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Arthur Salm: Hey kids, drugs are cool!

The Board of Supervisors believes that people are idiots.


By Arthur Salm, SDNN

Monday, July 6, 2009 8 comments  |  read comments  |  post a comment
San Diego: Arthur Salm is an SDNN columnist.

Arthur Salm is an SDNN columnist.

The city of San Diego wants kids to use intravenous drugs. To make it easy for them, free needles are dispensed twice a week.

“I think the free needle program particularly sends the right message to our kids,” said Mayor Jerry Sanders. “It sends a message that as city government, by giving out clean needles for illegal drug use, that we condone illegal drug use. And we do. And it’s right.”

Before the attorneys tool up and the lawsuits have actually been filed, let me state that of course Mayor of Jerry Sanders of San Diego did not say that, or anything like it. But Dianne Jacob, who chairs the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, has implied that that’s where Sanders’ heart lies. Because here’s Jacob explaining why the supervisors oppose the needle exchange program (for the fake Sanders quote above, I just changed a few words):

“I think it particularly sends a wrong message to our kids. It sends a message to our kids that as county government, if we gave out clean needles for illegal drug use, that we condone illegal drug use. And we don’t. And it’s wrong.”

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There’s no other way to parse it: In Jacob’s view, Sanders and his fellow pushers on the San Diego City Council — we could be kind and call them “enablers,” but we’re in a (drug) war, so no bombast barred - believe that it’s just fine if kids shoot up.  After all, a needle-exchange program is permitted in San Diego; the council is clearly pro-heroin.

Yesterday, in the third of his four-part series on Hepatitis C, KPBS-FM’s Kenny Goldberg pointed out that “People who inject illegal drugs are at highest risk of spreading hepatitis C, H-I-V, and other bloodborne diseases. To reduce that threat, communities all across the country have launched clean syringe exchange programs.” Goldberg cited a 2004 SANDAG study, which found that “clients who visited the exchange were much less likely to share a needle. They also reduced their drug use. In fact, one in five clients said they had entered treatment.”

There followed a remarkable statement: “Jacob doesn’t believe it.”

Goldberg quoted Jacob as saying that she “thinks” there’s research on both sides of the issue, something Steffanie Strathdee, head of the division of global public health at the UCSD School of Medicine, called patently false.

“I’ve been working in this field now for more than 20 years,” Strathdee told Goldberg, “and I can tell you that there’s no scientific evidence that shows that needle exchange causes harm.”

But Jacob and her fellow supervisors prefer what Steven Colbert would likely call the “truthiness” of needle-exchange programs encouraging drug use. Pushy, in-your-face facts get in the way of the supervisors’ anti-drug bluster, so they’re dismissed (”Jacob doesn’t believe it”) and escorted from the chambers.

Goldberg then elicited from Jacob even more remarkable statement. He asked her, “What kind of information might make you reconsider your view on this whole matter?” to which she replied, “I’m not sure any kind of information will, frankly. Because of the fact that philosophically, I believe it’s wrong to in any way to encourage drug use. I think it’s wrong to government to send that message.”

The magnitude of the obtuseness, rigidity — say it! — stupidity of that statement is breathtaking. It recalls the classic from former congressman Earl F. Landgrebe (R-Indiana), who, even when confronted with the cascading, irrefutable evidence of President Richard Nixon’s perfidy in the Watergate scandal, continued to defend him. “Don’t confuse me with facts,” Landgrebe intoned, “I have a closed mind.”

The supervisors’ position would be bolstered if, out of all the intravenous drug users in San Diego County, they could come up with one individual who, dragged into a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, in public, for all the county to see, would declare something like, “Yeah, I was pretty much anti-drug until I heard about the needle-exchange program. I thought, ‘Whoa - free needles! That must mean the city council says it’s okay to mainline! Guess all that other stuff I’ve been hearing all my life was wrong. Sign me up!’ ”

To which you’d have to assign to the supervisors a certain amount of credit for finding without a doubt the dumbest individual in Southern California, because every other individual in Southern California, and probably the northern hemisphere, and for that matter, the southern hemisphere, knows damn well that communities dispense free needles to help prevent the spread of disease, not because communities want to encourage drug use. That one imaginary person at the imaginary supervisors meeting is imaginary because no such person exists.

Someone once accused the great economist John Maynard Keynes of inconsistency. “When I get new information, I change my position,” Keynes replied. “What, sir, do you do with new information?”

We know Dianne Jacob’s answer to that one.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Columns, Health, Local News, Politics & Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Comment by: Hifi Posted: July 6, 2009, 2:10 pm

Are we surprised anymore that conservatives aren’t only ignorant of scientific evidence, but reject it outright? Once again, on this issue, they ask us to accept their ideology on faith alone.

As elsewhere, it’s time to boot these GOP Luddites out of San Diego government.

