[Wally_Sconce]

Harm reduction strategies prove most useful when combined with supply reduction, and demand reduction strategies.

Harm reduction by itself is less effective.

[sandorski]

ridenrain ridenrain:

I'd be for safe injection sites and even giving addicts drugs if it were done to get them off drugs, but that's not what's happening. We're simply enabling an illegal addiction that the courts don't want to address.

$1:

Last week, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and Chief Constable Chu fired the first in a series of salvos aimed at the province's judiciary, declaring that a "plague of career criminals who infect our city" would "never be allowed to stand at any other time in our history in any other place in the world."

The VPD also made public the transcript and partial video of an interview that one of its officers conducted with a chronic offender. Until recently, the person was stealing "full-time" to support a $400-$500-a-day cocaine addiction. He has 26 criminal convictions and thus knows well how the justice system in Vancouver works. Or doesn't. In his words, it's "a joke."

The most obvious reason is rampant illicit drug use in the city, especially in the Downtown Eastside. One "super chronic" offender described in the VPD report is a crack cocaine addict who, when not incarcerated, purchases three-quarters of an ounce of the drug each day for personal consumption.

On the street, crack cocaine costs a minimum of $900 an ounce. Stolen or "fenced" goods typically fetch 10¢ on the dollar, so this chronic offender must steal $6,750 worth of goods each day, just to support his habit. He has admitted to committing up to 35 property crimes a day.

More troubling, the report concludes that "Vancouver has been the most lenient sentencing jurisdiction for [chronic] offenders" in British Columbia. Astonishingly, "evidence shows that after 30 or more convictions the sentenc[ing] actually decreases."

One needn't be a criminologist to realize that revolving courthouse doors that quickly spin drug-addicted crooks back into the streets - without effective addictions treatment - are no solution.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada ... ?id=613496

It's far past time for the other pillars to drop.

Totally irre;evant to the issue of Safe Injection sites. Yes, we all already know that Drug Addicts do bad things. Glad you finally figured that out.

[romanP]

ridenrain ridenrain:

I'd be for safe injection sites and even giving addicts drugs if it were done to get them off drugs, but that's not what's happening. We're simply enabling an illegal addiction that the courts don't want to address.

The Insite clinic doesn't give anyone drugs. The clinic is for getting addicts off their drugs. Your article has absolutely no relation to the safe injection sites, so I don't what point you're trying to make.

An addiction being illegal is quite possibly the stupidest reason for justifying being against this kind of treatment. Why does it matter whether it's legal or illegal? The answer is that you have an addiction of your own, an addiction to authority without reason. It is not about them or finding a reasonable solution to their problem, it is about your own selfish impulses arising out of being uncomfortable with the idea of talking about addiction to any kind of drugs under the guise of anything more than emotional pleas and Schadenfreud.

[romanP]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

$1:

Please, entertain me, how is it an oxymoron? Do you even know what that word means?

An oxymoron is made up of two or more words that seem to be opposite to each other, or actually are opposite.

You forgot to answer the first question. That was the most important part.

$1:

$1:

Well, they care more than you do, but you have a pretty fucked up idea of what "caring" means in the first place.

Some yes, some no. Alot of them are social engineers who love to experiment while claiming compassion. BTW I do care. I care about getting the addicts the help they need and I also care about protecting the rest of society, who also suffer from this insidious disease by being victims. But I guess that doesn't matter so long as you can claim the moral high ground.

Well, I can claim the moral high ground, because my position is completely backed up by facts. People do not recover from addiction by going to prison, in fact, they just use it as a means to make more connections to find more drugs. The Insite clinic, on the other hand, has a 30% success rate at ending addiction, has kept dirty needles off the street, and has never had a death due to overdose. So far, you have presented nothing at all that counters these facts.

$1:

$1:

There has not been an increase in crime since the clinic opened. Once again, facts win and emotional appeals are just fucking stupid!

