The Vancouver Sun is reporting that Despite all efforts to provide support and assistance to intravenous drug users, people are dying of overdoses at twice the tragic rate of last year in Vancouver. Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall stated “What we had been doing didn’t seem to be working.” No kidding?! Harm promotion isn't working.
Well, actually it is. Our twisted interpretation of harm reduction has indeed become harm promotion. Our harm promotion has become very effective at promoting addiction and promoting the drug trade which continues to result in more addicts and more fatalities.
This is what happens when you abandon the other three pillars: Prevention, Treatment and Enforcement. When you stop enforcing the law and start promoting illicit drug use you end up pouring gasoline on the forest fire of addiction and it burns out of control.
While all that is true, there are two aspects to it, as there is to everything in this world, Duality being God's basic method of construction and operation.
ReplyDeleteFace it, nobody, but nobody doesn't hear before they ever start off with opioids (or crack, or meth)that:
1)They are highly addictive, and
2)An overdose will kill you.
Deciding to try them out after already knowing that is the functional equivalent of deciding to walk along the edge of a cliff where the edge crumbles away on a regular yet unpredictable basis. Darwinism in action folks. It's not pleasant, but it's not really a surprise either. Could some be saved by not following the harm promotion model? Sure. I think more could be saved by interdiction of supply and by eliminating people involved in that. But at the end of the day, there will always be drugs, people who are stupid enough to try the ones that offer misery and death as the price for bliss (duality again) and of course those who will supply them, even at the risk of their life, as in countries that offer the death penalty for trafficking in them. Our best efforts will only reduce the numbers, even with a drastic reduction there will still be people who self select to clorox their part of the gene pool.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes....
Indeed but "Duality being God's basic method of construction and operation" WTF?
DeleteEverything has an opposite. Try naming something that doesn't. Night/day, male/female, etc. Duality
Deleteis the basic underlying principle of everything. If we agree that our world/universe has a creator (and of course many do not agree with this idea, otherwise known as "intelligent design") you then start to look at underlying principles of design and operation. Duality is it.
I'm familiar with yin and yang. God is good, the devil is not and we are free to choose between the two. I just thought it was an interesting random thought to throw in there. No big deal.
DeleteTrailer Runner may be correct in referring to God's basic....Duality, etc. if you check the Bible it does talk about making choices, the Devil/God/Jesus, good and evil, etc. Some people are born with the ability to make those choices,. Some not so much. The not so much group, those do wind up with drug issues and some don't and again, people who have the brains to see the difference between doing drugs and not doing drugs.
ReplyDeleteSome people are born with a "danger" gene. They take risks. For some its psychological. They choose the danger and that in today's society is drugs. At one time that willingness to risk, engage in danger was feed by other means: going to war, going to sea; travelling into unknown terrority. As the population and costs grow doing social acceptable dangerous things, dangerous sports, etc. those opportunities just aren't available to much of the population. so its drugs they go to for the rush.
For some the drugs gives them oblivion.
There is an interesting article on I think its Politico about the higher rate of dying these years by white middle aged men in the U.S.A. and why. Some of it is attributed to drugs and lack of employment in the U.S.A.
In my opinion people who continue to use drugs that can kill you most of the time are interested in committing suicide. Perhaps the time has come to simply set them up with shrinks and get an answer to that question. We haven't delved into why people continue with the drug taking when they know it will kill them.
Governments are not going to a 3 or 4 pillar approach because its costs more money from their government coffers than the harm reduction model. its that simple. Its all about the money.
I have no problem with supplying needles, drugs etc to addicts. Let them have it all. Its cheaper and easier on the rest of society. But they have to live in a building which is set up to deal with their issues and not leave. counselling would be available as would detox, but if people want to die who are we to tell them they can't.
I have always viewed substance abuse as a slow method of committing suicide.
Yes, so do we hand out guns and sleeping pills to help people commit suicide or do we help encourage them not to commit suicide. That would be the higher road to take. Harm promotion is taking tax dollars away from schools and hospitals and putting it in the hands of drug dealers and the pharmaceutical companies.
DeleteHaving known people who committed suicide I understand why they did it. it may be the higher road to take to convience them not to, but for some it is the solution. Life is too painful. to end it is the solution, not for all but for some. In our society we simply have not spent enough time to help people over come some of their issues, I understand what you are writing.
ReplyDeleteAgreed the way money is currently spent on "harm reduction" is taking money away from other needed services but government is not going to spend the real money either on schools and hospitals because they don't care, in my opinion, especially in this province where they can send their kids to private school and pay to get the medical services they want. Like do you really think C.C. and her supporters have to deal with the medical system the way the rest of the province has to? Ya right.
time to walk the dog and find him a tree.