By Ray Cardello for December 28, 2022 Season 15 / Post 18

We are bombarded with bad news every day, and it feels like it has worsened since the onset of COVID in 2020. We incessantly hear how bad our economy is, how high our home-heating oil will be, how many illegals have crossed the Border today, how bad the weather will be, and if we will be back in masks after the holidays. Many have turned away from the daily news, feeling that not knowing is more manageable than dealing. We are in information overload and losing our sensitivity to major issues that need our attention. This is a dangerous place for our minds to occupy. We are getting numb, and we cannot allow that to happen.

Two issues that I feel we are beginning to overlook because we have heard about them so often are drug deaths or poisoning and homelessness. Only certain media outlets cover these stories, which means that large blocks of our population are unaware of the magnitude of these issues. Our government officials ignore them, which keeps the media from covering them. This is precisely why you will not see Biden or Harris make the journey to the Border. To do so would force the press that is avoiding the crisis to bring their cameras to the scene, 
and then the curtain is pulled back. Ignorance is far better than accountability for politicians.

We all know the source and route Fentanyl takes to arrive in our country. Drug cartels are getting more creative and daring every day to get this poison into the United States. Seeing the intercepted quantities is proof, but understanding that we are only capturing the tip of the mountain should scare every American. The Southern Border states are not unique to the plague of Fentanyl deaths as once it clears the Border, it spreads quickly to every state, making every state a Border State. With now, over 100,000 deaths of young adults between 18-45, Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for that age group. Fentanyl is not a drug addiction problem but a drug poisoning problem. Treating it like another opioid is the wrong approach. We must cut the head off the Fentanyl snake and eliminate it at the source. Either stop the shipments from China before they hit Mexico or destroy the drug labs and the cartels producing the final product. This crisis is a terrorist attack on our country, and we need the government to have the cajones to solve it.

The homelessness epidemic is another complex issue. It is twofold: for some, it is economic, and for others, it is drug-related or a mental health issue. Either way, the solution that cities like Los Angeles use are wrong. To take the homeless off the street, carte Blanche, and give them free housing in hotels or motels is wrong and will only encourage more people with similar issues to relocate for a free roof over their heads. Boston is dispensing free needles to homeless addicts. These are lazy and costly ways to sweep the matter out of sight and hopefully out of mind. Their thinking is to promote safer drug use rather than solve the problem. The mental health issue is exacerbated by closing clinics and facilities where these people can get help. Now they are a danger to themselves and the neighborhoods they land.

These problems are not going away by ignoring them, but if society is complicit with the methods of government and we numb ourselves to the point where they are accepted as normal, then we have lost. The problems will become generational and another reason we are quickly losing the inner cities. We can stop and deal with them now or earmark them as another reason for the collapse of this great country.