I think the aim to make it safer and offer alternatives to get people off the opioids is a good one. If they can save lives by not only offering a safe environment but by replacing the drugs with a safer alternative and getting help for addicts then I wish them success.
Guess it depends on what your goal is. Unless your goal is to kill heroin users, programs like Insite make sense. Reminiscent of how one achieves the goal of reducing abortion, isn’t it?
Ha, you quoted the part I was about to. If there were a place which offered the morbidly obese food with more nutrition and the chance to get into a program to lose weight plus also had research showing the kinds of place had success then I'd support them too.
Well, first of all, there is a big difference between killing someone and not preventing them from killing themselves, but that's neither here nor there.
Second, are you honestly making the argument that nearly 3.5 million people going to this place to shoot up over the last 12 years is a good thing? Even if only half of them were there to get high, that's still over 1.2 million people with a Government needle in their arm, and we're only talking about one location, in one city. That's not fighting opioid abuse, that's facilitating it.
And as for the "research suggested those who visited the clinic were more likely to pursue detox programs" bit, that's great. How many actually did? Hmm? How many of the Insite members actually went to detox or rehab? How many have actually stayed off drugs? "More likely" is great but "more likely" is a fairly deceptive term, I hear it all the time in economic circles from people who are usually selling something. Tell me how many people have actually gotten off drugs by going to this place because I gotta tell ya, 3.5 million people over 12 years and an ever worsening opioid crisis doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that this place is helping at all.
I'd say it's doing a significant enough amount of good that the Canadian government looks to be going ahead with another 19 sites of this type. Hopefully having that many can stem the tide of addiction and help reduce the crisis.
But they're not actually doing that much good, at least from a curative standpoint, hence the opioid crisis.
The goal should be to reduce the total number of people addicted to opioids, not to take all the opioid users from one place and put them somewhere else. I mean this is getting dangerously close to Sponge Bob logic.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for treatment over punishment for users, but I completely disagree that making it easier for them to do drugs is the right way to go about it.
Let's assume that the addictions are not wanted, by either the users or society as a whole. Let's assume that addictions are not voluntary, notwithstanding the users own personal choice to use leading to addiction. That kind of life puts many people in jeopardy, including the user. Disease both giving and receiving, crime both giving and receiving...bodily injury, death, economic loss...a whole host of unintended consequences comes from addictions.
So controlling the dispensing does serve society better than not. It saves lives, prevents disease, lessens economic loss and brings those chained in addiction at least the contact to begin a very long and difficult road to recovery. With out that contact, they are hopeless.
I’m not too squeamish too say I’ve wished death on junkies. Death as a policy outcome for junkies? There’s something to be said. Death can be a release, and it has a way of stopping the spread of a contagion. People that get others hooked? There’re tickets to be punched, for sure.
Still, yes, I’m saying Insite’s a good thing. It’s not like without that place there’d be no junkies, right? Let’s restrict our attention to people that aren’t junkies. Let’s talk about how the public and their government are going to be dealing with those same junkies if you have your way and there is nothing like Insite. There’ll be people attacked, mugged and robbed by dope-sick fiends, and emergency responders from cops to paramedics to hospitals and coroners to deal with them. There’ll be police departments, uniformed and undercover officers, making street-level drug arrests or even mid-level raids yet never managing to staunch the flow of opiates, which exists and is protected on some very exalted planes in our society. There’ll be district attorneys and courts and prisons, prosecuting cases, imprisoning offenders, and corrections officers overseeing government-run shooting galleries anyway as somehow, prisons are no less awash in smack and oxy than our streets. There’ll be neighborhoods, cities and towns full of bystanders and family members and a wary public like you that wants something done, but knows rationally if they think about it that none of what’s being done is working. Honest education, access to contraception and basic medical care are the most basic elements of family planning, and there are parallels for heroin users, prostitution, homelessness and the mentally ill. There will be costs, whether you deal with an issue or choose to ignore it. Programs like Insite lower those costs.
A government needle in their arm? A clean needle, you mean? There are worse things in this world.
Aye, my reply was a little tongue-in-cheek. There are all these organisations out there to help but obesity still exists which isn't to say these organisations shouldn't exist. The problem may be much worse without them so giving sites like Insite an opportunity to make a difference, however slight, is a step forward in lessening the opioid problem.
Yes, we can all agree that drug addiction is bad for society, but this place isn’t fighting drug addiction it’s just managing it.
