The city of Minneapolis has a problem with open-air drug markets. Main cause: permitting open-air drug markets. Now they’re cracking down. In announcing this new effort, the ever-earnest mayor, Jacob Frey, said: “This past month I visited [the] Little Earth [housing project], and I learned that there were four children that had stepped on discarded needles and required HIV prevention treatment.”
You would think this would be bad, but you have to balance the “problems” of punctured kids with the harm that might befall the needle-strewer if the authorities were summoned. Said one city councilperson, reacting to the news of a crackdown: “Today, the City of Minneapolis and Mayor Frey announced a strategy that I consider the city’s War on Drugs. Let me be very clear, this approach will criminalize homelessness, criminalize those struggling with addiction, will worsen people’s life outcomes by giving them a criminal record that follows them for years, and will only expose our undocumented neighbors to deportations.”
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