Safe Injection Facilities vs. Disease & Death: Which is Moral?
It soon becomes clear to almost everyone who takes a serious look at America’s illegal drug problem that it is really a relatively small one. Most of the problems we associate with drugs are actually caused by the prohibition of them. Most of the crime we call “drug-related” actually involves either the business of drug dealing or obtaining the cash needed to purchase these drugs; not people committing crimes because they are high. Perhaps one day America will come to terms with this inconvenient truth and drastically change our drug laws but what should we do in the interim?
Although relatively few in number IV drug users present a significant array of social and financial problems to the rest of society. Since the opiates, ( typically heroin) they inject is only obtainable through the black market purity varies from batch to batch making proper dosage impossible. That means addicts sometimes overdose and frequently “nod-off”. IV drug users passed out or even dead on the streets of our cities is a costly and socially unacceptable product of prohibition. Another cost is the spread of disease. AIDS and Hepatitis are spread through the sharing and improper disposal of used syringes and the generally unhygienic conditions in which poor IV drug users live. Of course legalizing, or at least “medicalizing” heroin, making pharmaceutical heroin available to addicts through clinics as is done successfully in Switzerland solves most of these problems. Addicts health improves. Dosage can be regulated so addicts can function instead of ODing, and they are in contact with medical professionals who can help them kick their habit when they get ready to do so.
America is another story. What passes for morality here prevents change. Anything other than some form of forced abstinence is looked at as enabling, no matter the cost in dollars, human misery, or the total inefficacy in solving the problem. There is however, an interim step that can be taken. A harm-reduction step that involves providing a place for these unfortunate addicts a clean place to inject… to dispose of their dirty needles… to seek medical help. Unfortunately most of the government’s reluctance to start these programs in the US stems from a fear of political backlash from misguided morality enforcers in the electorate.
The first such facilities opened in Switzerland in the mid-1980s. Since then, they have spread slowly and there are now 65 of them operating in 27 cities in eight countries: Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, and Canada. Do they work? Data from Vancouver’s safe injection facility shows us the following:
- No fatal overdoses at the SIF.
- No increase in local drug trafficking.
- No substantial increase in the rate of relapse into injection drug use.
- Reductions in public drug use, publicly discarded syringes and syringe sharing.
- SIF users 1.7 times more likely to enter detox programs.
- More than 2,000 referrals to counseling and other support services since opening.
- Collaboration with police to meet public health and public order objectives.
So all you “moralists” out there… ask yourselves which would Jesus prefer; results like those from Vancouver above… or condemning those unfortunate IV drug users to a life of suffering, filth, and degradation while simultaneously spreading deadly diseases through the rest of the population?
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