Who’s in Charge? City Journal Podcast

Charles Fain Lehman, Ilya Shapiro, Carolyn Gorman, and John Ketcham discuss the federalization of the D.C. police under the Trump administration and what it signals for local governance in the nation’s capital. They explore New York City’s controversial proposal for involuntary commitment of individuals with substance-use problems, raising critical questions about civil liberties and public safety. The panel also examines the broader atmosphere of disorder in New York City and ponders the surprising rise in alcohol abstention among young Americans.

Audio Transcript

---

Charles Fain Lehman: Welcome back to the City Journal Podcast. I’m your host Charles Fain Lehman, a senior editor at City Journal. Joining me on the panel today are Ilya Shapiro, responsible for all things constitution and law at the Manhattan Institute. Carolyn Gorman, responsible for all things mental health and mental illness at the Manhattan Institute. And perennial attendee and guest, you’ve been on a lot recently, John, John Ketcham, responsible for all things cities at the Manhattan Institute. Thank you all for joining me.

Ilya Shapiro: Are we releasing a book called “The Manhattan Institute”? You mention it so often, that’s something that publicists tell you to do with your new book. But people tune in probably are aware of our institution, but anyway.

Charles Fain Lehman: I, you know, I got to, it’s somewhere. There’s a close connection between City Journal and Manhattan Institute. They’re related to each other. I want to take us into the news. We were off on Thursday, so we haven’t done follow-up on this. We were off on Thursday for an event that we’ll talk about in a little bit, but I want to talk about, a little bit more about Trump’s takeover of the police in D.C., the collective meltdown that that has occasioned, whether or not it’s actually working.

Listeners may remember from last Monday, we recorded just as Trump announced his plan. So John saw into the present that was happening in parallel to us expecting the takeover of MPD. The Trump administration has federalized D.C.’s police department. They’ve also deployed a variety of national guardsmen, other federal law enforcement officers to patrol the district. Most recently, Stephen Miller said they’re going to start clearing out all of the graffiti in D.C. There’s been some homeless encampment clearance. I think there’s a lot of debate over A), is there a real crime problem in D.C.?

Ilya Shapiro: Every generation needs to rediscover broken windows policing apparently.

Charles Fain Lehman: Apparently. No, so yeah, so let me ask A), what do we think? I want to talk about the reaction first because I think there’s been a great deal of Sturm und Drang from the press about this: A), the claim is that isn’t crime is not an issue in D.C.; B), crime is an issue but they’re doing it wrong; C), this is a fascist coup. What do we make of these arguments? Ilya seems to be in the fascist coup camp.

Ilya Shapiro: Look, I’m across the river here in Virginia. I go into D.C. every now and again. It’s a different city than when I lived there from ‘04 to ‘14, which I think is its real golden era. Anthony Williams and his successor, Adrian Fenty, it’s gone downhill in a whole host of ways. Social services, policing, what have you. You know, I’m very open to the idea that home rule needs to be repealed or at least suspended because the governance is bad. Well, for broader purposes, I’d like most of D.C. retroceded back to Maryland, but that’s a broader discussion. And I think the president here, look, we’re very much about federalism, very much about limits, constitutional limits on power, but this is D.C. This is not Trump federalizing the police of New York or Chicago or some of this is the federal district. And I think it’s important, even if crime is lower than it was at a very high level two years ago, it’s still a problem. And even though those in the northwest of D.C., where there is less crime, the kind of the extreme left are out demonstrating and calling it this fascist coup, those in Anacostia and in other higher crime neighborhoods seem to be more positive about the show of force.

John Ketcham: We could be in favor of federalism, that’s fine, but we have to remember that there is a higher authority as well, not just the lower. So if jurisdictions, you know, at the lower level of municipalities, counties, et cetera, don’t get their act together, then it is incumbent on the higher level of government to step in and take corrective action. And the threat of that, I think, will impel municipalities to do a better job in governing, especially in getting crime down.

