« NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT | Main | Contest: $100! »
March 30, 2005
Canada is a Junkie's Paradise
A couple of weeks ago on my blog, I posted about Canada's new program available for heroin addicts. A rehab program? you ask. Nope. Free heroin for addicts. All addicts have to do is show up at medical centers three times a day, seven times a week, and a kindly medical professional will shoot them up with a fresh dose in a clean needle.
It seems hard to believe, but it's true.
Well, I guess I'm not the only one who thinks it's a crazy idea.
Rachel Marsden, writing for the Canadian Free Press, calls this the Junkification of Canada by the Left. Within her article, she quotes Dr. Peter Cohen, who is apparently for the idea:
“[O]piates are remarkably non toxic and impose very little health hazards. However, the junkification of users that happens to some of them is not a result of the opiates, but of the social conditions in which people land. Intense marginalization under conditions of prohibition 'creates' junkies…Now, if you supply heroin to users, you relieve them from the black market and you supply self esteem to them which creates all sorts of possibilities…But, compared to the social conditions that create junkification, the conditions inside the maintenance program are more humane and more promising.”
I see...
Marsden then uses his reasoning with her scenario of a fat woman who has difficulty in losing weight, and is given free fast food from the government:
“The lardification of fast food eaters that happens to some of them is not a result of cheeseburgers, but of the social conditions in which people land. Intense marginalization of cheeseburger scarfers under conditions of cheeseburger badmouthing as a result of movies like ‘Supersize Me’ ‘creates’ fatsos.”
Now that sounds more reasonable!
What does a bonafide, ex-heroin addict think? Billy Weselowski, a former 20-year heroin addict who now runs a rehab clinic and is working on his Ph.D., had this to say:
"Everyone has copped out to the degree of reducing a little bit of crime and a little bit of harm at the expense of human beings. They’re just throwing these people away...No one’s going to be able to maintain [their addiction on the three prescribed hits per day] because you can’t maintain heroin. You build a tolerance to it. Inside a few months, you’ll need more of it to get the same sort of punch...Someone’s going to end up killing somebody [while on government heroin], and they’re going to blame the government and use that as a legal defense. The addict has got a gun to the citizenry’s head. It’ll be, ‘You created this. You put me in this position, and now you’re going to pay for it.’”
Like any government program (those in the U.S. included) that is supposedly a temporary, stop-gap measure usually ends up being the status quo. Look at what it took to make changes to the welfare situation in this country! As Marsden says, "Leave it to the Canadian 'harm reduction' leftists to advocate in favor of using Canadian citizens as guinea pigs to essentially duplicate a failed experiment. And while the government is funding heroin injections for junkies, diabetics can’t afford needles, and addicts who want into treatment centers to get off heroin end up on a waiting list."
This last statement ties into my earlier post today on the perils of national health care.
Who pays for these drugs? Why, Canadian taxpayers, of course.
Remember this story when someone you know talks about what a great healthcare system Canada has, and how many great services are available for Canadian citizens.
Posted by at March 30, 2005 09:36 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.lifelikepundits.com/cgi-bin/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/520
Comments
Actaully, it's a great idea. Methadone, another opiod given to addicts, measurably improves their lives. Giving addicts heroin relieves them of the risk of HIV, HCV, overdose, crime, withdrawal, and allows them to maintain a stable habit that is much less destructive of the soul.
Addiction sucks, but supporting a street habit is destroys a person in ways mere use of chemicals does not.
Posted by: paul at March 31, 2005 02:45 AM
Perhaps...but there is no rehabilitation program to go along with the heroin. And this is heroin, not methadone, that is being given out. Did you read the quote by the former addict? About not being able to "maintain" because you need more and more as your body adjusts? Are they going to adjust for that, or say "tough, this is all you are allowed"? I think the whole thing is asking for trouble.
Posted by: Pam M. at March 31, 2005 09:20 AM
Limiting doses would be a mistake, but I disagree with the guy who asserts that addicts will take ever increasing doses ad infinitum. At some point most addicts will find a place where they feel comforatble. Limiting dosage will interfere with that natural process.
Referrals to services should be offered, but I think limiting the heroin dispensing to just that is the right idea. Lets see what happens when ripping and running is removed from the equation of addiction.
Posted by: paul at March 31, 2005 03:09 PM
I am sorry. I may support decriminalizing drugs--no jail for users, just treatment and work release.
But people (especially children) need to see junkies. They need to see people who lose everything chasing a high. They need to see what it does to their bodies and their goals in life.
Otherwise, a new generation of children will grow up thinking, why, doing drugs won't ruin my life.
Posted by: Aaron at March 31, 2005 04:56 PM
Hmmm...an interesting perspective, Aaron!
Posted by: Pam M. at March 31, 2005 08:58 PM
Aaron, if using drugs won't destroy your life unless you have to buy them on the black market, why not legalize them? And if they do destroy your life anyway, your aim is acheived.
Frankly, I doubt kids will be as attracted to drugs as you claim. They weren't a hundred years ago.
Posted by: paul at March 31, 2005 09:38 PM