Budgets demonstrate values and priorities and a majority on the Seattle City Council just sent a clear message that the police don’t matter.  The recently approved 2023 budget eliminated 80 unfilled police officer positions with no provisions for restaffing the severely depleted police department.  

But here’s what the City Council might decide is both a priority and worth funding: free money for drug addicts.

A recent audit by the City of Seattle Auditor Office reported that the number of fatal meth overdoses have increased from 96 in 2016 to 318 this year. The audit was done at the request of Councilmembers Andrew Lewis and Lisa Herbold.

Not surprisingly, the number of homeless deaths in the region are also at record highs, much of the time caused by drug overdose. It’s also not surprising that places like downtown Seattle have open drug markets where dealers and users can operate with impunity.

What may also not shock you (at this point) is what the city councilmembers are proposing to address the drug deaths.

Make Your Voice Heard!

Contact the entire City Council and tell them you’re opposed to giving out gift cards to drug addicts!

The auditor’s report describes the proposed program as “contingency management,” which sounds both innocuous and boring. But it’s effectively a system founded on the belief that giving people money will incentivize them to quit drug addiction. 

If implemented, a drug addict would have to go through a 12-week long process where they meet with a “practitioner,” i.e. a social worker twice a week. Drug tests would be administered at each meeting. If the test comes back negative, they receive a gift card or voucher. The amount of money would increase with each successive meeting.

But here’s the kicker.

According to the proposal “a missed appointment or a positive urine test will reset the reward back to the original amount.”

In other words, a drug addict could get their fix and still get money. Just not as much as they would have if they were sober.

The total amount a person could receive is $300. That’s not enough to incentivize someone to kick their drug habits permanently, but it’s enough to keep them sober until they qualify for a gift card they can cash in or trade for drugs.

 This is another case of the city missing the forest for the trees.

Homelessness is driven in large part by drug addiction. According to the 2021 Washington State Syringe Service Program Health Survey, 67 percent of drug users who participated in the survey said they had no long-term housing. Research clearly shows a strong correlation between mental illness and drug abuse.

Sorry, but $300 worth of gift cards or vouchers isn’t going to cure mental illness.

The issue with the mentally ill is that they do not respond to incentives the way a rational person does. That applies even more so if they’re drug addicts. They engage in destructive lifestyles and often refuse help when offered because it would require them to stay clean or they’re incapable of acting in their own best interests. 

They don’t need gift cards any more than they need clean needles or city-financed RV parks to live in. They need to be off the street and in permanent facilities where they can be monitored and receive long-term drug and mental health treatment. Those who are unwilling to accept a helping hand do not have the right to undermine the quality of life for others whose tax dollars would be used to finance this gift card program.

The long-term solution of investing in mental health facilities will no doubt cost money, but King County and Seattle have already squandered more than $1 billion on homelessness and yet the crisis remains. Spending more money isn’t an outcome, but better to restore mental health infrastructure than waste it on gift cards. And given recent revelations about yet another scandal at Western State Hospital, perhaps that’s a better place to start.

There needs to be more scrutiny and transparency around any group receiving tax dollars to address a public crisis. At the county-level, a convicted sex offender was recently found to be running a gun violence prevention program. Early this year a Seattle school district found a man they hired to do homeless outreach was pressuring people to sell him drugs; amazingly, no background check had been conducted before hiring him.

We need more metrics and goalposts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent effectively and the problems we hope to solve improve.

But ultimately the only way for this crisis to end is for elected officials tasked with addressing it to be held accountable for the results, or lack thereof. If voters demand meaningful results, elected officials can either be pragmatic about the situation or get replaced by someone else. 

That’s an incentive-based program that’s more likely to address the homelessness and drug overdose crisis than gift cards.

Contact the entire City Council and tell them you’re opposed to giving out gift cards to drug addicts!