Al Arsenault Puts It on The Line
I walked the beat down in Vancouver's Skid Road as a police officer for decades and I watched a series of failed social experiments kill and infect thousands of people desperately in need of treatment in a place I now call the 'chemical gulag'.
The drug legalizers would like you to believe that the Needle Exchange Program (NEP) and the Supervised Injection Sites (SIS) were huge successes. They were utter and abject failures, driving up the Hep C rate to saturation levels (95%) and the HIV rate to the highest in the developed world (from a starting point of 3% and 2% respectively in 1988 when the NEP opened up). Read the Dr. Garth Davies' article: 'A Critical Evaluation of the Effects of Safe Injection Facilities' in Volume 1, Issue 3 of The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, and Dr. Colin Mangham's 'A Critique of Canada's INSITE Injection Site and its Parent Philosophy' in this same journal (http://www.globaldrugpolicy.org/) for some real insight on this matter.
Campbell should hang his head in shame for what he has put this community through by carrying on with this SIS nonsense.
Do you know what twenty years of so-called Harm Reduction will bring? Perhaps a live addict who will use up more precious health resources because he/ she will most likely be a sick addict on top of still having their habit, which you will also be paying for.
They say that you can't detox a dead addict. NO ONE has ever died nor gotten a drug-induced infectious illness in a good treatment program, because the addict is separated from the poison.
It is not the dirty needle or the crack pipe lacking a rubber mouthpiece that is the problem: it is the relationship between the addict and the drug. Period.
Coerced treatment works as good as voluntary treatment. At the end two decades of treatment, you will most likely have a healthy, productive and contributing member of society.
The poor get Harm Reduction and the rich get treatment.
You don't give an addict what they want. True compassion lies in giving them what they need. It's your choice to make but thousands of lives depend on running these snake oil salesmen out of town.
Al ArsenaultMemberOdd Squad Productions Society (http://www.oddsquad.com/)Drug Prevention Network of Canada (http://www.dpnoc.com/)International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy (http://www.itfsdp.org/)
Drug expert recommends heroin \'shooting galleries\'By Kate FosterA LEADING drugs expert will this week recommend that \'shooting galleries\' are set up in Scotland to allow heroin addicts to inject drugs safely.Larry Campbell, a Canadian senator, believes a similar scheme in Vancouver has saved many drug addicts\' lives and cut the risk of infections from dirty needles.At one state-funded clinic in Vancouver, addicts bring their own drugs and are given clean needles to inject, overseen by nurses who can monitor them for signs of an overdose.The injecting rooms allow addicts to take illegal hard drugs without fear of arrest.Campbell plans to lay out his idea on Wednesday at a meeting of the Scottish Parliament\'s Futures Forum, which is preparing a report on new ways of tackling Scotland\'s drug and alcohol problems.He said last night: \"We have set up a supervised injection site. Our approach has meant we have 7,000 drug-users registered and 400 overdoses have taken place at the site but not a single person has died. People can be treated by medical staff in the clinic. It\'s not without its controversy in Canada but it\'s a health clinic.\"This was set up to prevent the spread of disease through dirty needles. The fact that no-one has died is an amazing record. I can state unequivocally that people are alive as a result of this clinic. We have also made referrals to addiction counselling and treatment. Drug-users can register under a false name and they are given a dish that contains a swab, syringe and antiseptic wipe. \"It\'s something that should be considered in Scotland alongside prevention, treatment and enforcement. It lessens public disorder.\"Similar clinics exist in Switzerland, Australia and the Netherlands, and there are growing calls for the introduction of them in Scotland.The full article contains 303 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.Last Updated: 08 March 2008 7:38 PM
