Vancouver’s safe-injection site

[Elder]

I do not know quite what to think on Van's safe-injection site.

Part of me says: " You (you is the addict) had to try the drug first and this is usually done without coercion; then you had to learn how to use it to gain the effect - smoke/snort then ultimately learn to inject into veins ; you did the drug again and again and again knowing it was addictive - so how I am supposed to feel compassion?

I really do not know what the other part of me says. I just know that I am not a co-dependent (caretaker) or rescuer/martyr so I do not feel the extreme need to go out there to enable people to do drugs safely whilst they are purposefully destroying theirs and others lives. Does the carefully develeped criminal element in an addict's personality magically disappear when they have free drugs? They are probably still not working so do not have a personal income. The twisted psychological perspective must remain so they would need to continue to act out those patterns. Wouldn't they?

Author Gene Hayman states that addiction is a disorder of choice. In fact he wrote a book: Addiction: A Disorder of Choice which flogs to death the current (codependent-based) popular idea that drug and alcohol addictions are diseases. No...they are choices!!

Each addict begets a host of victims; you know - like the families who still love the users/abusers and are so angst ridden that they become emotionally depleted especially when their daughter/son is constantly breaking in and stealing from them? Also in their wake are the current and former friends who become emotionally and financially depleted yet feel they cannot give up on their friend. Or people such as neighbours, business owners, passers-by that they prey upon and rob. Maybe I should mention car theft and insane chases through the populated streets whilst they are out of their minds on crack laughing at society for being so stupid. Or how about home invasions and terror tactics to feed their need for more stolen goods to pawn so they can get some more drugs.

I would make certain that no free injection site is opened up in our neigbourhood for when that occurs the neighbourhood is doomed for along with the safe-site come the addicts and their other dark, nefarious habits and criminal associates.

Everyone who is not an addict is the potential prey/victim of the addict. Do I think that safe injection sites help? I do not have enough information on this but it seems to me that if they have free drugs to use they do not need to quit and that just doesn't seem helpful to me.

I have diabetes and have coped with chronic pain and illness, for 7 long years, without alcohol or drugs. I learned to live with this ongoing state because I am an adult and must hold myself accountable for my thoughts and actions and how I affect society. If husband lost his job, again, and were unable to find another, or to afford BC Med at $109.00 for 2 per month- is there a safe free insulin injection site for diabetics?

The people who choose to become addicted by using addictive drugs believe that the world owes them. No, we do not. They are supposed to be self-accountable and be contributing members of society. Instead they are a drain on society and the perpetrators of most of the crimes. Wait a minute - I think I have come to a conclusion now - no I do not want to support Vancouver safe ejection sites...no...no...no.

 

[MHz]

Perhaps the 'Netherlands' could become the place where people who prefer heroine to life could 'exist in peace' before their breath left their body. All the war injured could also move there so as to not 'disturb' the homeland (to the true horrors of war) Even Himmler has been recorded as going insane when less than 30.000 were being shot to death (apparently not all bu8llets were a kill shot.

 

[In Between Man]

I have to call Bull**** on that one. Only someone with no experience with drugs could possibly be gullible enough to believe that.

Believe what? Insite being a contributor to addiction?

 

[JLM]

Believe what? Insite being a contributor to addiction?

Yeah, I'm skeptical about that one myself.

 

[MHz]

It's part of our commitment to the CIA drug cartel. The alternative is (apparently) a few more drug overdoses but a 90% drop in 'funds' for the muddlemen (patent pending)

 

[In Between Man]

Yeah, I'm skeptical about that one myself.

Well, she claims that Insite coached her how to properly inject a needle. That's like showing someone how to load and use a firearm when they want to kill themselves. Sounds like contribution to me.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Safe injection sites are designed to protect addicts from avoidable death and disease. They work, the evidence from Vancouver is perfectly clear to anybody who takes the trouble to look at it. But in the neo-con world, ideology trumps evidence.

 

[In Between Man]

But in the neo-con world, ideology trumps evidence.

Wrong! No one is denying that Insite protects addicts from avoidable death and disease. But so what! So does locking them up and throwing away the key!

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Uh huh. And which do you think is the more benign, charitable, and dare I suggest Christian, way to treat troubled people?

 

[In Between Man]

Uh huh. And which do you think is the more benign, charitable, and dare I suggest Christian, way to treat troubled people?

You can easily treat a troubled person with a benign, charitable and Christian attitude without literally standing back and watching them stick a needle in their arm. It would take a great amount of patience and network of support but ultimately our love towards troubled people should be so great that we will do whatever it takes to prevent that needle from going in. Like I said, if we succeed that person will be nothing but grateful when they look back at that critical moment.

