Scenes from a Drug Disaster - Wyoming: To see the damage from marijuana, just look westward

by Wyoming Liberty Group

Imagine this: You can't step foot outside your front door in broad daylight—for fear of cartels and drug dealers who might kill you by accident in the crossfire of turf wars.

Well, if you live in parts of Los Angeles, you don't have to imagine it. This is already a reality—thanks largely to the slippery slope of legalizing marijuana, lax enforcement of drug laws and a lack of political will.

How, by the way, has this shocking state of affairs happened to LA, the second-most populous city in the United States, behind only New York? And, closer to home—is this the kind of future we want for our beautiful state of Wyoming?

That question is particularly relevant now because pro-pot forces are trying to crack open the potentially lucrative marijuana market in Wyoming, where the drug remains illegal.

But before considering the false promises of marijuana, look westward to see what it has wrought.

In downtown LA, the devastation of marijuana and other drugs is plain for all to see on Skid Row, the notorious stretch of dozens of blocks of haunting poverty, thousands of homeless people and brazen, open-air drug use and dealing, gang violence and general lawlessness.

"It's beyond my imagination," said one civic leader who works there. "It's the worst man-made disaster in the United States."

While Skid Row has been around since the 1930s as a bleak haven for the homeless, the problems have only worsened since California legalized marijuana—politely called cannabis. California first legalized marijuana for so-called medical use in 1996 and then for so-called recreational use in 2016.

The drug problem isn't just confined to Skid Row. Indeed, Venice Beach—the famous California tourist attraction less than 20 miles away—has been the site of shootings, fires and other violence in homeless encampments that are riddled with drugs.

You'll also see another terrible phenomenon there: van lords. People who earned that nickname rent broken down recreational vehicles—RVs—which often are inoperable and squat on city streets, where many break out in fires and all manner of other mayhem.

LA is home to about 50,000 homeless people—almost the same number of people as in our biggest cities in Wyoming, Cheyenne and Casper. More homeless people than the entire cities of Gillette and Laramie.

Now, let's move up the West Coast to San Francisco, where the legalization of marijuana has led to a permissiveness about virtually all illicit drugs. In this once-proud city, downtown has turned into a ghost town. Tourists have been replaced by the remnants of a roiling drug crisis—discarded needles, the stench of human waste and a homeless population that counts about 17,000 people.

It's impossible to miss the carnage and destruction, fueled by the drug epidemic, throughout San Francisco. Fearful of car break-ins—tens of thousands of which happened last year—people regularly post handwritten signs inside their car windows: "Nothing to Steal!" said one.

Just moments away from San Francisco's ornate City Hall, teenagers can be spotted in the middle of the day inhaling fentanyl, which can kill in an instant. Not far from there, people sell stolen merchandise, like jewelry, on the streets. Meanwhile, police officers who are nearby to all of this illegal activity do nothing to stop it.

The upshot: In the San Francisco area, an estimated 385,000 people aged 12 and older suffer from a substance-use disorder. That's more than half the entire population of Wyoming.

This isn't just about statistics. Overdose deaths claimed the lives of 647 people in San Francisco in 2022 alone.

Finally, let's move further up the coast to Oregon. It was the first state to decriminalize marijuana back in 1973. As in other states, decriminalization led to legalization, which opened the door to other drugs. In 2020, a ballot initiative known as Measure 110 made Oregon the first state in the country to decriminalize the possession of personal-use amounts of various drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

It didn't take long to ruin Oregon's once pristine city, Portland. On the streets of its downtown, people are passed out, the aftereffects of drugs. It's gotten to the point where people say they avoid downtown for fear of being attacked by people addicted to drugs. Local merchants bemoan that the drug crisis is hurting business.

The damage of decriminalization has spread well beyond Portland's downtown. Homeless encampments filled with open-air drug use have cropped up all over the city. It's a shocking sight to see: people suffering with open sores, struggling with drug addiction, living in squalor.

This tragedy isn't what is wanted for Oregon, California, for anywhere in the United States. And it's certainly not what we want for Wyoming.

Stay tuned. More information to come from your friends at Wyoming Liberty Group.