Posted on 04/10/2016 6:35:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Larry Campbell, a former cop and former mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, was appalled as he came to San Francisco to advocate a bill that would allow California cities to open safe injection centers like the one in his city for intravenous drug users. He'd "never seen the number of people sleeping on the street," he told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, that he saw as he walked a few blocks from his Market Street hotel. He saw open drug dealing. "There's nobody hiding here."
I asked Campbell whether he thought he should have seen some arrests. "Yes," he responded. "I think you need to get control." Campbell says he saw only two police officers. In Vancouver, you'd see many more police, and they'd direct addicts to Insite, he said.
No other North American city has opened a "supervised injection site" since Insite opened its doors in 2003, but that may be about to change. Ottawa is looking at opening similar facilities. Ditto Ithaca, New York. California Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman has introduced a bill to allow California cities to open up such facilities, even though drugs such as heroin and other injected controlled substances will remain illegal under federal law.
"I can tell you bluntly, there is no downside," Campbell, now a Canadian senator, told the Chronicle. Crime did not rise in the blocks closest to Insite. Needle litter is down. Users enter the clinic with their own illegally obtained drugs, avail themselves of clean syringes and other paraphernalia, and then shoot up in a safe, clean environment away from the streets. Users have access to a detox center and treatment referrals. There have been 2 million injections since Insite opened, but not a single overdose death.
Why should San Francisco follow suit as Supervisor David Campos proposes? (Mayor Ed Lee is opposed.) Campbell asked rhetorically, "Can it get any worse?" Over the phone, Campos said the same thing.
If there's one thing I've learned working in San Francisco, it's that when you think things cannot get worse, they can. And do.
California Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez opposes the Eggman bill for a host of reasons. She sees the notion as "enabling" and can't believe anyone wants to use tax dollars "to pay medical personnel to watch people shoot up." Surely, there are better uses of tax dollars -- such as rehabilitation programs.
I worry about how programs keep moving the bar to accommodate increasingly self-destructive behavior.
In 1997, I visited a San Francisco needle exchange center in the Mission and was impressed by what I saw. Users brought carefully bundled used needles -- 1,615 of them -- and thus showed they cared enough to take care of themselves. The mantra of social workers, which Eggman repeated to me over the phone, is essential: "Every life matters." In exchange for showing up and responsibly disposing of their needles, users received clean syringes and the chance to have a volunteer treat an abscess and give them vitamins and a medical or treatment referral. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation credited the program with helping to prevent pediatric AIDS cases in the city in 1995 and 1996.
Over time, San Francisco's needle exchange program morphed into a needle access program, as users no longer had to produce a dirty syringe to get the first 20 clean needles. With heroin use up across the nation, these days you see dirty needles everywhere. They are a public safety hazard for the non-using public.
Campbell lauded Insite for providing clean paraphernalia and access to treatment and medical care. The needle exchange centers of the 1990s provided all that. Needle exchange became needle access not to improve care but to accommodate users who couldn't get it together enough to return their used needles. The needle, if you will, has kept moving to make dysfunction easier for self-destructive people.
"If it doesn't work, shut her down," Campbell said when questioned about the probable success of a proposed San Francisco injection center. Nice try, but hitting the brakes is not a skill in which City Hall is practiced.
:: You can’t stop people from being stupid ::
I think all of FR knows this but, it is a good position to start from....but....
:: It is better for activities, like drug use, to allow people to get a little high with regulated substances ::
As another posted has stated, this is simply long-term euthanasia
Again, there is no such thing as “recreational heroin use.
Perhaps you missed my post that you don’t need to sell heroin.
They may very well be seeking slow euthanasia, but we’ve created a situation, because it is so profitable, where the drug users will push highly addictive substances because it is more profitable to do so because of the risk factors involved in doing so.
“I can tell you bluntly, there is no downside,”
I don’t have a solution for the drug problem (short of the way they handle it in Singapore and Malaysia), but I think I can be pretty sure enabling addicts isn’t free of a downside.
