It might work if users wanted to quit, but they don't, so it won't

Not many take them up on the offer

Portland Declares State of Emergency Over Fentanyl Crisis

The Governor’s Office says a command center will be set up in central city where State, City and County employees will meet to coordinate strategies and response efforts.

Multnomah County says it intends to work to prevent exposure and use of fentanyl; reduce harm among people using substances; and increase access to outreach, treatment, recovery, and housing services.

During the 90 days, the Health Department will also launch two public education campaigns on fentanyl.

The City of Portland says it will deploy public safety, addiction and public health services, crisis response, and other resources and services to those impacted by the fentanyl crisis.

Rick Moran:

"Harm reduction" means that the city, state, and county will all facilitate "safe" fentanyl use by making sure users ingest non-lethal doses of product that are not dangerous.

If you just want to reduce overdose deaths, it's a good plan. It's worked in other cities. The problem is that it does absolutely nothing to address the problem.

And the rest of Portland's plan is even more useless.

Junkies in the throes of addiction want more not less and are drawn to drugs that promise an “improved” high.

A couple years ago, when local news agencies reported a spike in overdose deaths related to fentanyl in St. Paul, Minnesota, clinicians at an outpatient treatment clinic in that city saw an immediate effect.

"A dozen of our patients disappeared," says Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer of the Minnesota-based Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. "They'd been in treatment from six weeks to two years and were sober." The patients dropped out of the program to try fentanyl, a synthetic opiate painkiller that was new to the area. "Nobody in their right mind would want to get near fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and up to 50 times stronger than heroin," he says. "Our patients heard about fentanyl and thought, 'I want to try that.' They wanted to recapture the euphoric high they hadn't felt since they'd started using."

… The grim fact is that for many people with opioid use disorder, the lethality of a particular batch of drugs isn't a deterrent – it's an attraction, says Howard Samuels, chief executive officer of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles. Samuels, 60, speaks from experience: He's been in recovery from heroin addiction for more than 30 years.

"When I was on the streets of New York, when we heard a brand of heroin was causing people to overdose and killing them, we wanted that brand of heroin so badly," Samuels says. "We thought the people who were dying didn't know how to shoot it [properly]. I thought [overdosing] won't happen to me." This mindset is illogical, but it makes sense to someone struggling with substance use disorder, because denial is a hallmark of addiction, Samuels says. "It's all about denial and rationalization," he says. "I was shooting heroin and thought I was still in control. It was absolutely crazy."

So I don’t know the answer. I do know that, if I opened a restaurant and, rather than connect to the sewer system, I merely piped the toilets out to the street and onto the sidewalk, I’d be shut down and arrested. Yet cities like Portland and San Francisco tolerate thousands of “people experiencing homelessness” to do exactly that.

Go figure.