Thirty years ago in Seattle, I was sad to see a homeless man sleeping in a park at the top level of a double slide. It was a nice playground\u2014I could imagine little brothers enjoying a race down that slide\u2014but as things were, parents and kids stayed away.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I witnessed then was nothing compared to what Michael Powell recently reported<\/a> in The Atlantic<\/em> about that same park today: <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I arrived, a drug user squatted next to a child\u2019s slide and relieved himself. Others had set up tents and colonized the park pavilion, where they heated fentanyl on tinfoil and inhaled the fumes with glass pipes. A few went old-school and injected it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Likewise, I remember Burlington, Vermont, as a beautiful city. But Powell reported the view from City Hall now: \u201cAt least 70 users and dealers, many looking hyperkinetic in the way of the strung out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n He quoted Shabnam Nolan of the King Street Center, where poor children get tutoring: Why does drug users\u2019 \u201cright to \u2018dignity\u2019 violate children\u2019s right to come to our center without seeing blood and needles?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Burlington Mayor\u2019s Office<\/a> website warbles about \u201charm reduction,\u201d which means opening a $2 million center (with funding from the state legislature) so addicts can use their drugs in private. And yet, Powell talked with one mother of three young children who has a fentanyl dealer for a next-door neighbor. \u201cEveryone talks about needle exchange and harm reduction,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, okay. But it\u2019s like my children and I are living in the zombie apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> What Went Wrong in America\u2019s Addiction Recovery Policy?\n
From west to east, many cities are enabling the slow suicide of vulnerable people. How did we get here?https:\/\/t.co\/AwLD8K0Zkn<\/a><\/p>— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) September 30, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>