Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Worst Editorial Ever Written


In all the many years I have been reading newspapers, I have never, never ever, read a more wrong-headed, stupid, colossally appalling editorial as that in the Sun today.

This is the Heading:

Closing down Insite will bring out the angel of death

But the reality is that Insite IS the Angel of Death.

99.9% of all Canadian citizens detest this local atrocity and understand what a dreadfully mistaken and deadly public policy it pursues.

It is only most of the politicians and the pseudo-scientists and the academics and those invested heavily in continuing failure who continue to defend the idiocy that is safe injection sites.

Scotland, faced with exactly and precisely the same problems, has woken up. In May, Scottish Parliament declared that all of their harm reduction strategies were failures and that they were now going to invest entirely in treatment.

The photograph that accompanies this worst of all editorials ever written shows The Three Wise Men signing the documents that gave birth to Insite. Honorable men, each and every one.

Rumor hasn it that one of these men is an alcoholic. We don't know that to be true. But if it is, we can understand an addict who hasn't yet faced up to his own problems happily endorsing anything that enables.

The other two are politicians. A sprinkling of pseudo-facts here, an opinion from some well-spoken murderer there, and they're off and running.

Imagine Insite being your legacy. How do they sleep at night?

Here's my legacy.

Forty years after we started it, our treatment centre is still running in Manitoba, still helping hundreds of addicts get clean and sober and stay that way.

I'm proud of our work. I feel honored that I was a part of it.

I cannot imagine for a nano-second leading an addict to a place to shoot drugs.

Fortunately, not all politicians are cut from the same cloth.

Health Minister Tony Clement is being ridiculed and personally attacked for expressing what most of you already know and believe - safe injection sites don't' help. Treatment helps.

Mr. Harper has been quietly doing a reasonable enough job as Prime Minister. He isn't in my face every morning, as Chretien was for far too many years. Yet, how quickly the silly class out here in Point Grey are quick to condemn hium because he isn't a Liberal. How quickly they forget and rush to bring back the most corrupt government in Canadian history.

Help Mr. Clement to have the courage to act on his understanding. Email him words of encouragement. He is on the right track.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

But David, the political elites want Insite, simply by doing very little (it doesn't matter if it is for the good or bad), they can pretend that are doing lots.

We may have our differences whether drug addiction is a disease or a condition (my money is on the former), we can't cure it or do anything to mitigate it if we give addicts a free place to shoot up. Society has utterly failed with the drug issue, simply because society can't face some very ugly truths such as the big 'wheeler dealers' in the drug trade are community leaders and/or successful businessmen; people that for many, want to aspire too.

The sad souls who poison their bodies with this crap are but collateral damage in a far bigger and more sinister game.

The drug trade is like any other business and the hypes, addicts, and other sundry lost souls are the consumers, no different (in the eyes of the merchants of disease, sorrow, & death) than wealthy women hooked on Gucci shoes or Prada handbags. Consumers expand profits and to treat the addicted consumers just reduces the 'tear end' accounts. And what every successful business does to ensure continued profits is to hire lobbyists to tell government that their political (read financial) backers are not happy with overzealous anti drug or forced treatment legislation.

Back to Insite - it is just a sham to make the elite & political classes feel good without really doing anything at all!

Anonymous said...

The three stooges, Larry, Curly and Moe.

Anonymous said...

This all reminds me of a friend of mine that was an Ethics Advisor for the Cretien Liberals for a couple of Terms. To save his family embarassment, when asked, he used to tell people that he was a Drug Dealer............

Gary.

Anonymous said...

Where are they getting their numbers? 3% on Harm Reduction, which is about $5 million locally by the most conservative estimate (SIS plus Needle Exchange), which means that if 14% is going into treatment, we must be spending $23 million on treatment per year. And $122 million on drug related enforcement.

Really? I seriously doubt it. Where's all those expensive treatment centers?

I'm so confused...

Anonymous said...

I gave up on the Sun four years ago and have never regretted it.

The "newspaper" became little better than a high-school newsletter filled with columns and "news items" filed by nerdy girls and boys trying to be popular with the cool kids (anybody feeding them biased information for publication). Wishing that the starvation and illness in Africa could be avoided, anguishing about crime, making silly juvenile comments about politicians.

There is no content just wishful thinking, there are no solutions proposed, just an endless display of preprinted positions disseminated by various lobbyists.

Once in a while an extra special super dooper edition will be issued by one of the cool kids, they get to be editor for a week! then the editor goes into paroxysms. (Oh wow that David Suzuki is so cool. I let him feel under my sweater)

Pathetic.

Anonymous said...

My natural reaction is against shooting galleries, needle exchanges and other enabling facilities. My wife, a critical care RN, disagrees, arguing that Insite works at least as an entry point for treatment. She says that initial care is usually for something other than addiction, like infection, abscess etc. That may lead to a few days of sobriety and, for some, ongoing treatment, perhaps recovery. We must offer substance abuse treatment that can begin the moment an abuser is ready to get well.

Anonymous said...

If Insite is a medical entry point for treatment it needs to be based in a hospital setting and then there should be treatment readily available for the many moments of "insight" when the addict knows he/she has a problem.
Anything less is a farce and a continuation of the enabling industry. (Maybe that's what the upper echelon of health care wants)
Talk lots, do nothing.

Robert W. said...

Never stop speaking out on this subject, David, never stop!

Recently I heard a commentator on the radio say that he believes that Al Gore and David Suzuki have about 2 years of credibility left wrt Global Warming. By then it'll be so abundantly clear that both of them are so absolutely incorrect.

My intuition tells me that the same sort of thing will happen with Insite here in Vancouver. Eventually it'll become clear that the drug equivalent of giving a shot glass full of whiskey to an alcoholic makes no sense. Also, statistics will come out, showing that very few (or no?) drug addicts going to Insite have ever successfully gone through a drug rehab program.

Only then will the majority start asking, "So we've spent all this money on Insite. Where are the positive results?"