ADDICTIONS ARE MAKING ME SICK ALREADY
CONFESSION:
I am boring myself talking incessantly about addictions.
But what can you do? Today, the press is filled with it all.
So...
A quick summary:
Our friend, Robert Werner sent us the link to a late afternoon Globe and Mail piece on Harper's announcement about his new drug strategy. You can read that here.
But the best quote from Harper follows:
"I remain a skeptic that you can tell people that we won't stop the drug trade, we won't get you off drugs, we won't even send messages to discourage drug use but somehow we will keep you addicted but reduce the harm just the same," Mr. Harper said of the Insite program. "If you remain a drug addict, I don't care how much harm you reduce, you are going to have a short and miserable life."
So, Harper's program may or may not play out in any useful fashion, but HE HAS THE CLEAREST AND BEST PERCEPTION OF THE ISSUE OF ANY POLITICIAN IN CANADA TODAY.
The Sun's shrieking editorial and the articles in the paper today, quoting all the "stakeholders" are pathetic. The junk science people keep trotting out their fantasy that Insite leads addicts to seek treatment. The VANDU ghouls just want more free drugs and more free needles, even thought tax-paying citizens who raise families can not get free drugs and free needles for diseases the haven't actively pursued.
The best thing said about all this in the press today - other than Harper's welcome statements - came from a letter to the editor.
Here it is in its entirety:
Appeasing addicts hastens social decay
Letter Published: Friday, October 05, 2007
I did not find Frances Bula's so- called balanced article about Insite very informative. It had the same tired arguments applauding the success of keeping criminal addicts alive so that they can continue to steal and inject poison into their arms.
Every addict knows there can never be enough drugs or supervised injection sites to appease the addiction. Evidence of this is all around us as Vancouver's social decay continues uninterrupted.
If this is called success (after four years), I shudder to think what failure would have looked like.
Patti Milsom
3 comments:
Albert Einstein said: "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity."
The letter you posted from Patti Milsom is brilliant. The disastrous drug rehabilitation policy that has reigned misery over Vancouver for the past few decades clearly is NOT working. Yet countless "experts" continue to defend it. Why? The cynical part of me has a very plausible explanation.
Two obvious questions for anyone connected with Insite are:
1. How many individuals have used your facility since it opened?
2. Of these, how many have successfully gotten off of drugs?
For each & ever one of those they cite in Question #2, a name and phone number must be demanded, and a follow-up done to see if there's any truth to their claim. For more than any other organization, Insite and Vandu are the kings of phony statistics.
When the true numbers are determined, what percentage of addicts that have passed through Insite will be found to have recovered from their addiction?
Less than 1%? Less than 0.1%? Less than 0.001%?
Change must come and more people must speak up if we ever hope to remove this cancer from our society.
Things the SIS has done:
Directly cost an enormous amount of money (about $15 million so far).
Increased the load on the health care system, sometimes preventing other patients from getting care. The costs of this are incalculable.
Helped thousands of addicts to continue their addictive behaviour.
Created the perception that mind-altering drugs are more or less harmless.
Things the SIS has NOT done:
Reduce the prevalence of HIV or HepC.
Reduce the overdose death statistics.
Improve the public order or crime situation.
Directly help a single addict to get off drugs.
Oh yes, one more thing the SIS HAS done:
Lied about its results.
Things the SIS has done:
Directly cost an enormous amount of money (about $15 million so far).
Increased the load on the health care system, sometimes preventing other patients from getting care. The costs of this are incalculable.
Helped thousands of addicts to continue their addictive behaviour.
Created the perception that mind-altering drugs are more or less harmless.
Things the SIS has NOT done:
Reduce the prevalence of HIV or HepC.
Reduce the overdose death statistics.
Improve the public order or crime situation.
Directly help a single addict to get off drugs.
Oh yes, one more thing the SIS HAS done:
Lied about its results.
Post a Comment