There is a principal stance here, even if we extend this to the state level and say, hey cities, if you aren’t going to take the steps necessary to get crime to manageable, reasonable levels, the state might come in and do some of that work for you, or at least, you know, like nudge you along the way. I think that’s entirely consistent with federalism, even if all things equal, we would prefer that not to happen and for localities to do a better job.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Even when we have state takeovers, they don’t always go well. So I’m sort of wary about that. But John, you actually had a really useful piece in City Journal last week, I think. I think it was last week that really spelled out sort of whose responsibility is for what. And those responsibilities are sort of ambiguous and create almost like a circle of finger pointing like, well, this is your fault, this is your fault, between the federal government and the D.C. government. And that ambiguity just like totally kills accountability. And so I just think that that’s really problematic here.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, you do have this weird dual sovereign situation or like that being the idea…

Ilya Shapiro: Not so much in D.C. Again, D.C. is a federal district, constitutionally speaking. Congress passed the Home Rule Act 50 years ago in the 70s, which grants D.C. autonomy and self-governance, but it could repeal it at various times. And there are these provisions over federal control of police among other services. I mean, look, I am a strong believer in constitutional checks and balances, obviously, but this is not like a federal takeover of the NYPD or sending in the National Guard into Los Angeles. Nor, for that matter, is it like a state, say the state of Illinois says Chicago is broken down and we want to put all Chicago PD under state control. Different sort of situation.

Charles Fain Lehman: I think, I think, well, okay, so, so, but I think what John is saying, what I think is an interesting point of disagreement is, if Illinois wanted to come in and put Chicago under its control, it varies by state, but there are many states in which that’s true. Utah, all the cities in Utah are creatures of the state legislature, much the same way that D.C. is a creature of the federal government. The city of Salt Lake City could be abolished tomorrow, I have been told by people in Utah state government.

Similarly, there are things that the federal government can do in big cities. So like, there’s now, I believe, Trump-appointed prosecutor in Southern District of New York, the U.S. attorney there who prosecutes federal crimes in New York City. That person can, in many contexts, just sort of go in and take over cases that Alvin Bragg doesn’t want to pick up, the progressive prosecutor in Manhattan. This is a model that we saw happen last time around in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is where Philadelphia is, where the progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner didn’t want to prosecute and McSwain, the prosecutor there, the federal prosecutor there stepped in and handled a bunch of his cases for him. So, you know I think part of what’s interesting to me here is this gets the sort of core federalism thing where the left wants to sort of claim federalism when it’s useful for them, when they can say you know orange man bad federalism good, but what I actually think this is an effective model for what red legislators can do for blue cities. And indeed, what the feds can do in other jurisdictions, they can’t federalize the NYPD, but like, you know, if we have a crime problem in New York in a couple of years, there are things the prosecutors, the federal prosecutors can do that they aren’t currently doing.

And this is part of this, last point, this is part of this like sort of Trump administration posture that I’m curious about people’s take on, which is like, we’re not just going to sort of sit by the sidelines and defer to local authority if we see a problem that we define as a problem we’re step in as aggressively as possible. There’s this Steven Cheung quote, who works for the White House, you know, culture is no longer downstream of politics, in the Trump administration, politics is downstream of culture like that you know that aggressiveness…

Ilya Shapiro: No, that’s alright, but I do want to emphasize the uniqueness of D.C., this federal district. The only thing that might be comparable is territorial rule or something like the Virgin Islands or Guam or whatever. But the federal district especially, there’s a hearing yesterday because D.C. sued over this takeover. And they’re kind of quibbling around the margins, but even the Biden-appointed D.C. district judge was, you know, they’re trying to tailor Attorney General Bondi’s order in terms of exactly how the authorities lie. But there’s clearly lines of demarcation that the federal government can come in just because of the constitutional authority over D.C. and the federal interests with regard to federal workers and functions and property.

John Ketcham: Yeah, basically D.C. is taking the stance that the governing structure that has been in place for 52 years is like the way it has to be. No, it’s not. In fact, for the vast majority of its history, Congress and the president had a very direct hand in the day-to-day management of the district. So Ilya is exactly right. D.C. is quite unique.

Ilya Shapiro: There was a standing committee in Congress for a long time that effectively functioned like the D.C. City Council.

John Ketcham: Right. And there was a three-member commission system that the president appointed for about 100 years. So this has been something that people have forgotten about. But it’s certainly not the legal necessity to have a home rule arrangement in D.C. And I think…

Carolyn D. Gorman: The problem is though, also, that Congress doesn’t like to govern. So, what are you doing?

