White And Black Are The Same Color.

Heroin is kicking our ass.

California’s millennials continue to flood hospital emergency departments because of heroin, a trend that has increased steadily statewide and in Los Angeles and Orange counties over the past five years, according to the latest figures.

The state data released last week show that in the first three months of 2016, 412 adults age 20 to 29 went to emergency departments due to heroin. That’s double the number for the same time period in 2012.

I was with one of them. A friend from the other side of town. (I've acquired 'friends' doing bail that I would not have normally acquired...maybe that's why I like doing it? )
I remember the doc matter-of-factly advising them 'Stay away from the heroin' as he dug an abscess out of their arm. He didn't need to be told where it came from. He was seeing it too often as it was. (Friend is currently clean again.)

I was first exposed to heroin back in my sophomore year of high school.
An early  childhood buddy took to experiencing teen life the hard way.
He showed me how to cook and inject it (as he fixed himself up) and warned me 'you don't want this'.

He got help soon afterward.

I took his advice and stayed away from things that required needles. (Thanks, Dave!)


After that, heroin was largely easy for me to avoid... for the most part.
Basically, it was the topic of rock star biographies, and ghetto culture.
But not anymore.
As the article states, it has now invaded the better families in the better neighborhoods.

Black Tar Heroin (or just 'Black' on the streets) is lower grade and rather cheap to acquire (as opposed to the China White, that Dave had that day) and has taken California and the Southwest by storm. It all comes from across the southern border with Mexico.
All of it.
Black is everywhere.
So much so, that even I, a non-user, know where I can get hooked- up if wanted to. Probably within one hour of making a phone call.


And... this is where shit gets personal for me...
Last year, the grandson of a long-time friend of 'The Ex' died from an overdose. Brandon was 26.
Six months before that, the neighbor across the street also lost her grandson to a heroin overdose. Seth was 22.
But why? How?
I don't live in a ghetto, and my friends are not in the music business.
Seth's grandfather is a retired, 20yr career United States Marine, from the Vietnam era.. who still takes no shit from nobody.
I'm not talking about the dregs of society.
Decent kids, from solid families.

I had some acquaintance with both of these young men. They were not bad people. These were not born losers. They were both talented, energetic, respectful and charming kids, always looking for full-time work (there isn't much around), but found the wrong way to deal with their idle time and were lost to heroin.
(hmmm... maybe if they had a factory job to show up to, they would have been too busy, and tired, to find other things to amuse them?  Idle hands are the Devil's tools. Yes, they are.)

We need to secure the border.
We need to bring gainful employment for our youth back to our land.
Or maybe... your family might be next in line to lose one whom cannot be replaced?

Donald Trump was the only candidate from either party to address the effects of the heroin epidemic on our youth.
He was the only one who promised to restore a proper border to our land.
He was the only one to acknowledge the weeping of families forever devastated by trade and border policies that only favor the upper 20%.
He was the only one who even pretended to care about all of the American people.

For all of his faults and shortcomings, Donald J Trump was the only one on the ballot who deserved to be on that ballot.

This is why he is our President today.

Viva Trump...
God willing.