Kill 'Em All; Let God Sort 'Em Out
Radley Balko | January 27, 2008, 10:58pm
Some truly astonishing behavior at ONDCP:
Public health workers from New York to Los Angeles, North Carolina to New Mexico, are preventing thousands of deaths by giving $9.50 rescue kits to drug users. The kits turn drug users into first responders by giving them the tools to save a life.
[...]
The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone, or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose.
Doctors and emergency medical technicians have used Narcan for years in hospitals and ambulances. But it doesn't require much training because it's impossible to overdose on Narcan.
[...]
John Gatto, executive director of the Cambridge program, says such dramatic results are unusual in the world of substance abuse treatment and prevention.
"In the work that we do, oftentimes the results are very intangible," Gatto says. "This is amazing to be involved in something that literally can save people's lives. Why wouldn't we do it?"
Indeed. Why wouldn't you?
But Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, opposes the use of Narcan in overdose-rescue programs.
"First of all, I don't agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That's No. 1," she says. "I just don't think that's good public health policy."
Madras says drug users aren't likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn't as likely.
Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user's motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.
"Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras says.
Digest that for a sec. Better to let a heroin user die than administer a product that, in some cases, may remove the threat of overdose death from people who use heroin to excess. This is the mentality of your modern drug warrior. We're fighting drug use not because it's dangerous or harmful, but because they believe drug use is, in and of itself, immoral.
Today's drug war isn't about saving lives, it's about saving souls. It's the same mentality that led some family values types to oppose the marketing of Gardasil. Remove the threat of cervical cancer from premarital sex and, golly, some girls might have more premarital sex. If a few have to learn an important lesson by dying of cervical cancer, so be it.
Via Mark Kleiman, who adds:
Why not just go all the way and poison the heroin supply? If withholding Narcan in order to generate more overdoses in order to scare addicts into quitting were proposed as an experiment, it could never get past human-subjects review. But since it's a failure to act rather than an action, there's no rule to require that it be even vaguely rational.
Kleiman is hyperbolizing. But it probably won't surprise you to learn that there are idiots out there who aren't.
Curtis Elliott | January 28, 2008, 9:44am | #
REEL LIFE FILMS
January 26, 2008
I recently read your article about drug abuse. The subject of illicit drug use is near and dear to me. I grew up in an area where drug abuse was common. As young people many of us participated in the drug trade as users , dealers and enjoyed the lifestyle. The participation in this subculture derailed our lives, in some cases for ever, and for the rest us success on any level became a dream and only a fraction of our original potential. It took jail and poverty among other things to force me into a change. With an intimate knowledge of my own failures, the love of my son, and the desire to help a friend, I took a chance and produced the award winning documentary Hairkutt.
Hairkutt is the true story of one man’s life and death battle against heroin and his friends’ daring move to try to save him. Unflinchingly captured by the camera in a style more powerful and raw than any reality TV, Hairkutt takes us inside the personal nightmare of drug addicts to witness their horror, and the courage and desperation of those who love them.
When I decided to make Hairkutt in 2002, I didn’t set out to make a movie for the fame, the money, or even for the art. I wasn’t an established filmmaker, having never shot anything other than the typical birthday party and backyard bar-b-que. But I was driven to make a very particular film for a very specific reason: to save lives. My decision was born of my love for a close friend who was a heroin addict, as well as my love for my son and a desire to emphasize to my child the dangers of drug use. The idea turned into a very risky endeavor, not only for me, but for everyone involved in making the film. Not only did we put our friendships and trust in each other on the line, at least one of us literally risked his life.
Five years later, the film has wowed audiences across the country, garnered critical acclaim from major film critics, and won awards at several film festivals. As of January 15, the film is available nationwide on DVD.
I want to make myself and my documentary available to you as a resource for any stories you develop in the future. You can find additional information on my film at www.hairkuttthemovie.com .
All the best,
Curtis Elliott,
Director/Producer
www.hairkuttthemovie.com
____________________________________________________________________________________
P.O. Box 2260, Florissant, MO, 63032 • curtiselliott23@yahoo.com
tarran | January 28, 2008, 11:01am | #
They fall into a different category because they were viewed as baleful foreign influences:
Marijuana - Popular with hispanics, whom the U.S> govenremnt was trying to drive out of the southwest. It was outlawed ostensibly because it was causing white women to fall pray to black men's lusts. From the Federal Record: Anslinger, the head of what would become the DEA
"[Marijuana] makes a [Negro] think that he is as good as a white man"
Cocaine - Mainly because Randolph hearst (the guy who convinced the U.S. to attack Spain by making up stories about Spanish aggression complete with fictional battles between the Spanish and U.S. fleets) for ten years published propaganda to the effect that cocaine-crazed black men were raping white women
Opium/heroin Popular with chinese and Filipino rebels. According to the lore of the day, Filipino suicide attackers would get high on drugs that would numb their ability to feel pain, tightly bind their limbs to reduce ther vulneribility to bleeding and then launch suicidal attacks on their new colonial masters the U.S. government.
Of course, the crazies pushing these moronic ideas were bankrolled by racists like hearst who saw in them a chance to make a buck by sensational journalism, and DuPont who saw in the outlawing of hemp a chance to kneecap the competition for his paper mills.
Plus, with the end of alcohol prohibition, you had all these prohibitionists that were out of a job. They needed a jobs program to keep them of the dole. Why not send them out after something else.
Drug prohibition, in the end, is essentially a giant project at social engineering intended to make the lives of non-whites more difficult, prevent economic competition and as a welfare project for government employees.
The meme that drug users are somehow moral degenerates is essentially the main propaganda point spewed out by the vile racists and social engineers of the late 19th century. It is about as valid as the Nazi propaganda against the Jews and the Soviet propaganda against the kulaks.
Fortunately, fewer and fewer people are buying into the propaganda, and by the time I am an old man, I expect marijuana at least will be legal again.
