Cowboy Confessional

Communion between politicians and other junkies recently reached a new high in San Francisco, demonstrating how unrestrained bad behavior corrupts both.Ashen intellectual elements within The City have for 15 years encouraged the self-destructive life style of intravenous drugs users by supplying addicts with the tools of their demise. Via high-minded but bereft strategies to reduce infectious disease among hopheads, abused taxpayers have supplied drug abusers with 2.4 million new syringes annually, of which about 800,000 never find their way back to “exchange” depots, appearing instead in parks, citizen’s yards, and protruding from children’s bodies. Rumor has it that a monument is being erected in the AIDS Memorial Grove built entirely from infected needles accumulating there.

What is surprising is that people are surprised. Drug use in general, and drug addiction in particular are dangerous behaviors. These behaviors are adopted despite decades of warnings posted at the trailhead of addiction and the minor amount of common sense necessary to avoid dependency. Societies toss barriers between potential druggies and dope, starting with parental threats and terminating with dopers watching acquaintances croak. Mankind attempts to dissuade bad behavior, except in San Francisco where it is actively encouraged. So thorough is this encouragement of expanded addiction that our junkies are one incentive away from running for Mayor.

The City’s reaction to millions of missing government needles is to expand the program that lost them. One suggestion seeks to decorate parks and street corners with bio-hazard drop boxes that heroin hopper allegedly will seek and use, providing they can first stand upright. Since these boxes are an unappealing tourism billboard, another notion was proffered — “better educating users about needle safety.” Perhaps the point was missed by politicians, but junkies don’t care about their own safety much less the safety of the general population, making education of the strung-out instantly hopeless. Lastly, the city might spend seven times the current needle “exchange” budget for high-tech syringes with retractable needles. They will still cover grassy plains in Golden Gate Park but will not jab strolling couples, joggers, or campaigning politicians seeking dramatic photo ops.

True to their nature, politicos failed to ponder the core problem, and in groping for headlines exacerbated the situation. One aspect of human nature is that those who display bad behavior will continue to do so in the absence of any penalty. Criminological surveys of felons show they will not assault or rob someone they believe to be armed, understanding that the penalty for this bad behavior is instant death. Likewise junior needle jockeys will continue to slam heroin unless a price for this behavior is extracted. Supplying unused syringes removed the both an expense and a grave element of danger, thus encouraging continued bad behavior.

Voters do the same thing. Abundant are laws designed to discourage behaviors destructive to the community. San Francisco has its set of vagrancy laws, and rules against littering that supposedly cover needles casually tossed into playgrounds. Despite a near absence of enforcement of these rules toward civil conduct, voters elect and re-elect the same caste of philosophical philistines who spritz deodorant over the cesspool then claim the “stench problem” to be resolved.

Inattention to the core of difficulties echoes throughout City Hall. A recent increase in street crime and homicides between gangs resulted in city fathers and mothers requiring non-criminal citizens to keep home-bound firearms locked or boxed. Given the behavioral gulf between the average home owner and the average thug, one would anticipate this regulation of private affairs would have no effect on street violence. Indeed, in a rare display of political honesty one supervisor admitted “I don’t think we’re getting to the heart of why San Francisco is experiencing this unabated gun violence citywide.”

Thankfully, an election comes soon, providing San Francisco voters the opportunity to apply a penalty for bad political behavior.

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