As if tranq, the “zombie” drug that literally rots human flesh, weren’t horrifying enough, high-minded New York Democrats are encouraging users to keep right at it.
This is the logical endpoint of so-called “harm reduction.”
The city Health Department is blasting out an ad campaign about tranq (official name xylazine) — an animal tranquilizer that causes pus-oozing lesions.
Tranq now taints huge amounts of street drugs, adding even more risk of death and injury to fentanyl use.
But the city isn’t pushing anyone to try to kick the habit — that would be stigmatizing!
Instead, the ads tell junkies to bring their drugs to an overdose-prevention center so they “can use them under supervision.”
In other words: Go ahead and kill yourselves! We’ll take a taxpayer-funded front row seat!
Remember: Mostly what the supervision sites can do is try and revive you if you OD.
The pustulent, necrotic sores tranq causes?
Oh well.
The spiral downward from drug abuse?
Don’t stigmatize!
This, even as city special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan warns that, thanks to tranq, “our black-market drug supply in the city is probably the most dangerous that I’ve ever seen.”
Even the addicts the campaign is aimed at see it as absurd: “They ain’t showing us how to keep ourselves safe,” fretted one.
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“That’s a pretty weird way [for the city] to approach it. There’s not too many positives” when it comes to tranq, said another.
The big lie here, of course, is the favorite claim of harm-reducers: that prodding addicts to feed their monkey will somehow magically reduce the number of bad drug outcomes.
It’s insane on its face.
But if you really need proof, just look at San Francisco.
There, harm-reduction policies helped create an open-air drug market in the Tenderloin so bad the mayor declared a state of emergency.
Or New York itself, hell-bent on safe injection sites, drug-kit vending machines and more even as overdoses killed over 3,000 New Yorkers in the 12 months ending August 2022.
That’s up from about 2,670 the previous year, itself a massive jump.
Mayor Eric Adams shows real brains and courage in hitting out at other lefty shibboleths.
But on this he and Health Department chief Ashwin Vasan are shamefully following the example of Bill de Blasio.
Fentanyl kills.
Tranq rots your body away before it kills you.
If a city campaign advocates for anything but actual treatment, it’s not truly about public health, but only progressive fantasies.