Instead Insite just monitors an injection, maybe offers a pamphlet about the rehab program, has a counselor ask a couple of questions, and then waits for the same poor sap to come back the next day, so they can offer that pamphlet again...:roll: Admittedly some of the addicts do take the rehab program, but were talking about a handful of people who get clean when there are thousands of addicts. Insite's success at TREATING addicts really is overrated.

 

[Unforgiven]

I do not know quite what to think on Van's safe-injection site.

Best to understand the whole situation than to make a judgment without all the facts.

Part of me says: " You (you is the addict) had to try the drug first and this is usually done without coercion; then you had to learn how to use it to gain the effect - smoke/snort then ultimately learn to inject into veins ; you did the drug again and again and again knowing it was addictive - so how I am supposed to feel compassion?

Some people get raped over and over again, finally run away and instead of dealing with their feelings and what has happened to them, they find a way to remove that pain altogether for a short time. That is what Heroin does. Just like Insulin regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Doesn't matter how upset you are or how difficult something for you is to deal with Heroin makes you fell much better for a short time.

So when you see someone who suffers from severe depression, do you feel they should just get over it already or should they get medical help to limit the negative affects of depression while psychology and regular therapy teach them to deal with the mental aspects of the problem?

I really do not know what the other part of me says. I just know that I am not a co-dependent (caretaker) or rescuer/martyr so I do not feel the extreme need to go out there to enable people to do drugs safely whilst they are purposefully destroying theirs and others lives. Does the carefully develeped criminal element in an addict's personality magically disappear when they have free drugs? They are probably still not working so do not have a personal income. The twisted psychological perspective must remain so they would need to continue to act out those patterns. Wouldn't they?

Well I guess you should ask yourself what you would want to happen if you were in those shoes. There are junkies who didn't have the money problem. Keith Richards, Jimmy Page for example. Both are worth millions and have no problem affording the drug while they were addicted. It's the prohibition that makes the criminal out of an addict. The drug itself only costs a few dollars a month to manufacture and supply an addict. Instead we class the drug as a schedule I narcotic, making it illegal to manufacture, buy, possess, or distribute without a licence. This drives it into the black market and in doing so drives up the price drastically.

The addict, having to raise that money to continue the drug supply, resorts to whatever means to do so until all resources are exhausted. Inevitably resorting to criminal activity such as trafficking, prostitution, theft and ultimately violence as the drug takes control of their life.

Compassion in the right feeling Elder. First and foremost is someone who has an issue that isn't being dealt with.

Author Gene Hayman states that addiction is a disorder of choice. In fact he wrote a book: Addiction: A Disorder of Choice which flogs to death the current (codependent-based) popular idea that drug and alcohol addictions are diseases. No...they are choices!

Well so are accidents. People could choose not to drive that day, not to be distracted, not to allow their car to drift out of the lane all sort of things can be seen as a choice so that blame can be laid. The point being that blaming someone reduces the amount we have to care about them. While it's easier to turn away, it doesn't solve any of the problems. Not to mention, it's the last thing we want when we are in need.

Some people are susceptible to addiction while others are not. Myself, I have no addictions to drugs or alcohol. I've done most of them too and not just once. I can walk away from it when I choose to for some reason. Food on the other hand, is what got me. Not because I don't know how to eat or cook, or what I should be doing for my own good.

Addiction is a difficult thing to deal with and to dismiss it as a choice like mashed potatoes or fries with a meal is wrong. It's like saying someone who will burn themselves to save a small child from a burning building is simply overly emotional and should have left the child to decide if they want to live or not. For some, it's simply not a choice. They have to act to save that child. It's not a question of right or wrong, it's an undeniable force that they react to.

Each addict begets a host of victims; you know - like the families who still love the users/abusers and are so angst ridden that they become emotionally depleted especially when their daughter/son is constantly breaking in and stealing from them? Also in their wake are the current and former friends who become emotionally and financially depleted yet feel they cannot give up on their friend. Or people such as neighbours, business owners, passers-by that they prey upon and rob. Maybe I should mention car theft and insane chases through the populated streets whilst they are out of their minds on crack laughing at society for being so stupid. Or how about home invasions and terror tactics to feed their need for more stolen goods to pawn so they can get some more drugs.

Very theatrical. While there is a nugget or truth to it, it's a naive understanding of the issues. There is a toll on those around an addict. It does destroy homes and lives. But you can't punish it away. Really the same can be said about someone who is suicidal. Take the case of Ashley Smith. Died in jail by suicide while the guards watcher her turn blue and die of asphyxiation before their eyes. She was originally put in juvenile detention for stealing a CD and throwing crab apples at a postal worker. 11 months in segregated, solitary confinement, failed in forcing good behaviour and instead she killed herself by tying a ligature around her neck while guards watched but were ordered not to intervene. At times during her incarceration she was sometimes restrained in shackles or a full-body “cocoon” topped off with a hockey helmet in case she toppled over or tried to bite someone.

