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February 13, 2022

White House crack pipe distribution denials fall apart

By Monica Showalter

The White House has been furiously denying that the Biden administration would even dream of handing out crack pipes to addicts in the name of 'racial equity.'

The scrambling came following the Washington Free Beacon's Feb. 7 report that the Biden administration was handing out 'safe smoking kits' to NGOs to distribute to drug addicts for a claimed purpose of 'harm reduction.' 

The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for "smoking kits/supplies." A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and "any illicit substance."

HHS said the kits aim to reduce the risk of infection when smoking substances with glass pipes, which can lead to infections through cuts and sores. Applicants for the grants are prioritized if they treat a majority of "underserved communities," including African Americans and "LGBTQ+ persons," as established under President Joe Biden's executive order on "advancing racial equity."

When news of that hit the airwaves, the Department of Health and Human Services furiously declared the whole Beacon report 'blatant misinformation.' White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki called it "inaccurate reporting" and claimed that crack pipes were "never a part" of the 'safe smoking kits.' The Biden administration said that "no federal funding" would be used for such things. Then the mainstream media and the 'fact-checking' outfits jumped on, declaring the Beacon story wrong, false, a lie...  

But the preponderance of the evidence says that that's exactly what they were doing and probably will continue to do once the flak dies down.

The Washington Free Beacon wrote out a powerful rebuttal of this administration bid to discredit its reporting (language warning), citing multiple factors.

One was the response of the NGOs who were actually planning to distribute these 'safe smoking kits':

The Drug Policy Alliance was also confused, and understandably so. The group's executive director, Kassandra Frederique, accused the administration of "backtracking" and expressed disappointment that "they will no longer allow federal funding to go towards putting pipes in safer smoking supplies."

Got that? The administration "will no longer" provide free crack pipes that "were never a part" of the taxpayer-funded smoking kits. Because the right-wing media are publishing "inaccurate reporting" and spreading "blatant disinformation." It's almost as if the White House is full of shit and thinks you're stupid. (Fact check: They are and they do.)

Another was a curious omission to a New York Times reporter's query:

Even after the White House denial that crack pipes will be funded, the administration still won't say it never planned to include them. "The department did not respond when asked by the New York Times if glass pipes were ever allowable under the grant provisions," the paper wrote on Thursday evening.

The big one, of course, is that 'harm reduction kits' have been around for years, and they've always included these crack pipes (and syringes and needles) in these 'safe smoking kits.' A loophole in federal law actually permits it. The idea has been to prevent junkies from getting secondary staph and septic infections as they pursue their suicidal habit. 

A website called 'The Dispatch' (it seems to be a bunch of NeverTrumps) pointed out the reason why there would be crack pipes in such kits:

Crack cocaine, as opposed to powder cocaine, is smoked rather than snorted. Some users use glass pipes manufactured for the purpose; others improvise pipes from aluminum cans or plastic or glass bottles, a habit that the Harm Reduction Journal has said often leads to “oral sores, cuts, and burns.” (last link added)

Junkies can inhale their crack out of broken Coke bottles and get cut and infected from the detritus. Therefore, the logic of providing clean crack pipes to drug addicts would make sense, at least to leftist NGOs. It's the same logic as that of providing clean needles and syringes to heroin and meth addicts, who get infections from passing needles around to each other.

The story gets interesting when we learn that these very NGOs were outraged by the Biden administration's declaration that "no federal funds" would be used to bankroll the "free" crack pipes:

The Drug Policy Alliance accused HHS of “backtracking on providing critical evidence-based resources that could greatly improve the health of people who consume drugs through smoking.” The administration, it suggested, had simply buckled under a few days of bad press: “Health policy must be driven by evidence, not dictated by clickbait.” 

That's because they expected crack pipes to be included in these kits.

While the government had not actually confirmed that pipes would be included in the kits in its communications with the Washington Free Beacon, there’s a reason that was an easy inference for Hauf to make. There was every public health reason to believe that pipes would be included; even the organizations intending to apply for the grants were under the impression they would be. “It would seem pointless to distribute these kits without” pipes, a DPA spokesman told the Washington Post, since they “are the main part of the smoking kit to prevent the transmission of disease.” 

Hear that? The NGOs who applied for the grants expected the crack pipes to be in the kits. Now they're furious to hear they won't be. Because as this tweet shows, they normally do:

These pipes, by the way, come pretty cheap, way cheaper than the price of the actual crack that junkies pay for, as this Twitterer observes:

The Dispatch blames the whole mess on the Biden administration being unnaturally obsessed with negative Fox News coverage, which could have some truth to it, given the Biden administration's obsession with 'optics' over substance.

But Fox was not the first to be on this outrage, a grassroots surge from Twitter, which contributed these reactions, some of them very hilarious, was what was behind it -- many of these went out faster than any Fox reportage:

It's the voice of the Heartland and it went out because the Biden administration has no credibility whatsoever. The amazing creative juices shown here demonstrate just how morally bankrupt and out of the mainstream the Biden administration is, and ultimately led to this Biden tale of denial to fall apart. Notice the striking exposure of the hypocrisy, racism, and double standards of these Bidenites and their bid to hand out free drug paraphernalia to junkies. Now the Bidenites have yet another mess on their hands, as of Ukraine, Afghanistan, inflation, violent crime, the border surge, the supply chain fiasco, Biden's sentience, and other disasters aren't enough.

They dropped themselves into this, getting effectively caught lying, and enraging their NGO allies. Good luck sorting that one out, Jen, the claim is falling apart. Word is overwhelmingly out that the Biden administration is bankrolling crack pipes for junkies instead of taking care of the United States of America.

Image: @BensGlassArt Twitter screen shot

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