The New York City mayor and council have approved a $100,000 budget to study the possibility of allowing the city’s addicts a facility where they can legally inject illegal – and potentially lethal – heroin.
Sometimes called a “safe” or supervised injection site, one city council candidate is calling the idea “crazy, and just another example of this city council’s and Mayor [Bill] de Blasio’s progressive policies being progressively bad for New York City.”
On Friday’s segment of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, city council candidate Bob Capano told host Tucker Carlson that “Mayor de Blasio and the city council want to make New York City a sanctuary city for heroin junkies by making make us literally the first place in the country to open these legal facilities where addicts and junkies can legally shoot-up and get high.”
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“This is bad for taxpayers, this is for New York City, and it’s even worse for addicts. How can we expect law enforcement to prosecute drug crimes when city hall is encouraging its use?” he asked.
Carlson remarked that one simple question needed to be raised: “Would I apply this to my kids? If someone I loved were addicted to heroin…I would say, ‘this will kill you: no. I have no tolerance for this at all,” he said.
Carlson referenced a similar experiment in Zurich, Switzerland, that had to be discontinued because “in five years, there were 20,000 addicts living in downtown Zurich and they shut it down because it was a disaster.”
But Capano reminded Carlson of another precedent, even closer to home – Vancouver, Canada, where an “in-site” program has produced not just controversy but chaos, with advocates arguing it saves lives and critics saying it just enables addicts to use drugs.
“If you look at downtown east-side Vancouver, you have people lining up, begging for money so they can bring their heroin in there and legally shoot-up and get high” said Capano.
Carlson called liberal attitudes towards the idea “strange” because “if you contrast their attitudes towards heroin addicts…with their attitudes towards cigarette smoking, or wearing a seat belt or driving in a bike lane – they have zero tolerance…but heroin use they can understand.”
Almost 29,000 Americans died from opioid use in 2014.
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