Charles Fain Lehman: Right. That is the source of my concern vis-a-vis getting rid of Home Rule is that I don’t actually want to an additional thing that Congress can be dysfunctional at.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Good governance is really hard and I think this sort of lack of accountability that you can have by sort of diversifying, for lack of the right word, who’s responsible for what, it just sort of, again, makes it harder for anyone to get any of their stuff done. And then if Congress, so for example, if Congress is responsible for D.C.’s budget and Congress doesn’t give D.C. enough budget to fund jails and fund their police force, then they can point the finger at Congress and then the federal government can point the finger at them for not maintaining safe streets. And so you sort of, again, sort of have this like negative cycle. And I don’t, I don’t know that there’s an easy way out of that.

John Ketcham: You talk about a negative cycle. The migrant crisis is a perfect example of how multiple levels of government basically abdicated their responsibilities to lead and dumped the problem on New York City. And just like we had to deal with it and we had the most generous right to shelter in the country. Southern border crisis that the federal government failed to maintain and govern correctly for a couple of years led to this unprecedented inflow of newcomers that the city had to provide up to 70,000 beds at the peak for, you know, and quickly. They have to have shelter that night if they request it. And then the state government really did not help much at all until the latter part of the crisis and even then only with funding. So you have antiquated laws that aren’t even passed by the city council in New York. You have a consent decree that governs all of this. And the federal government and state governments just kind of sat back and washed their hands of it for way too long. So that kind of overlapping government failure is something that President Trump seems anxious to avoid.

Charles Fain Lehman: I mean I think, you know, that on the other hand is my concern here, and this gets to the other argument that’s been levied. I mean there are a couple of different arguments. One is that D.C. doesn’t really have a crime problem, and I think that’s just objectively false. Like, I think that is measurably false, and there are a couple of arguments about what the crime rate says, and how they measure it. I can talk about that, but…

Ilya Shapiro: What I love about that argument is those who say, well, Philadelphia and Chicago have worse crime. Like, yeah, but those aren’t federal districts.

Charles Fain Lehman: They don’t! That’s not right! That’s false!

Ilya Shapiro: Well, even if it was true, even if it was true, Trump couldn’t simply, you know, federalize the Philly PD. There’s no authority for that, you know? Don’t give me any ideas, I guess, but like, this is a different sort of issue.

Charles Fain Lehman: Not yet.

Yeah, no, but so, you know, I think everyone agrees, everyone who is not a partisan hack agrees that D.C. is unsafe and has been structurally unsafe for a long time. And the question is like, you know, okay, where should we be deploying the National Guard? Where should we be deploying FBI and DEA agents in the District of Columbia to help with this problem? I think there’s been some criticism in the administration that says, well, they’re just having them patrol the National Mall and that’s not really where the crime problem is, which is very galling to me, because I think if you deploy the DEA and the National Guard in Anacostia across the river, which is where half the homicides are, everyone would say that it was racist and Donald Trump was trying to like execute black men. So it’s really a lose-lose here.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah, one of the problems with sort of like making this about what the crime rates are is now we sort of have politicized whether or not D.C. is safe. And that shouldn’t be, it almost like shouldn’t be the core part of the problem. Like by tying Trump to turning, or by tying the takeover of the police department into, you know, well, crime rates are low, they’re not low, whatever. It’s sort of like, well, actually now we’re thinking about that versus like, whether or not there’s a goal to this takeover. I mean, is there anything…

Charles Fain Lehman: I think there was just an instinctual reaction here. I had an argument with a prominent pundit on the site formerly known as Twitter, in which I said, do you agree with me that it would make sense to deploy federal forces in Anacostia? And his response was, well, it depends on what the people in Anacostia think. And are they masked? And can we identify them? And what’s the goal there? And I was like, maybe these are legitimate. I think the masking thing is the subject of reasonable debate. Asking the people is a ridiculous argument, but really to me it’s just like a basic failure to understand the urgency of situation. If you line up a bunch of young black men in D.C., if you get like 300-odd of them in a room, one of them will die in the next year. Ten of them will die over the next ten years from homicide. Like that’s, know, boys 15 to 24. That’s just like the consistent rate in the District of Columbia.

That’s a crazy situation, and to respond to that by going, well, actually we need to be very concerned about whether or the federal officers are masking before we can do anything about this. Like I can only explain this by, like, partisan derangement. That’s how I really feel. All right. So I want to…

Ilya Shapiro: A lot, a lot in our world can be explained by partisan derangement, Charles.