This isn't how you should treat someone with mental illness nor is it a way to treat someone who has a serious drug addiction.

I would make certain that no free injection site is opened up in our neigbourhood for when that occurs the neighbourhood is doomed for along with the safe-site come the addicts and their other dark, nefarious habits and criminal associates.

Some would say that East Hastings was in dire shape before Insite opened. It's not like they are located in some snooty suburban enclave hampering market values and upsetting the impressionable school children next door.
They are located in skid row where people are living in boxes, because they have no where else to go when they are in the down cycle of their addiction.

Everyone who is not an addict is the potential prey/victim of the addict. Do I think that safe injection sites help? I do not have enough information on this but it seems to me that if they have free drugs to use they do not need to quit and that just doesn't seem helpful to me.

For over 100 years the US has been trying to get rid of a drug problem. They started out with 1.3 percent of the population addicted to hard drugs. After 100 years and over a trillion dollars, that is $1,000,000,000,000, there is 1.3 percent of the population addicted to hard drugs. In contrast, in the last ten years over half the people who smoked have quit due to nothing more than education and help when they decided to start quitting. You tell me which is the more effective method?

I have diabetes and have coped with chronic pain and illness, for 7 long years, without alcohol or drugs. I learned to live with this ongoing state because I am an adult and must hold myself accountable for my thoughts and actions and how I affect society. If husband lost his job, again, and were unable to find another, or to afford BC Med at $109.00 for 2 per month- is there a safe free insulin injection site for diabetics?

Well, imagine if there was no BC med. If Insulin was illegal to have, sell, make, give away, would you just suck it up and learn to get along with out Insulin? Or would you and your husband deplete what you have saved and own buying Insulin from some guy down town who is going to charge you $150 a week for it? What happens when he puts the price up to $300 a week? How about $600 a day? Would your husband shake his head and tell you what a dumb choice it was to develop Diabetes in the first place or would he do what he had to do to get you the Insulin?

I know what I would do if it was my wife in your shoes.

The people who choose to become addicted by using addictive drugs believe that the world owes them. No, we do not. They are supposed to be self-accountable and be contributing members of society. Instead they are a drain on society and the perpetrators of most of the crimes. Wait a minute - I think I have come to a conclusion now - no I do not want to support Vancouver safe ejection sites...no...no...no.

You've just made the same argument some raise against Canadian national health care. Some people can afford to buy and pay for health insurance on their own. So why should they help subsidize yours? The answer is simple. Because over all it is better to prevent a catastrophic virtually bankrupting medical problem from ruining your family and having all of you remain productive in supporting our society and helping to fund things like health care and so on.

Taking the "Let's just get rid of them" line simply ends up on our own doorstep when we're the one's left who need to be gotten rid of. Helping others means that there are many willing hands to help you when you have fallen.

Insite doesn't give free drugs to drug addicts. Insite does help addicts reduce infection and over dosing while providing information and referral services to addicts when they have that moment of clarity and want to stop using drugs. While not a cure, it helps to reduce the harm caused by the abuse of addictive IV drugs.

Wrong! No one is denying that Insite protects addicts from avoidable death and disease. But so what! So does locking them up and throwing away the key!

No it doesn't. Most addicts when released return to their addiction and continue the abuse of the drug of choice until they are dead or they find their will to seek help in ending their addiction. The facts are there, you should accept them instead of this denial your in.

 

[JLM]

Safe injection sites are designed to protect addicts from avoidable death and disease. They work, the evidence from Vancouver is perfectly clear to anybody who takes the trouble to look at it. But in the neo-con world, ideology trumps evidence.

I can appreciate both sides of the argument on this one, Dexter. I too lean toward the philosophy that every life is valuable but only in the sense there is a potential for virtually every life to be salvaged. I can also understand those who think that some are so hopelessly addicted and there is no moral fibre left and their very being depends on harming and stealing from other people and hence would be better off dead. Are the injection sites really helping these people? I don't think so, just prolonging the inevitable. I think there is a better solution, but first of all you have to be undemocratic and take away these people's "rights" under the Charter, justifiable by the fact that in doing so you are improving the lives of the population as a whole. I wish there was a secure facility about 300 miles from nowhere, with doctors, nurses, councillors, lots of programs, and a farm or a saw mill for productive employment. I doubt if we can save them all but I do think once some of them get their heads straight, they would do anything to avoid going back to their former life.................for the rest we can only say we tried. Maybe there is a middle ground for the safe injection sites, perhaps access should be limited to 30 days so these people can make up their minds what they want to do. But you have to have a facility as I've described in place first.

