Ever notice how once in a while, you see something that makes you stop and go, "Wait, what?" 

Just such a case is a southern California mayor, R. Rex Parris, who is the mayor of a town called Lancaster. Mayor Parris has proposed a novel solution to the  homelessness problem: Giving the homeless "all the fentanyl they want."

A Southern California mayor is under fire for wanting to eliminate his city’s homeless population by giving them “all the fentanyl they want” — a shocking remark he reinforced by calling for a federal “purge.”

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris shared his controversial views during a Feb. 25 city council meeting when a resident took issue with the city’s attempt to address the homeless crisis by “enclosing” the unhoused at an abandoned golf course near a residential neighborhood.

“What I want to do is give them free fentanyl,” Parris said as he interrupted the woman’s comments, according to footage of the meeting.

Now, this is an idea that we have to say is a little... unhinged. It appears to be one of those cases where someone opened their mouth before engaging their brain; we've all been guilty of that at one time or another. And Mayor Parris appears to be walking that statement back some.

Parris, who’s been mayor since 2008, has no “regrets” about wanting to give homeless people the highly addictive, often lethal opioid, telling FOX LA in an interview Friday that he was referring to unhoused criminals who “refuse” to be helped.

“I made it very clear I was talking about the criminal element that were let out of the prisons that have now become 40 to 45% of what’s referred to as the homeless population,” Parris told the outlet.

“They are responsible for most of our robberies, most of our rapes, and at least half of our murders,” he added, without offering proof or data to support his claims. “There’s nothing that we can do for these people.”

Parris added that he didn’t think anyone would take his comments “literally,” explaining that fentanyl is “so easy” to get on the streets that it wouldn’t have made a difference if the city gave it away for free.

That, folks, is some Richter-scale obfuscating right there.

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He makes a point, of course, about fentanyl being far too readily available, and not just in California. 

The larger point, though, is that California and, indeed, all of the United States have not only a drug abuse problem but a mental health problem. It's not clear what these issues are costing Lancaster, California, but the problems of mental health, drug abuse, and homelessness are all conjoined, and for decades now, we have been pouring great big dump-truck loads of cash on the problem without solving anything. While this idea is, frankly, crazy, it is time for a new approach - an approach that, one way or another, gets these people off the streets, under control, dried out, cleaned up, and productive. We've tried the "housing first" approach, we've tried the "work first" approach, it's time for the "sobriety first, whether you like it or not" approach.

That has to be done - voluntarily or not.

The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.

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