is really slow to actually spend it. Just ask landlords of affordable housing.
Basically the conclusion here is that this is …not really a bad thing. Harm reduction is really effective at reducing harm to society overall, as well as the individual to a lesser extent. When we don’t have to deal with hepatitis outbreaks, there’s more wiggle room for providing resources to addicts.
It’s not really so much a win-win situation all around, so much as it’s a no-lose situation. That’s really better than you can hope for from government.
