Emergen-zzz

Breaking news! The head of the Multnomah County commission, Jessica Chevy Vega, is about to declare a 90-day fentanyl emergency. Oh, but it's not going to be like all the other emergencies. No sir, this time it's going to be a "tri-government emergency." Take that, you bad old fentanyl!

The plan includes developing a central city command center and combining resources from the community, public health, and law enforcement.

At the county level, the chair and health department director are also calling for addiction and recovery service providers to work together.

Where have these people been the last two years? They're just noticing the "emergency" now, and setting up the deck chairs?

Oregon needs drug addiction treatment beds, mental illness treatment beds, shelter beds, and jail beds. And capable people to staff them all. It's a moonshot that would cost billions. And we need to recriminalize hard drug possession in a way that will give the police a chance to force some people into treatment.

Instead, the bobbleheads, including those in the legislature in Salem, will use the "emergency" as an excuse to subsidize more housing projects that the addicts aren't fit to live in (and many never will be). Bad apartments are the politicians' solution to every problem.

But getting back to the "emergency," what, pray tell, will happen at the end of the 90 days? By then the equity and planning committees will have held only six or eight meetings, hardly enough time to get through the facilitator's icebreakers and get the website bios up.