The junkies have to get their junk, and they don’t pick it off bushes on the side of the road. Whether they’re getting their drug money through petty crime or violent assaults, society is paying a price for their addiction. Cold-hearted as it may seem, those that were being culled from the herd by overdoses and needle-promoted diseases no longer are in the Vancouver approach. And if there are any who survive after reaching rock-bottom and in desperation seeking help, they’re less-likely to do so with the government running a “Needles-R-Us” operation for them.
Back in the hippie days, I remember seeing signs in public restrooms in the Bay Area that said “No Dealing or Shooting Up. Take It Outside.”
Apparently they did.
Well Jonty the drugs could be stopped, just like we could win the war against radical islam. The problem is no one has the will to do what it takes to win that war.
Now, the question is, do we as a people want to live in a society that puts drug dealers to death? That is what it would take to stop drugs from pouring into this country but alas we can’t even execute mass murders let alone a drug dealer.
I want violent torture for those who commit crimes.
Any prohibition against that sort of torture at the state level has only “spiritually” existed by US Supreme Court ruling/description-creep since about 1968.
So, it might be possible to have hot pepper added to an injection, for instance.
The sale of narcotics funds terrorism.
Build the wall, control the border.
Every junkie should be allowed a triple dose of 100% pure stuff. The guberment has confiscated enough of this crap to pass it out that way.
I’d rather stop most of the problem by allowing low level drugs. Most drug users, if they can get a little high, will satisfy themselves with that. Only a comparative few will still move on to illegal harder drugs.
Are things falling apart in Colorado? Is that state having to deal with an influx of heroin and crack since it made marijuana legal?
It is produced in America. You can’t build a wall for that.
I’d end the war on drug users and require treatment instead of jail.
I’d incarcerate drug dealers and charge them with homicide if one of their customers ODs.
I was against this overseas when I heard about it 20 years ago. It has worked better than what we do. It still has problems and I think there will always be problems. That approach seems to have fewer problems and preserves the Constitutional Rights of our nation.
Instead, we pretend what we do works, force it underground at the expense of ridiculous cost - police state and dollars.
Supermax isolation is a safe place......
Citation needed.
Drugs are a cultural and spiritual problem. People get high because it is a short-cut to pleasure. We live in a society of short-cuts and pleasure seeking. Legalizing weed won't fix that. The real solution is long, hard, and cultural in nature. That's why no one wants to do it... and people suggest short-cut fixes like legalization...
This is nothing more than enabling.
I will use Colorado as a citation. Are people towards harder drugs enmasse, a few don’t count, or are they generally satisfying themselves with low level, but legal, highs?
Are they? "Citation needed" signifies a need for you to provide proof of your assertion. With documentation and quantification if you wish the response to be persuasive. You answered with another question...
the situation requires the wisdom of a Salomon, which leaves me WAY out the decision making process.
Having gone through klonopin withdrawals once (I take them for head injury problems) because I finished them about three days early, I can empathize with these people.
I had some bad nights and took an extra pill thinking no biggie some nights that month. Well, I stared at the clock for three days waiting to fill my next script.
muscle pain, twitches, nightmares, cold sweats, confusion, basically hell.
I NEVER took more than the daily dosage again!!!
Once you go through it, you REALLY feel for people that are going through 40x worse with heroin withdrawal!!
Poor souls.
Colorado is not a success story.
“What about a safe place for ladies who have to use the rest room?”
Transphobe! Why all the hate? </s>
“One of the reasons for fatherlessness in the black community, which has been disastrous, was because of long jail sentences and lifelong criminal records because of recreational drug use.”
That is a lie to move the blame from their own criminal acts(often unrelated to “recreational drug use”) to the shoulders of white people. Drug addiction drives people to murderous lengths to secure their next fix; the addicts showing up in these “safe spaces” obtained the funds to secure their drugs somewhere...
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