One big failure of the liberals who came to Philadelphia for Netroots Nation: ignoring the issue of overdose deaths | Editorial

Last week, Philadelphia hosted Netroots Nation, one of the largest political meetings of progressives in the country. Over three days, in dozens of panels and trainings, more than 3,000 activists, organizers, and politicians discussed everything from the best technology to connect with potential voters to the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, criminal justice reform, and foreign policy.

Everything except the overdose crisis.

During the three days, not a single panel, training, or even question in a keynote rose about preventing overdose death. During the same three days of Netroots, like every three days on average, more than 500 people died nationwide from a drug overdose — 36 of them in Pennsylvania, 9 in Philadelphia.

According to new research also released last week from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the number of people in Pennsylvania who died of drug overdose decreased by 18 percent between 2017 and 2018. Still, the state loses about 12 people every day to an overdose.

Aside from occasional lip service acknowledgment that “addiction is a disease” or calls to hold big pharma accountable, liberals confirmed the impression last week that the left has abdicated its responsibility for the suffering and death of people in addiction and the impact on families and communities.

The conference culminated with a presidential candidate forum. None of the four candidates in attendance — Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee — were asked a single question about the overdose crisis. As a warm up to the forum, Mayor Jim Kenney and Councilmember Helen Gym spoke, representing Philadelphia as a progressive’s utopia. Neither mentioned overdose deaths, which claimed the lives of more than 1,100 Philadelphians last year.

When The Inquirer asked Inslee and Castro if they support supervised injection sites, neither had an answer. Warren has introduced the CARE Act to funnel more resources — $100 billion over 10 years — to addiction treatment. Yet, it comes short from grappling with how drugs (legal or illicit) are regulated.

Overdose deaths are often lumped with other issues such as health care, criminal justice reform, or marijuana legalization. But the current crisis is driven by bad policies — ones that make providing efficacious treatment hard (if not impossible) and whose enforcement strategies pushes the illicit drug supply to be more dangerous.

In the afternoon of the last day of the conference, two Philadelphia-based harm reduction activists hosted an informal overdose reversal training and distribution of naloxone, an opioid antidote, in the hallway of the Convention Center. Only a handful of people showed interest.

There is still a long time until the Pennsylvania Democratic primary in the end of April 2020. A few months after the primary will be the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon signing into law the Controlled Substances Act. Half a century after, with 70,000 overdose deaths a year, it is clear that we require a different regulatory path.

Presidential elections allow us to debate big ideas and new solutions — and in this cycle many candidates allow themselves to reimagine the system. So where are the big ideas on how we regulate drugs and prevent overdose deaths?