I can remember being a kid in the 70's and how the start of the news each night was about which local kids died in the Vietnam war during the past week.
Perhaps it's time to declare this a war to save the (potential) addicts and act accordingly.
I hope that we don’t get too complacent about opiate deaths and start thinking of this as normal. We do need a nationwide coordinated mobilization I think. I hope it happens. I think it will require pragmatic political leadership that treats this as a public health crisis rather than a job solely for law enforcement.
The Wars on Terror, Drugs and Poverty have all been abject failures. War is a terrible metaphor for this problem. War implies at least some semblance of a defined enemy. The issues here are interconnected and require nuanced discussion and debate. Simply calling it a war will not get the people of Seattle that.
On the other hand, I feel a little like we (the people of Seattle) are a little short on action to address the magnitude of the homeless and opium issues. It’s starting to feel a little like the “hopes and prayers” that the right uses to respond to gun violence.
On the other hand, as one of of the aforementioned hand-wringing do-nothings (or do-too-littles) of Seattle, I struggle with what I can do or where I can best help. City leadership hasn’t done a great job at mobilizing the well-intentioned masses, and I don’t know if that’s because they aren’t doing a good job, or if we’re just belligerently apathetic.