Charles Fain Lehman: That’s true. Alright, I want to…

John Ketcham: But a lot of this is going to matter of how effective Trump is. And if, let’s say, there are violent protests, riots against this move, then my concern is that this episode we remembered for the disorder that resulted not from remedying the crime and disorder. So a lot is going to hinge on the next 30 days and any improvements or lack thereof.

Ilya Shapiro: It depends if the laptop class starts throwing something heavier than subway footlongs.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, oh right. We didn’t talk about that. All right. I want to exit on a slightly different exit question than I had originally proposed because we covered my first one. So Ilya brought this up, which is D.C. home rule and what to do about it. think a lot of people like to D.C. become a state. So let me put this to you. To Carolyn’s point, D.C.’s current governance arrangement is kind of nonsensical. What would you like to see happen to the District of Columbia? I will start. Ilya, give us the retrocession pitch.

Ilya Shapiro: It doesn’t make sense for there to be this weird jurisdiction where people live and go about their daily lives, but it’s not a state. The purpose of the federal district is to have a place for the government to function under Congress’s direct control, and so Maryland and Virginia gave up parts of their territory to form this federal district. And eventually, the Virginia part, which is Arlington and Alexandria counties, were retroceded back to Virginia. The Fed said, we don’t need this district. It’s inconvenient, it’s across the river. We don’t have that many federal buildings. We don’t need it. And so now, I think similarly, the federal government does not need all of these residential, you know, non-governmental commercial areas of D.C.

The most logical thing would be, you know, other than federal building, kind of the area around the mall, you know, where the federal agencies are, around the White House, around Congress, all of those federal buildings, that should be kind of the rump federal district, and the rest should be returned to Maryland.

And Maryland, I don’t think wants it, is the real issue, even though that would give them an additional congressman. There are complications in that. You’d have to repeal the amendment that gives D.C. three electors and certain other things, but in terms of just what would make sense as a matter of governance, I think that’s it.

Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Carolyn, are you on board with the retrosession plan or do you have a different proposal?

Carolyn D. Gorman: I think that’s really interesting, Ilya, and I can at least agree that what we are doing right now doesn’t seem to make sense in terms of this sort of mixed accountability thing.

Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, okay. John, do you have an evil mastermind plan for dealing with the District?

John Ketcham: Well, we came up with one in our piece, Charles, where the president could simply appoint a number of D.C. council members so that there would be a sort of mixed governance structure where you do have local representation, at-large representation, but then also something like a third to a half of the council members appointed by the president. So there’s some kind of like hybrid local control slash federal control system that’s more indirect. I think Ilya makes a very persuasive case.

Ilya Shapiro: The other thing is, know, D.C.’s slogan, right, taxation without representation, which is on the license plates. Although I tested this, right, because of that New Hampshire “Live Free Or Die Case” from the 70s, you don’t have to accept any slogan. So when I moved to D.C. in 2004, as I mentioned, I said, I don’t want that slogan on my license plate. And so the clerk at the DMV was like, fine, I got to go into the back room. I’m like, okay, I’ll wait. And he comes back and I got a license plate. In fact, I’ll be right back with it. I can show it. I have it hanging here.

Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Ilya is walking off screen listening.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Well, you know, he’s like the only person who’s ever…

Ilya Shapiro: With the URL of the city government on it, right? And people thought…

Charles Fain Lehman: It says, so for those who are listening, the license plate says Washington D.C. www.washingtondc.gov and then Fed 51, which I assume is a reference to the Federalist Papers.

Ilya Shapiro: My actual tag is Fed 51. People thought I was like an FBI agent, but of course that relates to the Madisonian, you know, “if men were angels,” federalist paper. Yes, but anyway, my solution, I’ve written a couple of op-eds over the years about this is no, at least when I was living in D.C., no taxation without representation? Cool, I’m happy not to pay taxes. I don’t need to vote.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yes, right. See, that was what I was going to say is, you know, I’m generally a retrocession sympathist myself, even though I live in Maryland and don’t want those, you know, don’t want the like, D,C. bureaucrats to come up here. That said, yeah, I think that’s the obvious alternative is just there’s zero income tax. If you live in D.C., you can’t be taxed if you’re in the federal district. Pros and cons, but like that’s the other that’s the other way to undo the Gordian knot. All right.

