October 8, 2024

Dear Editor,

City Manager David White, backed by his chief City Council enablers -– Jesse Zwick and Gleam Davis –- continue to permit County Health Czar Barbara Ferrer to conduct the absurd program of distribution drug paraphernalia, including dangerous breakable glass and needles with potentially deadly fentanyl residue particles in our parks (primarily Reed Park at Wilshire and Lincoln Blvd and Palisades Park, both city landmarks).

They do so under the absurd premise that they are ‘saving’ lives of drug users by distributing ‘clean’ paraphernalia. Of course, with utter disregard of the potential threat to the lives of greater society that uses the park –- and especially our city’s children. And over protest of what appears to be an overwhelming opinion of the majority of the population and certainly those that live in and around the Parks.

And the “clean” argument is preposterous on its face; anyone familiar with drug use knows that if the user “needs a fix”, the user will reuse Ferrer’s once originally clean needles.

Ferrer, White, Zwick, Davis & Company their continuing contribution to a major threat to public safety reminds one of words of the eloquent liberal essayist, Randolph Bourne, who in a 1917 essay stated:

“The true Puritan is at once the most selfish and the self-righteous of men. To the true Puritan the beauty of unselfishness lies in his being able to enforce it on others. He loves virtue not for much of its own sake as for its being an instrument of terror.”

Kip Dellinger

Santa Monica