With Friends Like These?

June 24, 2026

Start Date: May 31, 2026

In a previous post “You Gotta Have Friends” [1] I wrote about the, perhaps disproportionate, effort given to finding out who provided ketamine to Matthew Perry, resulting in his accidental drowning. Given his four decade history of substance abuse and near death hospitalizations, it is hard to know what his future held. But it is true that regulations for controlled substances were violated.

I asked in that post about whether such attention would be given to the proverbial “average Joe” who gets a lethal substance provided by illegal networks. Your neighbor’s kid won’t make the evening news. If you are not “somebody” there isn’t much pressure to apply.

But then think of the most anonymous of drug related deaths.

The homeless.

Homeless people die every day on the streets of Los Angeles. Some politicians will tell you a fairy tale about how they got there. But the medical examiner has the more clear-eyed answer. The leading cause of death of the homeless is overdose [2]. Others die in traffic situations while incoherently wandering the streets. There are deaths due to heart failure from poor health conditions that come with long term substance abuse.

Very recently there was a case of a former child star seen emaciated in a tent or RV on skid row. She died shortly after from a combination of malnutrition, system failure, and sepsis. Her agent confirmed that family were trying to find her and that she had millions of dollars in residual checks. She had not accessed them as she was too far gone in her addiction to heroin and fentanyl [3]. It was addiction, not poverty, that led her to the streets.

Whether these people can be saved is unknown but removing the drug supplies would be a good start.

The people who were prosecuted with regard to Mr. Perry’s death were charged for enabling his drug use [4]. They were said to have helped acquire and/or inject him with ketamine.

You probably haven’t seen as much effort applied to getting justice for the death of a skid row addict. How much is it that no one cares and how much is wanting to cover up who assisted these lost souls with their fatal injection?

Sadly in many CA cities the enabler of drug use is the city itself. The government uses millions of your tax dollars to pay organizations to set up shop in skid row and hand out needles, syringes, foil, pipes, and pretty much anything to facilitate drug use [5].

Why?

They say it is “Harm Reduction” to avoid disease.

These people have a disease. It is the disease of addiction. It is more likely to kill them imminently than any other disease. The NGO “social workers” may not perform the actual injection but in San Francisco they have been providing alcohol to alcoholics [6] and in Los Angeles users admit to selling the free crack pipes to buy more drugs [5]. These social welfare providers are, at minimum, doing the equivalent of giving the car keys to a drunk driver, and at most giving him more booze as well.

Morally they would seem to be every bit as guilty as those convicted for Mr. Perry’s death. The fatal overdose. The fentanyl laced drug. They make it possible. Even the collateral damage to the innocent residents and legitimate workers in the area who are surrounded by addicts, disposed needles, and dealers who know where the customers reconnoiter.

As long as the addicts remain addicted there will be multi-million dollar contracts for “Harm Reduction.” They have the same situation as Mr. Perry’s enablers. They keep the addict addicted, even if just barely surviving. Unlike the situation with Mr. Perry, they can help kill their clients and move on to the next batch without fear of consequences. They, more than anyone, know that when a street person dies, using the paraphernalia they provided, no major investigation will hold them accountable.

Surely the 10’s of millions of dollars used to help inject the poisons could instead be spent on rehabilitation services. Applying existing laws could provide an opportunity to mandate serious treatment. Full recovery is never guaranteed, but the existing policy is a guarantee of failure.

Matthew Perry’s doctors had one extremely wealthy customer. The taxpayer funded enablers of street addicts have an endless supply of victims.