I want to move on to the other topic for today. We were off, as I said, last Thursday, and that’s because a bunch of us were at an announcement, an event held by the Manhattan Institute jointly with the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, at which, among other things, Mayor Adams was interviewed by MI president and sometime podcast guest, Reihan Salam. He also announced a new proposal to compel people who are addicted to drugs into treatment unless, if they’re otherwise unable to care for themselves.

As I wrote in the New York Post almost immediately thereafter, drug addiction is a big problem in the city of New York. There are about 4,000 homeless addicts in the city. There are about 2,000 OD deaths a year. So I want to get our panel to talk about this proposal. What do we make of it? What do we think about the idea? Do we think it’s going anywhere is the other big question mark that I have.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah, so what New York City mayor Eric Adams is proposing is to pass a new state law in New York that would allow for involuntary commitment of people with substance use disorder who are a danger to themselves or others. New York City.

Charles Fain Lehman: And substance use disorder is the technical term for drug addiction.

Carolyn D. Gorman: That’s right, that’s right. Thank you, thank you. Anyway, New York has a process for involuntarily committing people with serious mental illness, but not substance use disorder. There is no legislative text yet and no definite specifics. But the mayor’s press release about this says that what he’s proposing is to give clinical professionals the authority they need, in his words, to bring someone with a substance use disorder who’s dangerous to themselves or others to the hospital for evaluation. And the press release also says that the proposal would allow a judge to mandate treatment if a person is unwilling to enter treatment voluntarily. So still a lot of specifics that would be needed to make a real judgment call on this.

John Ketcham: I think this is consistent with New York’s approach to, let’s say, homelessness, right? The vast majority of New York City’s homeless population is in shelters. They’re not on the streets, right? There’s a good public policy reason for this. One is to prevent the type of disorder and the degradation of our quality of life from affecting commerce and from potentially leading to violence or other kinds of criminal activity. The other rationale is that we have limited public resources and we try to focus those resources on the most acute needs because that is where they can make the greatest impact for the public at large. Those who are severely mentally ill pose a danger often to subway riders, for example, right? And so incapacitating them through civil commitment makes everybody safer and make sure that those folks get the care that they really desperately need.

Same is true, I think, with substance users, where taking them off the streets and getting them the treatment that they need can help them in overcoming their battles, but also prevent greater disorder and crime on New York City streets.

Carolyn D. Gorman: I think the question is, well, to your point, John, it is definitely important when you have limited resources to make sure that you’re sort of addressing the highest acuity problems. I think the question is, what’s the right process and how well does any given process work, whether it be commitment or incarceration or whatever. And so again, ambiguity is just like really problematic in any policy and so…

Ilya Shapiro: Can I ask a more basic question since this really isn’t my area, but does this kind of start to address or roll back what I think is commonly known as the error of the, in the 70s, of just massive deinstitutionalization?

Charles Fain Lehman: Well, think that’s part of Carolyn’s concern, right? So, like, just to sort of translate down a little bit, the city, the state of New York, thanks in large part to Eric Adams’s sort of pushing in Albany for a number of years, now has the capacity to compel into treatment people who are seriously mentally ill. That’s been like an ongoing process. One of the big constraints there is that there just aren’t enough beds, there aren’t enough places to put people who need long-term treatment for serious mental illness.

Substance use disorder, the verbiage that Carolyn and I both used, is relevant to this conversation because substance use disorder goes in the Diagnostic and Standard Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, which means that in some senses it is a mental illness, although it is often classified distinctly. Why does that matter? Because, okay, now I think part of Carolyn’s concern is, okay, we’ve been dealing with serious mental illnesses as an issue. Now we also need to deal with people who are addicted to drugs. We need to put them somewhere. They need to get access to treatment. Is it appropriate to put them into the same sort of treatment pipeline? Do we even have the resources to get them into that treatment pipeline? That, I think, is ultimately, by the way, last thought, an Albany question.

And this gets to Ilya’s question. It’s just like, there are many people who live or operate on the streets of our major cities, like New York, but not just New York, who are in serious need of care, who can’t care for themselves and by virtue of that fact, by virtue of the disabling condition, are a problem for other people, not just themselves. You know, we would like to be able to do something where we provide them with care in an incapacitative context. The problem is, in part, that it is illegal to do so, but also in part that we don’t have the capacity to do so. And those two things reinforce each other, which is what Daniel Patrick Moynihan was talking about when he wrote out “defining deviancy down,” for those who are familiar with that phrase.

