Experts and users discuss needle exchange, drug use, HIV, AIDS, drug law, AIDS, AIDS: borrowing-to-invest-in-failure-is-no-longer-an-option-jt
Email addresses will be used to email the information on your behalf and will not be collected, shared, sold, or used by Opposing Views for any other purpose. See our privacy policy.





We Have Tried the Drug-Free Ideal Yet it Has Failed to Work
Borrowing to invest in failure is no longer an option...jt
"Drug War" does not properly deserve to be called a "failure." Failure implies some serious attempt at success. For the 40 years that I know about drug war , there has been no serious attempt at success or belief, except among a few fanatics, that the concept of repression through enforcement alone would have any chance of success. Even much maligned Richard Nixon, who is the progenitor of modern drug war, for the purely political reason that he saw his opponents as "pot smokers," proposed a budget that directed 50% of the drug-fighting funds to drug treatment.
Beat-cops know this; so do prosecutors. They are on the merry-go-round, they see how it goes around & around and down & down. A few of them even read the research. Those cops and prosecutors know that heroin prescription programs in Switzerland resulted in an 85% reduction in drug-related crime . You run the numbers --- even apart from the economic savings, you tell me what that rate of reduction in crime would do for the safety and security of American communities. Then go back and understand the underlying fact that 85% of these crimes are driven by the desperation of addiction, which is built into our system to insure profits for mobsters. Please, tell he how that makes sense? Drug war is not a failure, it is not even only a fraud although millions cynically profit from it, but when the people, who prosecute it, openly say that it doesn't work, there is a problem taking the concept of "drug-war," as anything other than a social harm, seriously. Yet, we continue to invest billions of borrowed dollars into the obvious failure and fraud, that "drug war" has become. America's "drug-war" is a farce.
Then we can talk about "They hate us for our freedom..." but don't get me started on what drug war has done to degrade the civil rights of citizens. As my father would have said: "It's a sin and a shame."
Compared to making heroin available to addicts or communicating the evisceration of our civil liberties in the name of "drug-war" ideology, advocacy for needle exchange is a no-brainer. Needle Exchange works; not doing needle exchange abets the spread of a sexually transmitted disease that threatens our children 's lives while failure to fully implement this reasonable prevention effort accelerates the bankruptcy of our public health system.
And the reason not to implement this successful intervention is... Quoi? ¿Que? What?
- Joey Tranchina
June 26, 2009 4:13PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Where the money comes from.
I absolutely agree with supplying clean needles to addicts... through private organizations funded by voluntary donations.
We don't have a public health system (yet) and we should never adopt one.
- sunshiner424
October 5, 2009 11:45AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
support?
"I absolutely agree with supplying clean needles to addicts... through private organizations funded by voluntary donations."
If needle programs are just enabling addicts to do drugs then why would you support any program?
- MrBook
October 6, 2009 7:03AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Same reason you do
Reduce the occurrences of AIDS and the spread of HIV .
- sunshiner424
October 6, 2009 12:40PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
public health
Then how doesn't that help the larger population?
- MrBook
October 6, 2009 7:33PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Because I don't overgeneralize.
It helps some of the larger population. I still want to support some but I want it funded by some (voluntarily)
- sunshiner424
October 7, 2009 11:03PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.