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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I don't see any hints of a drug reform platform emanating from any of our current leaders in the Democratic Party.
But maybe there is hope. I will choose to be hopeful.
In my old economics class, my teacher was fond of saying how every problem in the world can be solved through economics. If you were willing to pay the cost, the problem could be solved.
The issue of Drugs was a particularly costly one, in that in order to end drug abuse; you had to essentially write off the drug addicts. Acknowledge that these people were addicts, untreatable for the most part, give them a nice clean place and all the drugs they could want, and all the ills of drug use would be gone. These people would be written off from society, cared for, but left to rot in their opiate induced trance.
Although the Insite program does not quite go as far as my old economics professor's thought experiment, I can't help but wonder how the underlying principle is really that different.
Yes, users are encouraged into treatment, but aren't monies that could be better used for treatments sites now being used for Insite's funding? Also can you really encourage treatment while enabling a vice? It strikes me this is just the first step towards the world my old prof described. A world where the human life of drug addicts is just another cost to society so as to maintain order. Give the addicts what they want, and organized crime, and disorganized drug use will cease, but the cost is denying that these people are human, and suffering, and need our help.
Perhaps this story is a little to close to me having lost loved ones to drugs. But every time I hear a story of government enabling of drug use I remember a story I heard about Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is the model of order and tranquility; it has embraced the libertarianism of vice, and allows those who seek that destructive path to do so, safely, cleanly, & legally. The picture is quite serene until you notice a tricycle in the picture. Human life has value because it affects all other human life around it. Letting people slowly kill themselves in the name of order ignores the countless lives destroyed along with the actual users.
Does someone referred to as a "Czar" sound to you like they're open and receptive to new ideas and initiatives..?
As an aside, an early safe injection site was a home for addicts in Massachusetts detailed in Drug Crazy by Mike Gray that was only shut down against the better judgement of the local police after the prohibition against heroin was first brought into effect. The addicts were no problem to anyone, and the long term effects of addiction was minimal due to clean drugs, proper housing, good food, and an opportunity to work like other people.
Peter Cohen is a Dutch sociologist studying drug addicts and his take is that what we call drug addicts are people who fall in love with a substance. His view: as with romantic love, trying to separate lovers leads to horrible problems. His prescription: give the people free access to their love and let them work it out.
For 100 years we have been trying to help addicts live a better life free of their drugs. For 100 years we have been failing miserably: there are ever more addicts and the bad effects of their drugs have been magnified. There is no evidence that drug abuse has been reduced in frequency or that drug takers take less drugs than they otherwise would. On the contrary, the prohibitionist countries the highest rates of drug abuse and drug-related social harm in the world.
A fundamental principle of our democracy is that you trust individuals to look out for their own best interests and then you leave them alone. Yes, that means that other people may make what you consider to be a mistake, but those mistakes are less frequent and more easily dealt with than the mistakes that are hidden in our system.
While we would like to believe that we are better than drug addicts and therefore more capable at setting boundaries on their behavior, most of the trouble we suffer as a result of drug addiction is really the trouble we create by our paternalistic do-gooderism, such as drug overdoses, diseases from bad drug delivery mechanisms, property crime by addicts trying to pay prices inflated by prohibition, and the crime and corruption of co-existing with a multi-billion dollar illegal industry.
Hopefully the day will come when we remember what democracy is all about: not about running another man's life, but letting him run it for himself.
And we're not talking in pretty impractical theories: there is no way to run another man's life without ruining it.
So true. So very true.
The current administration will never accept the fact that drug addiction is a social problem. They will continue to treat it as a criminal issue. Personally, I think Bush & Co want drugs to flood the streets so those who are on the fray (people they don't care about in the first place) will just disappear.
Afghanistan, much?
As a born and raised Vancouverite, I feel compelled to weigh in on the author's rather rosy viewpoint. I love my city and am very proud about its many merits. However, we possess one of the most degenerate inner city cores I have ever seen. The Downtown Eastside can look like a scene from "Night of the Living Dead", with crowds of wasted away junkies milling about on street corners, opening doing deals, prostituting themselves, wandering aimlessly into busy traffic, shooting up, or scouring the sidewalk for tiny rocks of crack.
Although we are a relatively progressive community, in that we have a functioning and well organized safe-injection site, to state that we have "halted a drug epidemic" is laughable. The city is awash with panhandlers and property crime (auto theft and home break ins are rampant). Some of the reasons for this are our moderate climate (the mildest in Canada and acceptable for sleeping rough), and the large volume of cheap drugs flowing through the area; however, the local "bleeding heart" activist groups, underfunded police and lax judiciary only exacerbate the problem.
With the Olympics visiting in 2010, addressing this situation has become ever more critical. Frankly, it is an embarassment. In addition to safe injection sites and creating more rehabilition spaces, the city needs to devote more money to policing, and the judges need to get real about sentences (no more five tries you're out).
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Salon headlines in your mailbox
