Blue America needs to send a stronger, more consistent message that hard drugs should be shunned.
The general message carried by the San Francisco billboard appeared as well in the New York City health department’s “Let’s Talk Fentanyl” campaign, which last year told subway riders, “Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely,” and further counseled them to “start with a small dose and go slowly.”
The nationally influential Drug Policy Alliance goes further: It lauds many fentanyl dealers as “harm reductionists” who should be respected and left alone by authorities (because the arrest of a trusted dealer might cause users to seek the drug from an unfamiliar source). A prominent subset of academics provides intellectual support for these initiatives, theorizing that stigma against drug use is ethically wrong and also worsens public health.
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