Wrong! No one is denying that Insite protects addicts from avoidable death and disease. But so what! So does locking them up and throwing away the key!

What you would be doing here is giving up on these people at HUGE public expense.

 

[captain morgan]

Safe injection sites are designed to protect addicts from avoidable death and disease.

Am I to assume that you believe it's in the addicts best interests that society act as their enabler such that they can enjoy a long and fruitful existence as an junkie?

Maybe Insite can also offer workshops on the best techniques for shoplifting and B&E's... Afterall, if they get convicted for crimes to support their habit and go to prison, they don't have access to safe injection facilities in jail.

They work, the evidence from Vancouver is perfectly clear to anybody who takes the trouble to look at it. But in the neo-con world, ideology trumps evidence.

Can I find that evidence in the same place as the evidence that North American junkies live an uber-sh*ty existence as an addict that is plagued with all manner of poverty, malnutrition, disease and depression?

 

[petros]

Quote:

Part of me says: " You (you is the addict) had to try the drug first and this is usually done without coercion; then you had to learn how to use it to gain the effect - smoke/snort then ultimately learn to inject into veins ; you did the drug again and again and again knowing it was addictive - so how I am supposed to feel compassion?
​

The majority of opiate abuser in Canada are not on the streets cranking up on heroin. It's you wife, your hubby, your kid, neighbour, aunt, grandma, cousin, friend, who all got it from their doctor after a trauma, surgery or progressive long term injury.



90% of opiates and opiate abusers use pills paid for by you and me and they look like you and me.

 

[captain morgan]

Fair enough, but the majority of the users at Insite are not in this group... On that note, we are talking about illegal narcotics and not prescription meds abuse.

 

[petros]

Fair enough, but the majority of the users at Insite are not in this group... On that note, we are talking about illegal narcotics and not prescription meds abuse.

Indeed but, what got them started is debatable.

 

[In Between Man]

No it doesn't. Most addicts when released return to their addiction and continue the abuse of the drug of choice until they are dead or they find their will to seek help in ending their addiction. The facts are there, you should accept them instead of this denial your in.

But isn't that due to our lack of positive counseling in prison and short jail stints. You your a full blown addict but only sit in jail for a couple of months it would be extremely easy to go back to your ways.

What you would be doing here is giving up on these people at HUGE public expense.

True, but I was just making the point that Insite is not the SOLE way of preventing avoidable death and disease.

 

[Unforgiven]

But isn't that due to our lack of positive counseling in prison and short jail stints. You your a full blown addict but only sit in jail for a couple of months it would be extremely easy to go back to your ways.

They're talking about forcing prisoners to work and reinstating chain gangs. Over crowded jails and you're thinking there isn't enough rehab going on in prison?

True, but I was just making the point that Insite is not the SOLE way of preventing avoidable death and disease.

Not the sole way but much better than what you are suggesting in this thread.

 

[Elder]

Am I to assume that you believe it's in the addicts best interests that society act as their enabler such that they can enjoy a long and fruitful existence as an junkie?

Maybe Insite can also offer workshops on the best techniques for shoplifting and B&E's... Afterall, if they get convicted for crimes to support their habit and go to prison, they don't have access to safe injection facilities in jail.




Can I find that evidence in the same place as the evidence that North American junkies live an uber-sh*ty existence as an addict that is plagued with all manner of poverty, malnutrition, disease and depression?

Oops! Reply was not for this post so I removed it.

The majority of opiate abuser in Canada are not on the streets cranking up on heroin. It's you wife, your hubby, your kid, neighbour, aunt, grandma, cousin, friend, who all got it from their doctor after a trauma, surgery or progressive long term injury.



90% of opiates and opiate abusers use pills paid for by you and me and they look like you and me.

Gosh, now where did i get that idea? Would it hav anything to do with the crack heads in our area? There was a crack house less than 100 feet behind the Halfway house across the street from us. I went to downtown Vancouver last week and was somewhat horrified by the amount of down and out drug addicts there too. We are surrounded by them so I was referring to this type of addict. I used to be a nurse and the number of nurses and doctors who were alcohlic/drug addicts may amaze you. The police departments are filled with officers who abuse drugs, alcohol and their spouses. I merely narrowed it to the ones that may visit the safe injection site. What you speak of is a separate Thread enitirely.

 

[In Between Man]

Insite's next battle: Supervised inhalation.

Now the proponents of Insite are hoping that a favorable decision in the Supreme Court this week allowing safe injection, will pave a way for them to argue for supervised inhalation of crack cocaine!

Insite isn't saving lives, its just monitoring the drug user's slower death.

Shut down Insite.

Next step to "supervised inhalation" sites:

Addicts get free crack-pipe supply