The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
When Seattleites came to City Hall this week to request some kind of action on the drug crisis, no one asked for what the city council is planning to do next.
Which is: Take a vacation.
“You all deserve a break,” said no one at a public hearing this week. “You should take a couple weeks, really get some distance and think through what you plan to do about this 2-year-old five-alarm emergency.”
Nobody said that. There were a wide range of views about how the drug scourge has turned into a city epidemic. Some people called for urgency in expanding drug treatment and street outreach. Others pleaded for help from the cops. Still others asked for more of both.
Nobody said: “Let’s take the rest of the month off.”
But that’s the plan. After voting down a drug ordinance in June, and then pledging something to replace that defeated plan, the council is recessing for the rest of August. It means Seattle will be in limbo on any sort of drug strategy until mid-October, at the soonest.
“My only question is — what’s taking you so long to do this?” downtown resident Michele Hasson asked the council, incredulously. That’s an actual quote, from a sensible real person.
It’s a great question, too. Sure this recess was planned months ago. But the blasé response of our city to the drug crisis is maddening.
Listen to what the Seattle Fire Department told the council in testimony Monday about what’s happening on the streets. “We in Seattle Fire are responding to 110 overdose calls per week,” said Jon Ehrenfeld, manager of the department’s mobile health team. “The volume right now is overwhelming … it’s crushing. It’s causing a tremendous amount of stress and burnout.”
That’s 15 overdoses every day, just in Seattle. As recently as 2020, Seattle was seeing only about three per day.
Why so lackadaisical? Surely part of the reason is that the council is ideologically riven. There’s no critical mass behind any strategy, whether hard on drugs, soft or somewhere in-between.
There’s also that the current proposal, from Mayor Bruce Harrell’s drug task force, was submitted late and is in bits and pieces. It effectively says “you can’t smoke fentanyl in front of Nordstrom,” but also promises “there will be a social worker who can help you get into treatment to avoid an arrest.” It further says if someone is hurting only themselves with their drug use, then it’s a health matter, not a criminal one. Arrests should be avoided.
Would it work? No one knows. It matters both symbolically and practically, though, to simply pick a lane and try. Seattle needs some kind of orientation, some direction.
On Tuesday the council was more than just conflicted. It seemed dysfunctional.
“It would have been nice if some of my colleagues would have shared with me that this is what they wanted to do,” council President Debora Juarez said after a 4-4 vote failed to move drug policy vote up in the calendar. “But that’s not what we do around here. So that’s awesome.”
Right. Awesome would be communicating. Awesome would be decisiveness. Awesome would be taking a vacation after a job well done. Or after a job done at all. This is not awesome. This is a travesty.
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