Pray tell, how much crime has been reduced by the safe injection site? I guess the status quo is alright so long as it isn't you on the receiving end.

If the clinic has a success rate of getting 30% of its patients off their addiction, then do the math. That 30% are no longer looking for any way possible to acquire their next fix.

$1:

$1:

Addicts are not part of "the public" now? What's next, are we going to force them into a ghetto, build a wall around it and then torch the neighbourhood?

They are and I never said they weren't

You didn't say it, you just implied it.

$1:

but if I remember correctly, when a member of the public commits a crime he's arrested, tried and if found guilty put in jail. They are part of the public, so special treatment for any crimes they commit shouldn't be discounted under the guise of they're addicts and that's where mandatory rehab should be used. You can't have it both ways.

If I remember correctly, a wise man once said that unjust laws deserve to be broken. If the law is the only thing holding up your argument, in this case, you are making a very poor argument.

$1:

$1:

Quite the opposite, large prison sentences for dealers just means that dealers have greater chances of finding new customers in prison. The only way to end this is to make the drugs legal and provide a safe place for addicts to recover

Well we can both agree on one thing. Your last line. Your absolutely right about addicts needing a safe place to recover, unfortunately the safe injection site isn't helping them try and find it.

Are you talking about location, or recovery? The clinic sees hundreds of people a day. It has a 30% success rate at ending addictions. No one has died from an overdose. This would be a whole lot less frustrating if you'd stop making things up, because otherwise you'd be in complete agreement with me.

$1:

What we need is government to wake up and make these places available. We have people living on the streets with mental disorders and drug addictions who, 30 years ago would have had the help available through institutions and group homes.

Government is trying to make safe injection sites available. Provinicial government, that is. The federal government still can't see the forest for the trees, and follows the same circular, unreasonable logic of "illegal stuff is bad and it's bad because it's illegal" that the rest of the opponents of such clinics keep following.

$1:

Personally I'm still pissed off about government closing all these facilities under the false claim that, they were dehumanizing and didn't allow these people to integrate into society, when we all new it was a cost cutting measure and nothing more. They could have changed how they operated alot easier than closing them and forcing people on to the streets who couldn't cope.

We are now living with the results of that financially expedient, yet morally wrong decision.

Welcome to neo-liberalism. Sure, we balanced the budget with a few billion dollars of surplus, who cares if people are starving and frying their brain on refined street drugs!

[romanP]

Aging_Redneck Aging_Redneck:

Harm reduction strategies prove most useful when combined with supply reduction, and demand reduction strategies.

Harm reduction by itself is less effective.

Supply largely has to do with the fact that the drugs are illegal in the first place. This is why Al Capone was so successful at running his booze racket, and is the same reason why suppliers of any kind of drug that is illegal now are also very rich.

It doesn't matter which time you live in, or how many things you try to make illegal. There will always be people who will want to discover a new vice because they have had the misfortune of being in bad circumstances that caused them to make a bad decision, or are simply genetically predisposed to become addicted to just about anything.

Note: there is a difference between dealer and supplier. The difference is mostly the amount of volume being moved. Suppliers are the people who dealers get their supply from.

[PluggyRug]

romanP romanP:

Your opinion of drug addicts is irrelevant. The clinic works.


"Your" tax money is being spent so that they may cease to be "failures."

As is your opinion on the fact that they work. To what end do they work? Enabling addicts to further their downward progression.

An addict is still an addict whichever which way you wish to impose a twisted spin.

[Zipperfish]

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

As is your opinion on the fact that they work. To what end do they work? Enabling addicts to further their downward progression.

An addict is still an addict whichever which way you wish to impose a twisted spin.

Why not enable them? Smokes, booze and drugs should be legal and cheap. There's not much problem with smokes. They're nice and cheap, tons of people are addicted to them and they don't do society much harm except for the fact that people who use it tend to die early. Just like the people that sit around all day, eat Doritos and watch TV. Heroin is readily available, would be a great industry for Afghanistan, and would be nice and cheap in a free market.

