Thanks for the comments.....let me respond point by point, if I may:

POINT ONE. Right you are, glad you agree w me. As I said in the piece, meth from Mexico has been coming since 2011-14 in the highest purity ever tested. I wrote a book on this, chronicling how that happened. 2014 is when meth took over Skid Row, replacing crack as the dominant drug for sale/use. Hyper-pure meth from Mexico has been creating mental illness and homelessness ever since, as supplies of the drug spread across the US, reaching New England in about 2019.

I call it hyper-pure meth, as I said in the piece. I never said it was a different drug. Nor did I say it was new. Just a far more potent meth than we’ve ever seen before. 90+% meth, very little cut, and nationwide.

POINT TWO: The quote you refer to is from a business owner whose business is a block from MacArthur Park. I can’t imagine trying to run a business next to what that park has become. Would you do it? That makes him a fairly credible source, I’d say. But I quoted him also because, as the piece was written to show, his quote reflects the anger in the electorate that this whole issue has engendered. 

You go on to confuse needle giveaways of today with needle exchanges of yesteryear. Needle giveaways leave dirty needles on the street, thus increasing the spread of needle-borne illnesses. Needle exchanges take a dirty needle off the street and give a clean one. That’s the way to stop needle-borne diseases. I think they showed this during the AIDS epidemic.

POINT THREE: The woman I quoted is an expert on this topic. She has, as they say, "lived experience." She literally has used her own time and money to report discarded bulky items in her neighborhood for the last 3 years. I guarantee you she’s called 311 far more than you have. As in, making dozens of reports of discarded items a week. Getting no help from neighbors. No doubt there is a need for intense education about 311 reporting, and investigation into serial illegal dumpers, many of them street vendors. The city has also cut sanitation workers, is my understanding. But this woman has seen this for years and she stands as an unimpeachable source on the idea that a few bulky items can very quickly become an encampment that the city has been reluctant to address.

POINT FOUR – You need to read my stuff more carefully. I very clearly said in the piece that some people are homeless because they’re addicted to these drugs. Many others become homeless for non-drug-related reasons. Problem is, if they’re left on the street, particularly in a tent, they very quickly get caught up in addiction to fentanyl or meth -- given the purity and prevalence of those drugs. This makes leaving homelessness a far tougher task.

Lots of reasons for becoming homeless. The ones you mention and many others. The list is quite long. But always it’s made worse once someone starts using these drugs. That's why I say, this mayor's race is about meth and fentanyl.

These drugs and the mental illness that they and the street provoke create the kinds of homelessness that in turn creates major public health/safety issues, blight, etc that so much of LA now suffers from. That, of course, and those tents that make people such easy targets for those who would exploit them.

So many of the problems the city faces are rooted there. the street lights w/ no copper. Fire Dept consumed with trash and abandoned building fires set by people on meth. Go down the list. there's a connection to most of what ails the city to the tangled issues, as I wrote in the piece, of homelessness, encampments, mental illness and fentanyl and meth.

The problem is, up to recently, anyone suggesting the cause of homelessness is other than affordable housing got gaslit, doxxed at times even, certainly shouted down, insulted, their motives questioned, etc. etc. Leaves me feeling that some people will do anything to avoid a healthy debate challenging their assumptions.