Mayor Rex Parris reportedly suggested providing homeless individuals with the lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl as a solution to vagrancy.
The Los Angeles Times reports that a Southern California mayor is facing criticism for suggesting Lancaster could solve its homelessness problem by giving vagrants “all the fentanyl they want.” The US is currently struggling with a major opioid crisis.
Fentanyl, initially created for severe pain relief, is significantly stronger than heroin (50 times) and morphine (100 times).
Illicit fentanyl has saturated the US drug supply, leading to over 74,000 American deaths in 2023 from drug combinations containing the substance, according to the CDC. This figure is almost double the number of traffic fatalities and more than triple the reported homicides in the same year.
The controversy surrounding Mayor Rex Parris of Lancaster, California, arose during a February city council meeting. A resident was criticizing the city’s plan to confine homeless individuals to an abandoned golf course near a residential area, the LA Times reported on Sunday.
Footage from the meeting shows Parris interrupting the woman to say, “what I want to do is give them free fentanyl.”
“I mean, that’s what I want to do. I want to give them all the fentanyl they want.”
The resident responded to the Republican mayor’s comment by saying it “was not kind.”
Parris, mayor since 2008, told FOX LA on Friday he has no “regrets” about his comments. He clarified that he was referring to homeless individuals involved in crime who “refuse” help, and he repeated his position on giving them the highly addictive and often deadly opioid.
“I made it very clear I was talking about the criminal element that were let out of the prisons that have now become 40 to 45% of what’s referred to as the homeless population,” Parris told the outlet.
He further claimed, without providing supporting evidence or data, that “They are responsible for most of our robberies, most of our rapes, and at least half of our murders.”
Parris added that he didn’t expect his comments to be taken “literally,” arguing that fentanyl is “so easy” to find on the streets that providing it for free wouldn’t change anything.
Parris concluded, “Quite frankly, I wish that the president would give us a purge. Because we do need to purge these people.”
In 2013, Parris made headlines for proposing a Buddhist temple to attract Chinese investment. In 2018, he garnered attention for advocating a ban on neckties in the workplace, citing studies linking them to decreased blood flow to the brain.
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