But the secular humanists on the left and the Christian conservatives on the right would never let this happen. Artificial happiness is tainted. Drug use is primoridal, animal. It's difficult to imagine a more monumental failure than drug prohibition. Yet the myth persists.

[romanP]

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

romanP romanP:

Your opinion of drug addicts is irrelevant. The clinic works.


"Your" tax money is being spent so that they may cease to be "failures."

As is your opinion on the fact that they work.

That's an interesting definition of "opinion" you have.

$1:

To what end do they work? Enabling addicts to further their downward progression.

Have you read a single post in this entire thread? I'm not repeating myself again. Look back in the thread.

$1:

An addict is still an addict whichever which way you wish to impose a twisted spin.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

[Public_Domain]

[snuggles61]

It's unlikely anyone is going to write a post advocating junkies and their habit but the argument that it keeps children from finding spent needles is a pretty good sell.

[PluggyRug]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

As is your opinion on the fact that they work. To what end do they work? Enabling addicts to further their downward progression.

An addict is still an addict whichever which way you wish to impose a twisted spin.

Why not enable them? Smokes, booze and drugs should be legal and cheap. There's not much problem with smokes. They're nice and cheap, tons of people are addicted to them and they don't do society much harm except for the fact that people who use it tend to die early. Just like the people that sit around all day, eat Doritos and watch TV. Heroin is readily available, would be a great industry for Afghanistan, and would be nice and cheap in a free market.

But the secular humanists on the left and the Christian conservatives on the right would never let this happen. Artificial happiness is tainted. Drug use is primoridal, animal. It's difficult to imagine a more monumental failure than drug prohibition. Yet the myth persists.

To some extent I agree.

The problem (as I see it) is spending $millions in a failed attempt to eradicate drug usage, whilst at the same time seemingly condoning usage.

Yes the myth does persist, although the "Bare Naked Ladies" would deny it.

[Zipperfish]

[quote="PluggyRug]Yes the myth does persist, although the "Bare Naked Ladies" would deny it.[/quote]

Can't say I saw that one coming!

[DerbyX]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

PluggyRug PluggyRug:

Yes the myth does persist, although the "Bare Naked Ladies" would deny it.

Can't say I saw that one coming!

Corrected.

[romanP]

Aging_Redneck Aging_Redneck:

Harm reduction strategies prove most useful when combined with supply reduction, and demand reduction strategies.

Harm reduction by itself is less effective.

Do you have one single fact to back up any of this?

[acidcomplex]

If we want to start then lets get going.I have some facts for us "un-caring people"

Supporters claim the site reduces overdoses and HIV infection-transfers among injection drug users by preventing them from sharing needles. Crime rates are also said to have dropped in the vicinity of the site.

According to a new study authored by Colin Mangham, director of research with the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, those claims are faulty and ignore research showing the project has failed to reach its goals, the Canadian Press reported May 3.

“[The findings] give an impression the facility is successful, when in fact the research clearly shows a lack of program impact and success,”

Or maybe this as well

The number of overdose deaths in Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside has increased since Insite started up. This…at least suggests that in its three years of operation Insite has produced no impact on overdose deaths.”

Or this

“Only exclusive use of Insite correlates with reduced sharing. If someone uses Insite for all their injections, it goes without saying they would not share needles. Only one in 10 HIV negative participants reported using Insite for all their injections.”

And another

Initial reports on the facility claimed the initiative was successful because of the high volume of users--as many as 600 per day. Within a six-month span in the first year of operation there were 107 overdoses reported among 72 “clients” of the facility, the report also acknowledged. As well, the report stated that only 2.3 per cent of addicts using the site contacted a nurse or counselor, saying, “visits to Insite for nursing care or counseling have been uncommon to date.”