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April 4, 2005
Canada to Give Heroin to Addicts
How would a Eurocrat deal with the problem of heroin addiction? If you guessed, give addicts heroin at taxpayers' expense, you win a free syringe full of life-destroying poison. Not to be outdone by the pioneering Dutch and Swiss, Canadians have decided to apply this same clever strategy.
As reported by an approving Worldpress.org, Vancouver has demonstrated the slippery slope principle by becoming the first city in North America to begin clinical trials for heroin prescription, a year and a half after opening North America's first safe injection site.
Despite the enlightened nature of this approach to the drug problem, it does have its critics — some addicts find it intrusive that they have to give urine samples and reveal their medical histories and criminal records in order to get their heroin.
The site of the heroin handout is not far from where the Olympic games will take place in 2010. The handout will be extended to Montreal and Toronto later in the year. Still in its "study" phase, it will be funded for now through the Canadian Institute of Health Research Studies and supported by the British Columbia Ministry of Health and Health Canada.
Jim Boothroyd, Communications Director for the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, does admit there has been some criticism of this insane program from addiction specialists who question its ethics. However, the ethical review boards at several Canadian universities say it's okay, which is clearly good enough for Worldpress.org.
Dean Wilson, "the former head of a health board funded drug user group," notes that it increases a junkie's self-esteem when he doesn't have to "run around all day figuring out how he's going to get his next fix." Other benefits are the extra time it leaves for shooting up, and cost savings that will help addicts avoid getting jobs.
There is of course a precedent to this approach to problem-solving: Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, when Democrats decided they would cure poverty by paying people to be poor. The results were predictable, probably even to Democrats who realized that intergenerational welfare dependency would essentially be a means of breeding votes for their party.
The approach might be applied in the future to a wide variety of social problems. Terrorism could be curbed by handing out box-cutters at airports. Rat populations could be kept under control by stocking sewers with cheese. The proliferation of nuclear weapons could be curtailed by building nuclear reactors for rogue regimes like North Korea, and topping it off by giving them free oil to free up their resources — oh wait, Jimmy Carter already thought of that one.
Posted by Van Helsing at April 4, 2005 1:13 PM
Comments
They used to do this in the US, under hush hush. It didn't work. Addicts ended up STEALING the pharmacy grade heroin, and they needed tons more of it to get the same effect...it was a disaster.
It won't work; rather-it will just enable addicts to keep right on dosing themselves up.
Posted by: Raven at April 4, 2005 2:47 PM
Not to mention they will probably be standing in line for 3 months for a fix.
Posted by: Tomslick at April 4, 2005 3:56 PM
On the bright side, will entice the US drug culture to move north.
After Adscam, will there be DrugScam?
Posted by: Anna at April 4, 2005 5:43 PM
This is the same leftish "compassion" that advocates providing Vi@gr@ to AIDS patients, so their inability to infect others doesn't harm their self-esteem.
Posted by: V the K at April 4, 2005 7:39 PM
