Monday, January 2, 2012

BLATANT PITCH


This morning I received no less than eight phone calls from the Mystic East.

Sun News Media, which has a TV viewership smaller than Langley township, is headquartered in Toronto.

Thus, several of these calls arrived to my thankfully silent phones long before eight a.m.

Each call represented one of several producers for various Sun talk TV shows.

'Sup?

Vancouver Coastal Health is giving out clean crack pipe kits to users, and that includes 12 year old girls.

You don't say?

Getting news from the shaggy West Coast to the Centre of the Universe must be more difficult in these winter months what with all the snowy passes and such.

I've got better news than that.

In my spare time, besides being a retired old goof who likes to walk to cafes and drink cappuccinos and read old fashioned books with paper pages and doing a weekly cable TV show (with more viewers here in the Forsaken Territories than all of Sun Media) and doing therapy with addicts and alcoholics and swimming and hanging with friends and family, besides all that stuff...I have a part time gig.

I'm the executive director (or Executive Director) of the DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK of CANADA.

We are a curious lot.

We cling to a quaint value system.

I know this will break you up, but we actually believe that, when it comes to drugs and alcohol, abstinence-based Prevention & Treatment work.

We believe this so much that we have been making ourselves into the voice for abstinence-based Prevention & Treatment in communities, in the media and in Parliament.

In the last six months, we hosted two terrific small conferences bringing front-line workers together for common cause.

Here's what makes us different.

The honorable men and women who are spending your tax dollars are giving out free crack pipe kits, free needles, free heroin to 322 addicts for three years ($8Million) and free booze to downtown rubbies. Not to mention running (at tax-payer expense) clean well-lit places where addicts can shoot up before they go back in the alley and shoot up a little later in the same old way.

At the DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK of CANADA, we have the audacity to want to see drunks and drug addicts go into treatment and come out clean and sober citizens. Imagine. We also want to see children encouraged to avoid the indignities and misery of a life in addiction. Crazy us.

Here's what I wrote to our colleagues and members organizations and individual supporters this morning:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We head into this New Year with fresh energy and determination to promote in all possible ways our shared beliefs in abstinence-based Prevention and Treatment.

Our hearts and minds may be full, but our pockets are nearing empty.

The DRUG PREVENTION NETWORK OF CANADA operates on a comically modest budget - what my mother would have called "windy pies and airy puddings."

We have no secretaries, no fax machines, cell phones, frequent flyer miles or the like.

So we ask you once again to become a full-fledged member. That's $200 a year for like-minded organizations and $50 a year for individuals.

Now it is easier than ever to JOIN US. We have added PAY PAL and or CREDIT CARD subscriptions to both our website and our blog. Strength is in numbers. We need you to be added to our growing list of groups and people who know that Prevention and Treatment work.

Please JOIN US today.

Perhaps you agree with us.

If you do, please JOIN US today.

2 comments:

Evil Eye said...

David, when I heard this in the media, free crack pipes, I thought it was a April Fools joke that had come early.

But no, this is BC, where those addicted to drugs, seem to get a free ride.

Crack is an insidious drug and that those in power deem that it is OK to smoke it and give out free pipes is beyond belief.

My mother suffers from dementia and has been in residential care for five years (I have been informed that she has, what they call "smokers dementia") and her rates have gone up again. She gets less than $1400 a month, but will now pay $1195 a month, which I have no problem with but......

That is just the basic charge. If she needs more than one bath a week, it is an extra charge. If she gets he hair washed, an extra charge.

My mother has a broken hip and is prone to fall, we had to get a crash mat and that was over $300 more.

But now, if you are a drug addict and smoke crack, you get free pipes; if you are a heroin addict, you get free needles; if you are aged, infirm, and lot your wits, you pay through the nose.

No wonder the public has lost faith with government.

Anonymous said...

David I grew up with an alchoholic father then an alchoholic step father. Then I was an alchoholic. I quit drinking 22 years ago. I have raised 3 sons one who was addicted to cocaine. If the do gooders that want to enable drug users could have lived the hell my family endured with drugs and alcohol they might not be as keen to enable. My sympathy goes out to the eye and his infirm mother. My mom also just gets by. Because she isnt dead broke and because she is able to get about in a power chair she gets little or no help from the do gooders. When we sought treatment for our son it was available but it wasnt in our area. It took time and money for him to get treatment. If the do gooders only knew the harm that they cause by enabling addicts and drunks they would stop.

To those that believe in abstinance keep up the good work. We live in a strange time. We allow governments to waste our money on so many crazy ideas that people with clear vision for recovery and treatment need to be heard.
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