New York Giving Up On Addicts?
New York Giving Up On Addicts?
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The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has gone too far with its superficial attempt to 'help' drug addicts while undermining legitimate drug treatment. Supplying addicts with a guide on how to more successfully use drugs is a dangerous endeavor for both those struggling with addiction and for the community at large. The Take Charge brochure created by this department contains information on how to mix drugs 'safely,' take care of veins and use clean needles among other outrageous recommendations. This is not harm reduction; this is harm production.
The optimal way to truly beat addiction and prevent drug-related harm is an effective harm reduction strategy that targets drug use and includes prevention, education, treatment and law enforcement efforts. Some examples of effective harm reduction strategies are drug courts, best practices treatment programs, 12 step organizations and methadone or other legally prescribed opioid substitution programs with the goal of ending drug use. We should reject ineffective harm reduction tactics that ask society to accept drug use or allege that drugs can be used safely or responsibly, creating the misunderstanding that drug use itself is not harmful and increasing addiction.
How do you think your loved one addicted to drugs should be helped - by teaching them how to shoot up or by treatment that sets them free from addiction?
Comments
Choose your weapons
Three questions from those who would rather enable addicts to choose their own methods of destruction:
1. Did you know that HIV and Hep C levels are at the saturation point in Vancouver, the mecca of the safe injection mythmakers?
2. Are you aware that the sexual behavior of drug addicts causes more HIV infection than their needle cleanliness does?
3. More importantly, have you ever asked a recovering addict what they think? Every one of them will tell you that giving up the drug is the best thing they've ever done.
I'm not giving up on those struggling against addiction. I'm sorry that you are.
This is a fight worth fighting for
First of all: You are claiming "facts" with no sources. Not helpful. Second: You are not these addicts mommy or daddy, and neither is the state. Why do you think you are qualified to tell others how they must live? Third, as long as you equate not giving up on addicts as incarceration or mandated treatment, we have no basis for discussion. Treating addictions as a law enforcement issue, instead of a health issue, is what has gotten us in the situation we are in today. I'll throw your questions back to you, have you ever asked a recovering addict if incarcerations was helpful in their struggle to get off drugs? I have, and the answer was no, it wasn't because there are no programs in prison either to establish effective treatment in that setting or to establish a bridge to sobriety after release.
Ineffective??
Similar policies to these have been in use in various European nations for years now. They have proven far more effective than destroying the lives of addicts through a law-enforcement based approach to drug addiction. Use rates are far below what is seen in North America with significantly lower rates of HIV and other infectious diseases in drug using communities. It is policies like these that allow for the opportunity for addicts to be brought into the system and out from under the influence of drug gangs.
If you lived in New York any point over the past 20 years you would have saw first hand how disastrous the old Rockefeller Laws were. We just sent more and more people to jail, saw diseases and needless deaths rise, all the while with ever increasing use rates. Drug gangs saw their numbers swell with addicts who had no other future with that drug conviction on their record. There is little substance abuse professionals can do for addicts when there is nothing for them outside of rehab other than drugs. That is the reality created by this old drug war mentality.
In the end we as a nation are going to have to identify the mistakes we are making and go with what actually works. New York's recent step back from extremism is a step in the right direction, but so much more needs to be done. If the safety of drug addicts is really your concern why would you stand in the way of efforts to make their drug use safer (not safe, but certainly safer than current drug use trends)? I say we put ideology aside and reduce the burden drug use puts on taxpayers by making a genuine effort to keep addicts alive and give them something to live for.
Idealism has its costs...
I have no hope of convincing DFAF of the wisdom of harm reduction, but for those of you on the fence, recall that those opposed to needle exchange support a policy that has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable HIV infections. Idealism has its costs...