This link will take you to the article I based today's discussion on:http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/health/2007/10/19/Supervised.Injections/
While officials are waiting to see the results of a similar program in Canada, San Francisco is considering offering a location where drug addicts can inject their drugs with the supervision of nurses in order decrease the number of overdoses.
While the nurses will not be assisting anyone with the injection, I took from the article that nurses would be on site to answer questions about how much of a particular drug would be a lethal dose and where would be a good injection site. So far, in the Canadian program, 800 people have died of overdoses onsite. Doesn’t this defeat this purpose of such a program?
Needle exchange programs, where drug addicts can turn in used needles for clean needles, have decreased the transmission rates of HIV and Hepatitis C. In addition, fewer overdoses would lighten the workload of the San Francisco Fire Department, where approximately 14% of all emergency calls are overdoses. In addition, the Canadian program states that some drug addicts who come into the program end up seeking treatment for their addiction.
With the positive aspects of this program, providing a safe haven to help addicts get high, with the funding of city government, implies that San Francisco condones illegal drug use. The ideal of completely eradicating illegal drug use in our society will most likely never become a reality, but do we want to encourage it? The funding will come out of San Francisco’s residents’ and workers’ tax dollars. How do we justify using tax dollars to encourage illegal drug use?
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3 comments:
If I were a resident of San Francisco I would be upset about my tax dollars being put to this use. I feel that the city should have waited to see the end results of the Canadian example before using their resources in this extreme experiment. While I understand the goals of this experiment, I think this may be another of example of government throwing in the cards and giving up.
While I do not disagree that this might not be the best use of tax dollars, I don't know that I think that it constitutes condoning illegal drug use.
These are folks who will be abusing the drugs anyway. Now they're doing it with some city assistance, to avoid the possibility of accidental overdose. If a small fraction of illegal users take advantage of the program, and the small subset of those folks who would have OD'd do not OD, maybe it saves a life or two. Probably not a lot more than that (only a small fraction of instances of illegal use of a drug ends in OD).
So I don't know that I think it constitutes condoning illegal drug use, but I also don't know that the effectivity of this program will be worth the cost to other programs.
The idea of it is not bad, but the ramifications for other populations who are IV drug users - vagrants and bums may become difficult. "okay this cafeteria is for IV drug users only" I would imagine a homeless person would become an IV drug user if it meant some sort of meal and coffee.
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