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 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.

Does someone referred to as a "Czar" sound to you like they're open and receptive to new ideas and initiatives..?

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.

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.

The N4A, Inc.

Dan F. Umanoff, M.D. President and CEO

In my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, where Hypoism is the genetic neurobiological disease that causes addictions, I say, "Public policy and harm reduction for mood-altering drug addictions are issues that must be accomplished now, prior to the general acceptance of Hypoism, just to save the ones who have progressed to active addiction.1 My vision of this is as follows: Decriminalization of all drugs, as hard as that may seem. We must provide pharmaceutically pure and standardized drug doses for those presently drug addicted. The distribution of these drugs will occur at centralized clinics where addicts have three avenues available to them: a) standardized drugs and paraphernalia, b) medical care and birth control advice and help, and c) access to detox, rehabilitation and 12 Step program referral as they desire it. All this must be done at minimal cost. A timely example of this approach is presently in existence in Switzerland. (The study report can be found in the Appendix.) The harm reduction program that I suggest is actually happening within an entire country. Moreover, over 70 percent of the populace have voted in a recent referendum to continue the program with Swiss federal money! The Swiss, for financial, crime reduction, and social reasons, undertook a study beginning in 1993 that evaluated the various effects of prescription opiates on its addicts and country.

A similar program, although not at all as comprehensive, was attempted in Liverpool, England, but was not as successful as the Swiss study because they only prescribed heroin in one form, in cigarettes. The Swiss showed that this way of administering heroin destroys 90 percent of the heroin dose, and, therefore, is essentially not giving any drug at all which is why they got such dismal results. Additionally, since the Swiss study was reported, several other countries, including Belgium and possibly Australia, are starting similar harm reduction programs. One of the positive effects from programs such as this, which is not discussed in the report, is that the black market for heroin and other drugs included in the program will disappear. Instead of having the effect predicted by US drug experts, that more of our sons and daughters will become addicts than ever before, the opposite actually occurs. Programs such as this are actually the only way to destroy the drug cartels, not the drug war, which is the only way to perpetuate them! The Drug War is the only way to ensure continued survival and growth of drug cartels! Aren’t our policy makers smart? You would think they were working for the drug cartels. I wonder."

The above discussion is derived from the scientifically valid theory of addiction, Hypoism, the correct interpretation of the science of addiction causation, not an opinion. Why is this policy diametrically opposite from the current US government policy? Because the theory of addiction causation pushed by NIDA, ASAM, and the US government, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), a wrong theory based on deliberate misinterpretation of the science, says addiction is caused by drug use itself, and thus is a moral issue, rather than by an underlying genetic neurobiological disease existing in just 10-20% of the population. The problem is that my book has been ignored and censored for the last decade by the addictionology community as well as by the media and the public has only heard about one theory of addiction causation, the HBH. My web-based article arguing the scientific difference between the HBH and Hypoism is at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ The specific policy argument is the drug war war, #4, at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/

In modern medicine rational and effective policy for any medical issue is derived from the correct theory of causation. As long as the US fraudulently uses the wrong theory of addiction causation for moralistic rather than scientific reasons there's no chance for addictions to ever be dealt with effectively, rationally, or beneficially even with obviously beneficial programs like the Vancouver policy. The correct theory of addiction causation must be learned by the public so they can demand rational policy change. Once Hypoism becomes the prevailing addiction theory, as is it should, there will be many automatic changes in all areas of the addiction arena that will allow thorough and effective prevention, recovery, and helpful public policies.

"Love is an action not a feeling.

Integrity is an action not a thought.

Anything less is too little." ---

Dan F. Umanoff, M.D.

Author of Hypoic's Handbook - The Hypoism Paradigm of Addiction.

http://www.hypoism.com

President and founder of The National Association for the Advancement

and Advocacy of Addicts, Inc. (N4A), a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization of addicts for addicts offering free educational and legal services to discriminated against and abused addicts of all varieties, "substances" and "behavioral," and their families.

http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thenationalassociationfortheadvancementandadvocacyofaddicts/

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