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FortheLoveofFreedom's avatar

What a great article you have written! It is spot on in how I look at these problems we are facing today. So often I say, "Look at all the marijuana shops". There are numerous ones even in small towns. Who is funding these? And the safe injection sites and safe this and that -- all put there to dumb us down. Look at the covid scam, small shops were forced to close but the alcohol and drug shops were left open. That should make us all think. I think government (federal, provincial and city/town) is largely responsible for enabling this addiction. If one town/city promotes it, then others follow. Brain cells have shrunk, honestly. All these things that 'catch on' including helmets are there to make you dumber and not think for yourself. As soon as you speak out about the obvious, you are called names as many of us can testify to.

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Sheldon Dumont's avatar

I spent much of the ‘90s between the edge of Vancouver’s downtown Eastside and Halifax. The poverty industry had already assumed control of Hastings St and things were getting visibly worse every year. Petty crime was out of control of course but the real disaster was the division of the city into two camps; the disposable and the prosperous. You could hear the educated classes speak of the need to “do something” about the despair and rot in their city core. Their guilt of living in million dollar homes while all around them junkies lived in alleys and doorways was a recipe for disaster. They wanted to throw money at the problem and any poverty professional with a “solution” was more than happy to receive it. In about ‘01 I asked a doctor friend here in Halifax if her ER saw many opioid ODs and she said no. I said she would soon enough. Much like the capital flow of Chinese money from West to East, Vancouver through Ontario and onwards to the Eastcoast, driving up asset prices and perceived prosperity in its wake, the opioids were sure to follow. And the “solutions” would follow as well. I’m hearing the same prosperous, guilty classes discussing the same easy solutions and I imagine they’ll get the same inevitable results. Halifax will become a city divided, a poverty industrial complex will grow to service it, and the change will become a permanent feature of the city. As the saying goes, Any bureaucracy created to solve a problem will evolve to perpetuate it. People on the peninsula will install more and advanced security systems while they become accustomed to the crime and homelessness. The police will receive more funding and the hospitals will demand more capacity to deal with the victims of addiction. It will become normalized.

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