Insite Given Exemption By SCoC
- Thread starter petros
- Start date
Perhaps we should just shoot them - Long term addicts - no hope of coming off drugs - drain on Health care budgets -
Not true if you factor in the extensive PROPERTY CRIME junkies commit to supply their habit, plus the tremendous POLICING COST of the Downtown Eastside.
The cheapest option is to ENFORCE THE LAW and lock these people up. Not only would it be the cheapest option but normal people would be able to walk the Downtown Eastside without having to worry about being mugged, without having to watch their step for needles, blood, urine, feces, and vomit. The junkies in the Downtown Eastside also throw so much garbage on the sidewalk that cleaner streets in itself would be worth removing junkies from the public.
That would mean lots more prisons - and then all the health care needed to provide proper care - Yes the public would like the idea until they saw the cost for it.
yeah it does, exactly the same as we factor it in when someone attempts to commit suicide, or harm themselves. They deserve medical care.
It won't change if we keep the status quo alley. Insite offers some hope of stability, safety. From there recovery is a possibility.
Is the scenario on the street you describe, typical of junkies or more the extreme? I'm a little puzzled at how this attitude coincides with your Christian beliefs. I'd like to find the cause and then I think a cure is attainable. If we "throw away" these people who will be next? The epileptics, the lepers, the mongoloids, people with a hare lip?
I sure hope so Karrie. :smile:
It's Insite that's perpetuating the status quo! It's not truly helping them because all they're doing is supervising the injection and offering a pamphlet :roll: on how to get treatment. They may stop an overdose today only to have that same person die tomorrow!
Have you seen these people in the Downtown Eastside? They're the walking dead and they love their drugs more than life itself. Their only hope is to be forcibly removed from the drug scene environment.
And if you still think Insite is valuable, what do you have say about the girl who went to Insite because she wanted to try heroin for the FIRST TIME? Surprise! No one at Insite warned her about her grave decision, let alone try to stop her and instead COACHED her on how to properly inject herself! She got addicted and had to seek help in a program that had nothing to do with Insite! Does that sound like giving someone hope and stability? No.
I'm not sure that addiction in itself is a crime. So if they steal something do they deserve a longer sentence than the non addict who steals something? What would locking an addict up teach him? Besides if you start locking up addicts, we could lose doctors, mayors, chartered accountants, blacksmiths, plumbers etc. It could be a very slippery slope.
Have I ever been? No. I've only ever been to Van once, on my honeymoon. Touristy, non gritty type stuff.
Have I ever had to deal with addicts? yes. Am I aware that it is virtually impossible under Canadian law to force a person into treatment or move them anywhere they don't want to be moved? yes. We've been to court to try to have someone institutionalized as their organs gave out from their addiction. It's impossible under the law. Current choices are try to keep them alive and get them help, put up with them injecting in parks and leaving needles around, or incarcerate the lot of them (and that's not a real choice as no one wants to foot the bill).
Are there going to be horror stories? hell yes. But guess what, the horror stories won't go away with Insite disappearing.
Their main hope is when the powers that be get the balls to shoot/hang the traffickers and importers. Kill the source of the problem, or at least one of the sources. Some people are by nature self destructive so you can't save all of them as some will find another addiction...............booze, gambling etc.
The ones you see who are filthy and lying in the gutter are not your typical drug addicts.
Do you go down there? If so, why?
Why do we have pubs? So people aren't wandering around drinking.
Not every junkie is a junkie by choice or personal action. Forcibly injecting socially vulnerable women and getting them hooked is one of the many tactics used to draw women into prostituion. Others turn to street drugs when their doctor prescribed opiate addiction for their bad back gets out of hand and docs stop prescribing to them, turn them away cold turkey. They're already an addict, their life was already destroyed. It may come as a surprise to you, but perfectly normal, valuable, people succumb to addictions every day.
probably because taking a humane stance on drug addiction makes us look bad to the "war on drugs" that we share a border with.