@#1: Should overweight people be denied cardiac care?

"hopefully this saves lives."

No, hopefully it never comes to be needed. I wouldn't wish an OD in a public library.

Substance abuse also has a genetic component, heart disease (and type 2 diabetes for that matter) are largely the result of lifestyle choices

Rest in peace, acclaimed skier Hilaree Nelson. What a frightening and sad way to go. Condolences to her surviving family, friends, and loved ones.

Channelling Hurricane Ian: Forget about slamming western Florida and the Gulf of Mexico already! If you want to do any justice at all, aim for Florida on the Atlantic Coast. Feel free to wipe out Mar-a-Lunatic and its corrupt, fetid inhabitants any time. I'll wait.

@2 & @4: I have Type 2 diabetes. I am not obese but still have to watch my sugar, carbs, and cholesterol intake, and avoid gluten. My physiological health has improved with some minor diet changes for the better, going outdoors for fresh air and sunshine, and regular activity.

@10; Yes, lots of people, there are also people who have heart attacks, or diabetic complications who become permanently disabled, and there have been heroin users who have in fact led very productive lives, ever hear of William S. Burroughs, Keith Richards, or Robert F. Kennedy?

Your list in post ten is silly, but to extend your theme, eating a big Mac instead of a salad is also a choice, so is not working out.

Thing is, you are so un-self aware, that you have no idea what you've told us about yourself in post 7

Seriously, Ian. If you wanna pound Florida, go after Trump and its enablers. The world will cheer. I know I will.

I don't really expect to see Trump go to prison, but I'd sure be depressed if Shakira did and he didn't.

"Just say no to Narcan!

Let the
Darwin Award Winners
achieve their self-administered dream."

183,571 Human Beings
Die every Day on this Planet.

how come
you're not
one of them

@13

omg might st2
be a Bot?

& here I thought
he worked for Putin
but no it seems he's all AI

or a Toilet

so you work
for the Sacklers

who Invented you?

and Why did they Fail
do Insert a little
Humanity?

I can't imagine ANYONE actually wanting The Big One and massive tsunamis here on the West Coast.
We have already had our first taste with the historic eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980.
Ask anyone living in or driving through Skamania and Cowlitz Counties at the time what I-5 was like.
Be careful of what you wish for, those of you who want The Big One, and can't wait. When a storm, earthquake, or volcanic eruption that severe hits, it's not an action thriller. It's the real thing. You can run but you can't hide. You can't hit a Pause button. It's Nature and she's got every right to be pissed, what with all the senseless human-caused destruction of this planet.
That's like asking for the return of the nasty weather we recently got slammed with---an early Fall 2021 and a harsh, prolonged Winter 2022---to become routine. We didn't have rain, we had monsoons, with record flooding in WHatcom and Skagit Counties. A mid-November windstorm was powerful enough to knock an 80 ton (= 160,000 lbs.!)semi on its side, like a dead elephant on the northbound lane of the Deception Pass Bridge. I can't unsee that image posted in The Stranger. Winter didn't want to finally give up until July. We almost didn't have Spring this year. Wanting that on a permanent regular basis? That's as crazy as Nathalie Graham's bizarre fixation with serial killer Ted Bundy.

"Billionaire
MacKenzie Scott
has filed for divorce from
her second husband, Dan Jewett"

I won't say I saw it coming
but I did. still Here still Waiting
with the Pre-Nup tightly in Hand

you Know where to Reach me Mac.
GodSpeed

Fear of overdosing and blackouts is a big part of recovery. Things that alleviate that fear such as thinking that Narcan might be nearby, could be conducive to more usage perhaps. Nevertheless, a very difficult issue.

The SBL's initial guidance was the correct one and kristofarian's hysterics can be safely disregard.

? these hysterics dewdrop:

"Just say no to Narcan!

Let the
Darwin Award Winners
achieve their self-administered dream."

Credit where
it's Due:
@st2

How McKinsey
Got Into the
Business of
Addiction

The consulting firm’s work with opioid makers is well known, but for decades McKinsey worked with Big Tobacco and has also advised Juul, the e-cigarette company.

Last year, McKinsey agreed to pay more than $600 million to settle state investigations into its role in helping [the Sackler's] Purdue Pharma and other drugmakers fuel the opioid epidemic.

And for decades, McKinsey has helped manufacturers boost sales of the most lethal consumer product in American history — cigarettes.

more ruthlessness cum Inhumanity at

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/business/mckinsey-tobacco-juul-opioi ds.html

Back at the start of Seattle’s Homelessness Crisis, some citizens of Seattle recognized it was actually a public-health crisis of addiction. They advocated drug treatment, including free Narcan/Naxalone for anyone who requested it.

This violated the Stranger’s narrative, of Seattle’s homeless being hardworking local victims of Amazon. So the Stranger hatefully attacked those who advocated for the city to distribute Narcan. (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2016/04/15/23960612/a-neighborhood-group-was-mapping-where-homeless-people-liveuntil-i-asked-them-about-it/comments)

Now, the addiction at the root of Seattle’s Homelessness Crisis has become so obvious, staff of the Seattle Public Library will distribute Narcan. How many lives might have been saved over the past seven years, had the Stranger not attacked the original advocates of Narcan distribution?