It’s literally about that dynamic. So to answer the question, it’s like, in some senses, this is half the equation for return to institutionalization, but then the big question mark is the other half of the equation, which is, where the heck are you going to put those people? And to some extent, that’s Adam’s responsibility to answer, but a lot of it is Albany’s responsibility to answer.

Carolyn D. Gorman: And, Ilya, just one sort of response to your question about whether or not this is sort part of the deinstitutionalization process. There were sort of two different parts of the deinstitutionalization process. There were a lot of these civil rights, patients’ rights, legal changes, and then there was also a financial change through Medicaid. Medicaid decided it would not pay for these big state asylums, and so psychiatric hospitals are now not covered under Medicaid. And it was essentially the catalyst for deinstitutionalization because states just realized that they could get the federal government to split the bill with them for any mental health treatment that happened outside of an asylum. So it was a lot cheaper and that is sort of like what led to the decline in beds. So a lot of people think that it was because of these civil rights and legal decisions. Really, there’s empirical evidence to show that the big impetus was the financial reason behind it.

Ilya Shapiro: Public choice economics, as always.

Carolyn D. Gorman: The last thing I’ll just say, I think to Charles, to something that Charles was talking about is, one big problem in mental health policy is that we don’t distinguish enough between different things, like people with serious mental illness, people with substance use disorder or addiction, and people who are what we call the worried well. And if you don’t sort of disaggregate groups that are pretty clearly different in substantive ways, you sort of assume that the same solution works for everyone. And then you get people saying, my gosh, we should never institutionalize anyone or my gosh, we should never involuntarily commit anyone because they assume that the person who is getting that intervention is someone like you or I who might get stressed out because we like have a deadline that we have not that we’re not going to meet. I mean, we are just fundamentally different as people, as the homeless schizophrenic. And the homeless schizophrenic is fundamentally different than the homeless addict even. And so the question is sort of what is the right system? What is the right process? And process really matters.

Charles Fain Lehman: I do though want to avoid making the perfect the enemy the good here, right? Let’s talk for just 30 seconds about the status quo ante or the status quo that Eric Adams is trying to change. First of all, there are these super high concentrated pockets of public drug use in New York City, much as there are in many other major cities. If you go to the hub in the Bronx, which is like a shopping area, if you go to certain parks in Manhattan, it’s just like open air drug use. And you can arrest people. but unless you have a concerted effort to shut these sites down and to deal with the underlying determinants, the situation is not really going to change. The situation has gotten a lot worse in the past couple of years. And then here’s the other thing. How did the city previously solve this issue? The de Blasio administration’s outgoing, its final gift to the city, they were like, what are we going to do? What are we going to set up these supervised consumption sites? There are two. There’s one in Harlem. There’s one in, I can’t tell you where the other one is, in Manhattan.

Ilya Shapiro: Is that like the Wires Hamsterdam episode?

Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, more or less, it’s a little bit, you can’t sell there, but it’s just like a supervised consumption site is a site where you’re allowed to, the city allows you to go and use controlled substances under the supervision of like some nonprofit worker with Narcan, which can reverse overdoses. And that was like, that is symbolic of the city’s approach.

Ilya Shapiro: I think Vancouver has a lot of that.

Charles Fain Lehman: They do, they have like 30 of them. And they also have one of the highest overdose death rates on the face of the earth, which is, know, if you like, like Vancouver is a great example, if you throw all these services at the city, it doesn’t do anything. I’ve been to, I’ve been to where they are in Vancouver. It’s one of the worst places I’ve ever been in my entire life. Um, yeah, so mean, like, like in some sense is simply being willing to say these people are a problem for themselves and everyone around them is a dramatic step forward in terms of, you know, by comparison to the laissez faire approach endorsed by the de Blasio administration. think Zohran Mamdani has been pretty quiet on the issue of drug policy, but I suspect that he is sympathetic to the de Blasio approach to drug policy. So, you know, to me, it’s like, the city has labored under this sort of like bizarro theory of how to deal with drug addiction for a long time. Anything that goes in the other direction seems great to me.

Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah, I mean, here’s what I think is easy to say. Accountability really matters. The harm reduction approach has just gone so far off the end of like not having any accountability that it has not been helpful. Injecting more accountability into our processes and our policies is useful.

