“tying bathroom emergency pull cords to themselves, so an alarm will sound if they collapse”
That way they might live to shoot up again...and again.
Hmmm, I think cities would do well to establish ‘safe shoot’ centers. Some warehouse or something, FILLED with all the drugs confiscated by law enforcement and offered free to any and all addicts to indulge at will. The rule would be-you can’t leave once you’re drugged up. HELP them overdose by their own hands then-when they croak-( no medical help, ,no, we must respect their choice to overdose)collect the bodies and reopen for another day. Repeat until your community is drug addict free. Crime goes down, pushers lose customers, it’s a win-win.
Local news today about a woman who lost both of her sons to Heroine OD within a week of each other I think.
This story should give everyone pause. Addicts are also carrying around NARCAN to administer to each other which reverses the effects of an OD should it occur. Initially this is a self induced addiction. Once addicted the long term prognosis is very grim regardless of how badly the addict wants to be clean. Opiates significantly effect the hypothalamus, a very basic part of the brain, and as such the addiction is exceedingly strong. Unfortunately nothing anyone else does for these poor souls means anything and trying to help in most cases turns into enabling.
It’s a very significant problem, one which really doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The costs to society are tremendous. We could start by closing the borders (the heroin in the country comes from Mexico and Columbia contrary to the military hating potheads belief that US soldiers are protecting farmers in Afghanistan) and making each dose packaged for resale an attempted murder charge as was done with LSD. However, there also needs to be accountability from our medical system for the over prescription of pain medications, among others, and confirmation that those given pain med prescriptions are in fact taking them instead of selling them through blood test verification.
While a lot of the fentanyl on the streets is coming from labs in Mexico there is still significant amounts coming from people scraping the gel out of fentanyl patches, drying it and then cutting it with other ingredients.
I’ve learned far too much about this problem through watching too many people die.