Comment by: Bo Posted: July 6, 2009, 2:30 pm

Everyone knows the studies. Everyone knows needle exchanges are beneficial. Politicians will always grandstand on this issue for votes because they know conservatives will flock to them with their blinders on.

Comment by: Eric Kiviat Posted: July 6, 2009, 2:56 pm

Dear Arthur,
I was lucky enough to have met you at your talk at San Diego Writers INK, and I respect you, but HOLY GLOBAL WARMING, PLEASE DO CONFUSE ME WITH THE FACTS. Did you ever hear of false science being used by and for hack political motives. I kind of remember the followers of Jim Jones believing “the new information” and downing that arsenic laced cool aid. I also remember those cult followers in Rancho San Fe laying down in that house in a nice orderly group fashion and killing themselves peacfully because they got some good information that the mother ship was lagging behind hidden in the tail of an approaching comet
and was coming to take them back home. All fall down dead.
What I am saying is that government needle supply is sanctioning drug use. Its not a public health issue even if you find some sympathetic ” information givers”. Addtionally, what you do with new information is to actually THINK ABOUT IT not just accept it. It goes something like( and I can’t resist, sorry) The Obama non existent birth certificate which was constitutionally required but in its place was shown on the internet a blacked out “certificate of live birth”
My kind of INFORMATION is for some attending doctors, nurses, interns, volunteers, maintence men who were present at the phantom birth of Barak to make a joint appearance on the TONITE SHOW and saying yea, I was there. Guess what ,they won’t appear, because it didn’t happen!!.. despite the INFORMATION.
I’m not a nut just tired of justifying bad behavior.Hey wait a minute I’m going to take a nap
there’s a new comet coming to Escondido. Oh,
one more thing….those electric cars run on electricity…Like Clinton said “It’s the economy, STUPID” How much do you think it will cost to charge up a non existent electric car?Electricity doen’t appear spontaneously.
Here’s some information you can take to the bank:
Drill for oil Stupid, build a nuclear plant stupid, burn some coal stupid. Russia, China, India do and think we’re laying down for the comet.Sorry I don’t drink any of the kool aid whether its needles, calling illegal aliens “immigrants” or thinking America is bad and Socialism is good. …Covered alot didn’t I?
Thanks for the chat.
Eric

Comment by: alncarter Posted: July 7, 2009, 6:35 am

“I’m not a nut…” –Eric

Wrong.

Comment by: Mark E. Smith Posted: July 7, 2009, 7:09 am

I just finished reading an interesting book that came out in 2008, “Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children.” Conservatives like Eric Kiviat and Diane Jacob care only about private profits and nothing whatsoever about the health toll that petroleum-based carcinogens, radiation from nuclear power plants, and air pollution from coal has on kids, and they certainly couldn’t care less about the spread of Hepatitis-C or HIV. As long as the rich get richer, the rich are happy to continue killing millions of kids in wars for oil, and think that the precipitous rise in childhood cancers from environmental pollution, along with the spread of Hepatitis-C and HIV to children from people without access to clean needles, is a boon to the health care industry.

These are your tea-baggers, the people who truly believe that we’re “better off dead than Red,” and who oppose single-payer health care because socialized medicine would enable more Americans to stay alive. When a wealthy white CEO outsources twenty thousand good-paying American jobs in a single day to a third world country where labor is cheaper, these conservatives will tell you that undocumented workers came here and took those jobs away from Americans.

But they’re not really close-minded or unaware of the facts. They simply care more about profits than about people. They oppose environmental safety standards because it would cut into the profits of the big polluters. They oppose public health and safety because it would cut into the profits of the medical, pharmaceutical, and health insurance companies. They, or their big campaign donors and role models, support the genocide-for-profit industries and the more people who die unnecessarily, the more money they make and the happier they are.

They’re also the rich people who stash their money in secret Swiss bank accounts so that they won’t have to pay taxes to the country that enabled them to become rich. People who get rich from destroying the earth, polluting the environment, poisoning children, making health care unaffordable, and privatizing basic human needs, won’t pay a dime to ameliorate the damage they cause, and oppose all efforts by communities to do so. They may call themselves conservatives, but they’re opposed to conserving the environment, saving lives, or doing anything but making money. It would clarify the issues to call them fascists, because that’s exactly what they are.

Comment by: OceanBeach Posted: July 7, 2009, 11:27 am

Quite a writer, that Eric Kiviat.

Comment by: Jason Eliaser Posted: July 12, 2009, 12:56 pm

If well-conducted studies show that needle exchanges reduce drug use, then why isn’t anybody accusing Jacob of “condoning illegal drug use”? It sounds to me like she’s the pro-heroin one.

Comment by: Arthur Salm: Much marijuana ado about nothing Posted: October 19, 2009, 3:40 pm

[...] from Arthur Salm: Legalize marijuana |  Hey kids, drugs are cool! Young marijuana plants are shown Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009, in Seattle. The marijuana is distributed [...]

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