Los Angeles County has begun distributing pipes used for smoking crack, methamphetamine, and opioids to the homeless population, hoping to discourage them from overdosing by injecting themselves with fentanyl.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the grim phenomenon Tuesday, which has divided homeless advocates:

By a line of ragged RVs slung along 78th Street in South Los Angeles, a seven-member team passes out glass pipes used for smoking opioids, crack and methamphetamine.

Part of the front line of Los Angeles County’s offensive against the deadly fentanyl epidemic, the group hands out other supplies: clean needles, sanitary wipes, fentanyl test strips and naloxone, medication that can reverse an overdose.

…

Fentanyl, which is laced in everything from weed to heroin and meth, was present in more than half of the nearly 1,500 overdose deaths of homeless people in 2020-21. In response, Los Angeles County this year increased its harm reduction budget from $5.4 million to $31.5 million. Most of the money covers staffing and programs; officials said that only a fraction of county funds — no state or federal money— goes to pipes.

Some believe that the pipes merely facilitate addiction; others argue that they slow the rate of drug intake.

The risk in fentanyl overdoses is that addicts inject typically their entire supply of the drug in one sitting; smoking a drug takes longer and lowers the chance of an overdose, supporters of the pipe program say.

Elsewhere, the Times notes, new Mayor Karen Bass is struggling to beat homelessness. Some people agree to move into hotels under her Inside Safe program, but they are often replaced on the street. Others refuse to go.

As Breitbart News noted earlier this year, Bass set a goal upon taking office several months ago of removing 17,000 homeless people off the street — roughly 40% of the city’s homeless population — in her first year.

A man sits beside a tent on a street in downtown Los Angeles, California December 8, 2021. – The 2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in June 2020 revealed that 66,436 people in Los Angeles County are homeless, a rise of a 12.7% from the previous year, while the city of Los Angeles saw a 16.1% rise in the unhoused population to a total of 41,290 persons. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Anecdotally, she has had some success: the area around Venice Beach has fewer homeless people living in tents than it once did at the nadir of homelessness under Mayor Eric Garcetti. But the problem remains staggering.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.