Relax Commuters, a Study Says Crackheads Smoking Drugs in Buses and Trains Aren't a Health Hazard. We Have Questions.

Are you getting more than a ride when taking mass transit? A new study says there are hard drugs in the air and on surfaces of your commuter buses and trains. But the researchers say you can relax because everything is “perfectly safe.”

We have questions.

Recently, we were told by Seattle area public health officials that there’s no harm from second-hand smoke from hard drugs – fentanyl, meth, crack – smoked on the buses and trains. The concern began with drivers worried about being poisoned. Drivers were also worried about driving the public while unintentionally high.

Crackheads routinely disrupt transit riders.

TriMet MAX trains have likely accumulated hundreds of hours of delays over the last year due to “passenger issues” caused by riders smoking or suspected of smoking fentanyl and other illicit drugs, a review of public records found.https://t.co/cru5eMAF2X

— KATU News (@KATUNews) March 15, 2023

These are perfectly normal concerns if you live in places where drug addicts are welcome to smoke up in public such as Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. These cities literally give out drug paraphernalia. In San Francisco, officials considered procuring drugs for addicts, that’s how nuts this is getting.

So kudos to the University of Washington School of Public Health for undertaking a research project to test the air and surfaces of Seattle and Portland commuter trains and buses to find out how saturated with drugs they are. And they are.

Researchers detected methamphetamine in 98% of surface samples and 100% of air samples, while fentanyl was detected in 46% of surface and 25% of air samples. One air sample exceeded federal recommendations for airborne fentanyl exposure at work established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. No similar guidelines exist for airborne methamphetamine.

The researchers worked with the biggest transit agencies in Washington and in Portland, Oregon on the lines with the most drug complaints by riders and drivers. They took 78 air samples and 102 surface samples over 28 nights in the spring and early summer of this year.

In summary, drug addicts prefer meth to fentanyl and prefer to smoke it. Meth was in the air 100% of the time from the buses and trains in their sampling, while fentanyl was in the air 25% of the time. Meth was also on nearly 100% of surfaces compared to fentanyl 46% of the time.

Maybe there’s less fentanyl present because so many of the people using it on the street have died of overdoses. “This year alone, almost 500 people have died this year from methamphetamine overdose in King County,” reported Fox 13 News. “More than 700 people have died from a fentanyl overdose,” the news outlet reported. Indeed, that’s not just a disgrace, it’s a public health concern.

But the head of King County Public Health, Dr. Faisal Khan says commuters and drivers are “perfectly safe” even with all the crackheads onboard. He told the Fox outlet that, “From the public health perspective, risk is minimal to negligible both to operators as well as riders. Once again, Metro and transit vehicles are perfectly safe.”

You’ve got to appreciate the fine line walked by public health officials who on one hand must convince commuters that boarding the train full of fentanyl is “perfectly safe,” but advised masking up while you’re outside during COVID. You can see the problem that one might have with the messaging here.

But Dr. Khan soldiered on. “Public health works hand in glove with our transit colleagues,” he assured a reporter, “to advise them on cleaning protocols, air filtration protocols, and the protocols that they currently have in place about cleaning and air filtration standards are more than adequate to take care of any residual elements.”

This issue is somewhat comical — in a rueful way — to those of us who watched decades of Gumby-like public health officials twisting in one way to warn Americans of deadly second-hand smoke — of tobacco — and now twisting in another declaring that second-hand meth smoke is no big deal. One might be inclined to believe there’s more politics than science going on here.

UW Public Health researcher and Assistant Professor Marissa Baker says poison comes down to intent, apparently. “Even folks who use these drugs recreationally are not taking it with the goal of overdosing,” she told a reporter. “So it would be very unlikely that there would be enough secondhand that could cause an overdose to anybody.” Well, that’s a relief.

It’s not clear if the reporter asked a question about overdosing versus simply getting high or even poisoned from touching or breathing in the stuff, but that’s the answer she offered.

“Even at a level that is considered ‘safe,’ it can still be stressful to see drug use in your workplace,” Baker said of the drivers confronted by this every day. She advises longer-term studies of the issue.

We have questions. Not too long ago, public health officials ogling the lucre from the legal tobacco extortion wars warned of “deadly” second-hand smoke. How is tobacco or vape smoke a public health hazard, while smoking fentanyl is OK?

How are the filtration systems on buses and trains “more than adequate” to filter out crack smoke from your lungs, but the superior filtration systems on planes were inadequate during COVID? According to the numbers we found at NIH, meth airborne particles are (in micrometers) 1 µm – 2.5 µm, and COVID particles are 0.07 μm to 0.09 μm, or much smaller.

They’ve only recently been forced to publicly acknowledge that, yeah, weed smoke isn’t good for your lungs. And they say nearly nothing about getting a contact high on the streets of Portland. What about that secondhand weed smoke? We found a study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse saying it was de minimis.

In the woke Pacific Northwest, where this drug research was done, politically correct drugs are embraced by all factions of government — public health included. Indeed, Washington state is considering making magic mushrooms legal and has already decriminalized all those drugs they’re finding on the buses and trains. When weed was legalized, these public health officials said their jobs were to offer ideas on how to keep drugs away from kids and pregnant women and make things more equitable, not that this was a ridiculous idea. That’s another way of saying they followed orders, saluted smartly, and marched up the hill — just like UW and public health officials did during the politically incorrect COVID.

Watch and see.

To the left, the facts and opinions just delivered in this story shouldn’t be allowed. Indeed, Big Tech, at the behest of Democrats, has been preventing you from seeing our brand of opinion journalism for years now. They’re trying to starve us into compliance — or non-existence. PJ Media has been censored, disappeared, thrashed, and throttled by social media companies at the behest of political Leftists. It’s wrong and un-American.

That’s where you come in. Are you sick of this yet?

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