In the immortal words of the late and great Jimmy Cannon, no one asked me but …
The politics of opioid abuse: Don’t get me wrong. This problem is real, tragic and widespread, here and across the nation. Opioids were connected to 42,000 deaths in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The president and Congress want to throw billions of taxpayer dollars to stem it. Who can argue against it? Well, I could now go off on the reasons why this crisis, compared to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s, is looked upon, talked about or presented as more a public health crisis than a criminal justice one. 
As Washington Post commentator and fellow baby boomer Ed Stetzer aptly characterized it: “Sure, I’m a few decades older and have learned some things, but it’s worth noting what crack meant to us. It meant black street crime. Today, what the opioid epidemic means for many of us: Whites need treatment. Yet, today there is the same amount of crime and addiction as there were three decades ago.”
True that. Hopefully, we’ve learned our mistakes from the way we responded to the crack cocaine problem. But it appears meth — a relatively recent drug scourge — has been all but forgotten, a reality highlighted by a recent New York Times article.
“Xanax is king right now, and meth appears to be creeping back up,” Michael Durschlag, executive director of Pease Academy, a Twin Cities-based alternative high school for recovering students, told me nearly a year ago.
“There is a lot of money tied to combating the opioid epidemic,” he shared this week. “It’s getting harder and harder to access services if it’s not prescription opioids and/or heroin. Depending on the funding stream and its stipulations it has to be a certain percentage of those you treat/serve are opioid addicts or all of them.
“On the more positive side, because of the so-called opioid epidemic, substance use disorder as a disease is getting a lot more attention, press, and legislative action,” he added.
A substantial portion of these drugs are indeed flowing north and peddled by Mexican drug cartels. Now, we can build a southern wall to the heavens and continue to lock up folks, both traffickers and users. But unless we stifle demand, there will be entrepreneurs both domestic or overseas who will be there to supply the need. And with all this, let’s not forget that alcohol abuse accounts for more societal devastation and costs than any other substance abuse problem, yet gets a pass because it is legal. The problem lies in a human need in too many of us to find a way to escape or self-medicate away our pains, our problems and our struggles, both internal and external. I’m hardly immune to this. I’ve had my binge drinking bouts. I hope we will find a way out of this someday.
Ice, Ice Castle Baby: I’m talking here about the ice castle, the St. Paul Winter Carnival and the Torchlight Parade. I could not find parking anywhere near Rice Park last Saturday and there was a side of me that frankly liked it. Downtown streets clogged with traffic and throngs of pedestrians. What a sight. Why? Well, I like to see big crowds in the Saintly City. And I was stunned — given the cold temps — at the number of folks who bundled themselves and their clans and came down to join in the festivities.
It was reported this week that more than a half-million people visited Rice Park and the seven-story ice palace towering over festivities during the extended 132nd St. Paul Winter Carnival.
I confess I wimped out. I parked quite a number of blocks from the festivities and waited until my loved ones called me to go pick them up. I had seen, but they had not, the seven-story castle before — impressive but not as majestic or interactive as the one erected several years ago, or during the 1992 Super Bowl week. I’m not warm at all to standing out in the bitter cold to watch anything. I did when my kids were wide-eyed and scooped up the thrown candy along the parade route or got tattooed by the Vulcans. But now they are grown and disinterested and my bones rattle a bit more with the chilly weather.
But, while waiting, I ran those images on my still-operable VHS film brain memory bank and smiled. I imagined how that castle looked to a child for the first time, how it looked to my own kids decades ago. Sure, it might be a bit hokey to some. But celebrations like these are what make the Saintly City special and distinctive.
I’m sure I’ll miss it when I retire and open up that tiki bar in Fiji or some other tropical site someday.
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