John Ketcham: One thing I’m wondering is whether those who are in favor of safe consumption sites would cheer this kind of move because it basically creates a safe harbor for users to go to the safe consumption sites. We’re not going to tolerate this on the streets, but we do have these places where you can use. So the alternative is you go to the safe consumption site or you might get committed.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, you know, there are models… This is really in the weeds. I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but that’s the historical use case of a safe consumption site. The first ones are set up in Switzerland, right? So the first safe consumption site is the Platzspitz Needle Park, which is just like a bunch of people were using, I think it’s Zurich. They were using in front of a train station in Zurich and the authorities were like, that’s gross, go over there. And that park became the first supervised consumption site. And the idea was we will designate an area for you to use in so that we don’t have to deal with the mess, crime, and disorder. That didn’t actually work very well, like it did become a giant mess, but that like ethos is very much European harm reduction is the idea of like public disorder is also a harm and we’re going to concentrate to avoid the issue. That does not play in America. We don’t like that stuff. We believe in like rights and so forth, which is, don’t, you know, we believe in like the right to shoot drugs, which I don’t think is a real right, but whatever.

Ilya Shapiro: So you’re saying it’s a Swiss idea that’s gone cuckoo?

Charles Fain Lehman: It’s, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, look, I think these facilities can work okay in Europe. They’re not the end of the world. I think that we really struggle with exactly what John is talking about, is the idea that like, or what Carolyn is talking about, the idea that perhaps there should be accountability for if you want to shoot up on the street in front of everybody and take over a street corner to do it, that’s anti-social. And we should discourage it. That doesn’t seem like a winner in America. And so we sort of have this all or nothing approach instead.

I can talk about drugs all day. don’t want to, I don’t want to time it. Yeah.

John Ketcham: It is worth noting that something like 36 states plus D.C. have these kinds of laws on the books. So for those who are crying foul that it’s a deprivation of constitutional rights, like give it a break.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, right. It’s a little bit like the arguments that you have a constitutional right to sleep on the street. I think often of the, I forget if it was Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Barrett and Justice Gorsuch who responded to that in the Grants Pass case by asking, you believe that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to prohibit people from defecating on the street? And the answer is no. Okay, well, that’s sort of the end of the discussion.

All right, I want to take us out with a sort of practical question. I’m curious, you I think that there’s a lively debate about where New York City is. We’re all in New York City a lot because, you know, our jobs are there. Do we feel like the city is more or less disorderly than it was two, three years ago? Has it gotten better? Is it still as bad as it ever was? think a lot of New Yorkers are still very uncomfortable. Where do we feel like New York is holistically on this problem of public drug use, serious mental illness in public, all those things that we mean when we talk about disorder?

John, you’re on the streets of New York the most, so what do you think?

John Ketcham: I think it’s less disorderly and the end of the migrant crisis has a big part to play in that. So, by our office, we had the city’s central intake center for migrants. We saw from our windows busloads of migrants coming in to get processed and then sent out to the various shelter sites around the city. And it was…

Ilya Shapiro: Are these buses provided by Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis or what?

John Ketcham: Some were just the one-way buses, yeah, and then we had to reallocate the MTA, had to pick up there. But yeah, and then the other thing is we’ve had a sharp reduction in subway homicides, and that is quite significant because everybody takes a subway and everybody feels that, you know, I could have been that person who got pushed in front of the train as it was approaching. So the combination of those two things, I believe, has improved the city’s quality of life and has made it feel more orderly. Is it back to where it was before the pandemic? No, certainly not. But is it improving? I think absolutely. And a lot of credit to Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, for getting us there.

Charles Fain Lehman: Carolyn, what’s your impression?

Carolyn D. Gorman: It’s hard to say, I’m just like always a little bit like, I wouldn’t say on edge, but just aware of my surroundings.  And it really is hard to understate how important it is for people to feel safe on the subway when they’re going to work. Like, it really should be a priority of any mayor because so many people use it and it’s just so visible. And having a dysfunctional subway system, and having a functional subway system for that matter, is just like going to be so telling or so informative to people about what the state of the city is. So, yeah.

Charles Fain Lehman: Ilya?