Sir Toby: the genetic roots of Substance Use Disorder, and therefore of addiction, have been recognized by science for many years. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5911369/) What you’re seeing is the result of Seattle’s massive, chronic enabling of addiction caused by the Stranger and city policy-makers, who pretended a public-health crisis was a housing-affordability crisis. They have helped to cause the deaths of god-only-knows how many homeless persons in Seattle. And yet, the “Stop the Sweeps” crowd continues to receive support from the Stranger to this day, e.g. Solidarity Budget. Cruelty mislabeled as compassion will continue to kill.

@33 Both viewpoints can be correct but you need to differentiate between homelessness and vagrancy. That is where the conversation diverges. Yes most people become homeless because they can no longer afford their place but many of these people stay with friends/family or move and eventually find a new place to live (maybe with some help). The people we see on the street everyday, including the high offenders, are not in this group. You could provide them a free apartment tomorrow and they will be back out on the street because many of them are incapable of basic self care and are only focused on how/where to get their next fix. Both of these issues require very different approaches and solutions. TS and many of the posters here want us to treat the vagrants like the homeless and "meet them where they are" however as we have seen the last few years that is not working and you are going to continue to get pushback on that false narrative until TS acknowledges the difference.

some of our commentariat'll
do just Fine, thank you when their
Number's Up* and find themselves
and all their Worldly Possessions out
on the Street -- they have the Moral Fort-
itude to -- as Nanci Raygun suggests -- Just
Say NO to Drugs. Despair'll NEVER catch them

and if we cannot Emulate them
well it Ain't on Capitalism
nor Housing as Com-
modty, Human Be-
ings as Profit Cen-
ters nor being
born out in
Left Field

but for the Life
of me I cannot
abide all the
Smugness.

*and you 'thought'
you had Great Health
Insurance but your Ins.
Corps begged to Differ
and has busloads of Law-
yers milling about ready to
kick your (or your Spouse's or
your Kid's) Sick ass to the Curb
and Will do so equally as Gleefully

as good ol' st2.

medicare
for ALL
or Bust.

why can't WE
join the Civil-
ized World?

how come We
Gotta Be so
Exceptional?

@34: me. as a teen, i got hold of a gram of opium. my buddy and i smoked the fuck out of it in a week. when it was gone, we were glad we couldn't get any more. that was my experiment.

i like to think of myself as a productive member of society.

@33: First, correlation does not imply causation, and second, most of Seattle’s homeless arrived in Seattle already homeless, unemployed, and addicted. A tiny minority said that rental increases had made them homeless. (http://coshumaninterests-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/City-of-Seattle-Report-FINAL-with-4.11.17-additions.pdf)

People who get priced out simply move to less-expensive areas; they don’t remain in a pricey neighborhood, move into their nearby park, and pitch tents there.

Perhaps you need to learn something about Seattle and it’s problems before you lecture the people who actually live in Seattle?

@42: Our homeless problem predates the "costal elite liberals" by about a century. It got its start when Seattle became the jumping off point for TV the Yukon gold rush and the businesses supporting it brought in money. There is a part of our society that seeks to survive by putting its hand out at the freeway off ramps. Or living along Skid Road (Yesler Way).

I don't know what can be done about that today. But I have the feeling that the Left might have hit on the correct solution. Everybody eats. But everybody works. Thank you, Stalin, for your Gulags.

Voluntary Narcan administration. That voluntary part is important. Because a part of that involves the problem of dealing with an addict coming out of an overdose. They can become agitated, even violent. After all, you just wrecked their high. Not everyone wants to, or is able to, deal with that.

And then there's the problem of Fentanyl contamination. Even the police and occasional EMT risk contamination and a possible overdose by coming in contact with an addict. Some freinds of mine almost lost their dog when she ran loose in a park, probably sniffed around some abandoned homeless gear in the bushes and collapsed.

@48: Correlation, by itself, does not imply causation. Struggle with that all that you like, but your claims @33 are not supported by the evidence.

Yes, you can cherry-pick generalizations from any data set, but the actual data in the report I cited clearly shows a minority of Seattle’s homeless respondents claiming to have most recently become homeless in Seattle; therefore, a majority arrived in Seattle already homeless. A minority claimed no drug use, so again, a majority used drugs. I know these facts inconveniently contradict your opinions, but that is your problem, not anyone else’s, and no basis for you to deliver condescending lectures from afar to Seattle’s citizens on a topic they deal with every day.

Seattle has tried to address a public-health problem amongst recent arrivals as if it was a housing-affordability issue amongst locals, and for seven years this approach — the approach you were hinting at — has failed completely. Persons who diagnosed the problem correctly at the beginning were shouted down and ignored. Little wonder Sir Toby’s unenlightened and belligerent takes on the issue now carry the day in Seattle.

@52: If you have a Seattle Public Library Card, you can read the NYT for free on-line.

Free is Great but
a buck a week
Ain't too bad
Princess A

& the nyt's Readers'
Comments pay for
Themselves.

@17 CKathes: I'd like to see fitting justice for the Orange Turd come by way of Nature.
Trump vehicles must the size of Sherman tanks in order to carry Der Gropenfuhrer's bulk, at 0.00000000001 mpg. I hope he drops like a rock in the rising Atlantic Ocean and that's the end of it.

I for one am really glad DeSantis gave all those migrants a free trip to Martha's Vineyard where they're safer.

@56: Safer and more employment opportunities as well. Martha's Vinyard residents probably don't do much of their own housekeeping or gardening.