You may be aware of the fact that every county in the State of California voted in favour of Prop 36, a piece of legislation included on the ballot of the recent general election. The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is a devout “liberal” who naturally opposed it inasmuch as it redefines as Felonies crimes which, in various “liberal” jurisdictions throughout both the States and Canada, have come to be treated as mere minor indiscretions. I have before me a stack of newspaper clippings citing crimes committed by individuals released on bail 20, 30 and 40 times! The people of California have apparently had enough of this lunacy.
As shoplifting merchandise worth less than $950 is one of the crimes formerly exempt from serious legal repercussions in California, the last few years have seen such thievery surge out of control. Prop 36 now defines any individual with two prior convictions of that crime as a felon liable to be punished as such. In the same way, those found guilty of either selling or possessing certain illegal drugs are now subject to far harsher penalties. Indeed dealers found to have supplied fentanyl to individuals who died as a result of its use can now be charged with murder. While Governor Newsom insists he will continue to pursue a balanced approach to the widespread abuse of drugs in his state, he laments the billions that will need to be spent in providing adequate prison spaces for those to be incarcerated, billions that might otherwise go towards programs designed to rehabilitate the addicted. You are no doubt aware that injection sites designed to insure the safety of addicts have been established in many North American cities. The law-abiding citizens of California, however, seem to have decided that their safety and the well-being of that multitude of commercial outlets that serve them, ought to take precedence over those who have consciously, self-indulgently, stupidly, succumbed to a life of decadence. Yes, I have made a typically “conservative,” morally “judgmental” evaluation of those who have succumbed to degenerate lifestyles, an evaluation which is in fact validated by simple common sense.
A CNN article posted on Mar. 2, 2024, cites the fact that Oregon, under its Democratic Governor Katherine Brown, became the first American state to decriminalize the possession and use of all drugs in 2020. Predictably, opioid related deaths in the state surged from 280 in 2019, to 956 in 2022. The article in question relates the experiences of Jordan Gale, a photographer who moved to Portland 3 years ago and was shocked to discover that many of its residents were perfectly familiar with the smell of burning fentanyl, given its ridiculous prominence in the city’s streets. In Jan. of 2023, Governor Tina Kotek declared the situation to be out of control.
Leftist tolerance for those who feel entitled to plunder their local grocery stores is rooted in the notion that they are most likely victims of the many inequities to which our vile capitalist system is prone. In the same way drug users are deemed to be victims of their addiction. That they made the decisions that led to their degeneracy was clearly not an issue considered by Katherine Brown when she decriminalized drug use in her state. Indeed the issue of personal responsibility is rarely mentioned in Leftist diatribes against social injustice. Does such injustice still exist here in the West? Of course it does. We are an imperfect species. But Life is more complicated than the superficial Left can ever admit. Millions of inner city American Blacks have worked hard and prospered without resorting to lives of crime. It is for them and indeed all decent, law-abiding citizens that Californians endorsed Prop 36. It is but another example of the current trend of many who had become addicted to the inanities of “wokeness,” deciding instead to cast their vote for common sense and simple human decency.