On the front page of today’s New York Post is a photo of a new vending machine at Bushwick, Brooklyn, that distributes free crack pipes, Narcan to treat overdoses, condoms, tampons, nicotine gum, first aid kits, and lip balm. In other words, it’s a drug store. Emphasis on: Drugs. All free. 

The first of many of these machines is to be placed in one of the city’s most drug-infested neighborhoods. Officials say these are life-saving tools. I suggest they are drug-enhancing tools. As the Post editorializes, “this is not going to stop the surge in drug overdoses. It’s going to normalize and feed the plague.”  

 There is no such thing as “safe” drug abuse — a nostrum that Mayor Eric Adams and the city appear to be selling. Drugs kill. Drugs destroy lives. Drugs waste human potential. Drugs breed crime.  

Make no mistake, these vending machines, and the needle exchanges, and so-called safe injection sites, and the legalization of pot, and the smoke shops — all feed crime and human destruction.  

A friend of mine flew into John F. Kennedy Airport the other day and tells a story that in the baggage claim he watched a young person pull out his paraphernalia and roll a joint — right in front of everybody standing around waiting for their luggage. You walk outside the airport and the reefer smell is everywhere. In fact, as almost anybody knows, when you walk around New York City, the smell of marijuana is all-pervasive.  

This is a scourge. Marijuana is not harmless, but harder drugs are absolute killers. There’s a fentanyl wave sweeping America — coming from China, through Mexico, and distributed all throughout the country. Some estimates suggest at least a hundred thousand Americans were killed from fentanyl in just the last year.  

The New York Post cites the new hottest drug, Xylazine. Get this: A veterinary drug known as Tranq, or the “zombie” drug, can leave users in a catatonic state and with conditions that eat away at their flesh.  

Besides destroying our children, all this feeding of the drug plague becomes part and parcel of the crime wave, which has already been bad enough. In the month of May alone, New York City officers made 4,600 arrests, which is 14 percent above the same month a year ago. In the first five months of this year, officers have made 21,400 arrests, which is a 24-year high.  

Tragically, New York City’s “harm reduction” movement rejects treatment centers or abstinence based 12-step recovery strategies, which have been so successful in changing hearts and minds and promoting recovery from addiction.  

The city of New York and all of its woke, far-left so-called leaders have rejected traditional family values, the value of human life, and just the straightforward Nancy Reagan message of, “Just say no.” Remember that?

It’s a timeless message. Why has New York forgotten it?

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.