Portland.

What can you say about the once-beautiful city? It is the Cuba of North America, without the charm of having actual Cubans. And unlike Cubans, the residents have yet to conclude that communism is a bad deal for everybody but those in the favor of the elite.

I’ve written about the decline of the city, including my world-famous and much-loved “WTF Portland?” post. It is, in the wonderful words of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, “the city where young people go to retire.”

Or at least it used to be. Now it is the city where everybody goes to overdose and die.

Another in a long line of “the decline of Portland” series, I give you this bit of news: Mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland has proposed $10 million in marijuana-related initiatives, which amounts to twice as much he dedicates to desperately needed new police officers.

In Crime-Ridden Portland, Weed Industry Gets Twice as Much Funding as New Cops https://t.co/3xhkaUXngn

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 7, 2023

It is, I would say, an interesting choice of priorities.

It is difficult to describe how Portland mesmerized urban planners in the 90s-2010s. When I was fighting Minnesota’s Metropolitan Council’s idiotic plans for development in the Twin Cities areas back then I couldn’t stop hearing about how our region had to be more like Portland. Portland is the future! “Creative class!” “Light rail!”

It was everywhere, and impossible to refute because it was like talking to cult members.

The decline of the city was foreseeable, of course, because many of us foresaw it. But even I never expected it to decline so rapidly or so dramatically. I just assumed that economic growth would decline as prices skyrocketed. I didn’t foresee the effects of social liberalism, only the economic kind.

Portland today is like this:

The city is a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole. It is hardly the worst city in America, but then again not so long ago it was among the best. It’s not like East Saint Louis declined into a dirtier, smellier East Saint Louis.

Portland has a horrible shortage of police officers, for obvious reasons. Who wants to be treated like dirt and then thrust into an increasingly violent and lawless city to be insulted and threatened?

When asked recently about staffing levels in the police department, the current chief said that they were at about half the strength they needed to address current crime levels. Currently, the police can’t even properly investigate serious crimes, and many spend all day dealing with drug overdoses.

In the midst of this crisis, Mayor Wheeler wants to subsidize marijuana social justice programs more than he wants to hire new cops.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler (D.) made a point to stress his intention to increase investments in public safety, announcing in early May that he aimed to spend $5.3 million to hire 43 new police officers to better address rising vehicle and retail thefts. What the mayor didn’t publicly stress, however, is that the city will be spending almost twice as much on various marijuana initiatives in the city.

Wheeler’s budget includes a proposal to put $3 million behind an “ongoing” Cannabis Fund and another $7 million behind a “one-time Cannabis Fund.” Of the more than $10 million dedicated to marijuana programs, $2.3 million is earmarked for funding so-called Social Equity and Education Development grants, which disburse funds to rectify “past racially-biased cannabis policies and disparate cannabis-related arrests” and support “Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and women led/owned small business initiatives.”

The high priority on weed spending comes as Portland deals with a sky-high number of homeless residents, drug overdoses, and violent crime. Over the last three years, for example, shootings tripled, homicides rose to a record-high, and the number of homeless people jumped by 20 percent, prompting criticism from local officials and residents.

Here in Minnesota we just legalized marijuana, and one of the key initiatives is ensuring that people who get a license to sell it are former drug-related convicts. This is a new social justice trend–using marijuana sales as a form of social justice reparations.

This is, of course, utterly insane. But that is no barrier for the Left, who even in the midst of making noises about public safety reveal their true priorities by what they actually do.

And what they are doing is nuts.