Ilya Shapiro: You know, I’m only ever in the Midtown Business and Entertainment District or at some sports facility or something like I’m going to the U.S. Open in a couple of weeks. I’ll report on the status of Flushing Meadows, I guess, but the subway is the common denominator for all New Yorkers and all visitors. And I don’t know, it feels maybe, and this is just completely anecdotal vibe-like. I think I agree with John that it’s probably feels less scary, more orderly now than four or five years ago.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean my personal index was when I was just in New York last week for this event, I went up to Harlem 125th Street to poke around, which is where one of the supervised consumption sites is. And I will report that there were many fewer people using drugs on the streets than there were. There were like six guys very openly dealing in the subway, so that was not ideal. There were a couple of guys nodded out on the streets, but it was better than when I was there, I think, four or five years ago, so like a major improvement relative to that, but also like the city has a long way to go. And I think everyone noticed that, it part of the goal of the push here.

All right, before we go, one last question. There was a recent poll from Gallup, which everyone was discussing. The share of Americans who abstain from alcohol is at an all-time high. This is part of sort of a broader swath of findings that Americans are souring on getting drunk. So I want to ask our panelists, are you joining the no- or low-alcohol trend in either way? What do you make of it? Ilya, can predict what your answer is going to be. Maybe you’ll surprise me.

Ilya Shapiro: I’m trying to make up for those Gen Z’ers who haven’t yet found their drink of choice, I guess. No, mean, as you get older in your life, in your career, whatever, your tastes change, so I’ve definitely, it’s been a long time since I’ve drank beer, for example. I’m much more into wine and craft cocktails and things like that. But no, I don’t know what that’s all about.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah. Not on the train. Okay, Carolyn?

Carolyn D. Gorman: I also don’t know what that’s all about. I’m getting married at the end of August and we just asked our venue if we could extend our open bar.

Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, John?

John Ketcham: God bless you, stimulating the economy at the same time. A teetotaler attorney, isn’t that an oxymoron? I’m not joining the bandwagon, but it is interesting to me that there’s an increase in abstention. I wonder if that says something rather than people just reducing their consumption and being able to enjoy in moderation that more Americans are just saying no as a categorical matter. And I think it does speak a little bit to Gen Z’s lack of desire to just like do things that other generations considered normal, like socialize over a few drinks.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there’s that. also think there’s sort of the MAHA phenomenon, like there’s a sense that alcohol isn’t clean. It’s bad for you. You don’t want to consume too much. You want to avoid it altogether. That’s clearly a thing. I’m a little concerned about the substitution to other drugs, something like, nine, think it’s either eight or nine percent of 18 to 30 year olds reported past year psychedelic use. So that’s, if I had to choose beer or psychedelics, I’m not sure which one I picked. It’s probably beer.

Ilya Shapiro: Then there’s that whole California sober thing where you’re smoking marijuana all the time but you don’t drink like…

Charles Fain Lehman: Pot’s out too though. Pot’s not hip among young people either.

Ilya Shapiro: Is it?

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, no, it’s not cool anymore, which is good.

Ilya Shapiro: Okay, well… Well there’s Zyn! I hear Zyn is big now.

Charles Fain Lehman: Zyn, yeah, there’s a lot of Zyn. There’s a lot of Zyn. I’m sure our producer is able to tell us more.

Ilya Shapiro: Which is a fancier, updated, just like pouch tobacco, right? Yeah. Okay, okay.

Charles Fain Lehman: Correct. It’s well, technically no because it’s only nicotine. There’s no tobacco. Yeah, nicotine also very in. Pros and cons. But I become I’ve been a lightweight…

Carolyn D. Gorman: But even the substitute for therapy, even the substitute for therapy, mean, all of these things are sort of the over medicalization of life. And, you know, how many kids are talking to their therapist now instead of just going to get a beer with their friends?

John Ketcham: True.

Charles Fain Lehman: I neither go to a therapist nor do I drink very much, which is not an ethical stance. I’m just a lightweight now that I’m a dad. I can’t. I can’t drink more than one beer. That’s okay, though.

John Ketcham: You just got to take up cigars.

Ilya Shapiro: You know, cigars give me a much bigger hangover than, like, anything else.

Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, yeah, I can’t. I just cough. It’s not good for me.

John Ketcham: That’s just a feeling of vitality.

Charles Fain Lehman: All right. That’s about all the time that we have. Thank you, as always, to our panelists. Thank you to our producer, Isabella Redjai. Listeners, if enjoyed this episode of or even if you didn’t, don’t forget to like, subscribe on YouTube. All the other platforms are you listening to us. Don’t forget to leave us comments and questions down below. Until next time. You’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images