As I said before, the goal should be to reduce the total number of persons addicted to drugs. This program doesn’t do that, not in any meaningful way. If Insite were part of a mandatory treatment protocol, where members had to progress along a structured program designed to get them off of drugs completely, then that would be one thing, but it’s not. This program is no more effective than putting an AA pamphlet at the end of a bar and hoping for the best.
And there are better programs (that would actually produce results) that society could focus on. Things like: Law enforcement initiatives that offer amnesty for drug turn-ins (something I’ve been wanting here in the US for years), adult education programs on dealing with family and friends who are suffering from addiction, or even- and I fucking hate admitting this, faith based programs that have had decent results in fighting addiction using the church community as a support structure.
There are plenty of ways to get people assistance and help fight drug addiction, without the Government helping them shoot up.
this place isn’t fighting drug addiction it’s just managing it
If ‘fighting’ addiction is your tarbaby, let ‘im have it. A place like Insite mitigates risk, reduces harm and prevents the spread of disease. Make all the mean faces you want at heroin addicts, but at the end of the day, there will still be addicts… only with places like Insite there’ll be less HIV and Hepatitis C in a seething ferment around your family and friends.
the goal should be to reduce the total number of persons addicted to drugs.
You can have a ‘war on drugs’ and you can have courageous policy like Insite. They’re not mutually exclusive, even if only one of them does anything besides keeping prices up.
If Insite were part of a mandatory treatment protocol, where members had to progress
That’s the great thing about the War on Drugs. So many things’ve already failed. Or, like Methadone, succeeded disasterously.
This program is no more effective than putting an AA pamphlet at the end of a bar and hoping for the best.
No more effective at what? Realizing your mythopoeic dream of automagically ending heroin addiction? Let’s evaluate Insite against other things that will never work, like telling Trumplestilskin his name, or securing the poppy fields of Afghanistan from the Taliban, or having a Cabinet member head the Office of Naqtional Drug Control Policy.
Law enforcement initiatives that offer amnesty for drug turn-ins
You’re not serious with this, are you? “Hey gang, let’s turn those dopesick frowns upside down and hand the only thing keeping you together over to the police and see how grateful they are!”
adult education programs on dealing with family and friends who are suffering from addiction
Al-anon isn’t a mutually exclusive option from programs like Insite, but I’ll agree it could be mainstreamed.
I fucking hate admitting this, faith based programs
I thought you’d already dismissed AA above.
These nostrums aren’t going to cure opiate addiction any more than Insite will. And that’s if you allow yourself to think of it as a sourge rather than the longstanding policy it really is. At some point, beyond the absurdity and denial, it’s worth trying what works to achieve what one can.
The issue here is that you, and the people who support programs like Insite, are laboring under the delusion that you're actually accomplishing something when you're not. You're simply sweeping a problem under the rug and declaring victory. Society should be working to reduce the number of people addicted to drugs, Insite does nothing to accomplish that goal. Insite is nothing more than society saying: "Fuck it, it's too hard to fight drug addiction so we're just gonna quit trying". It's the path of least resistance. Now if that's the kind of "progress" you're comfortable with then I guess there's no changing your mind, but personally I think we should expect more. Societies are better than that, even if they are Canadians (It's a joke people, relax).
The way I hear it, Snapzu is more CPU-bound than traffic-bound and some significant savings were made by not making so many database calls for vote statuses. It'll still show correctly when you go to the snap itself, however. Another thing you may've missed in the meantime is that now there's now a rough equivalent of Reddit Gold. Applying Snapzu Platinum liberally around the face and neck may help with the CPU costs. Known side-effects include covering our hosts' hefty bar tab and moderate-to-persistent star alignment in accordance with prophecy.
It's just that by 'society fighting' I'm pretty sure you mean letting first responders deal with the mounting human toll in its sundry and various macabre forms while being helpless to address the underlying problems in any meaningful way. The 'fight' metaphor's broken.
I think the aim to make it safer and offer alternatives to get people off the opioids is a good one. If they can save lives by not only offering a safe environment but by replacing the drugs with a safer alternative and getting help for addicts then I wish them success.
That's like offering the morbidly obese free meals to encourage them to lose weight.
I get that they mean well but it seems to me that the goal should be to eliminate opioid abuse, not give it a safe space.
How’s that working out?
I don't know, but I'd imagine that opening up a State sanctioned shooting gallery probably set them back a bit.
Experience shows otherwise. FTA:
Guess it depends on what your goal is. Unless your goal is to kill heroin users, programs like Insite make sense. Reminiscent of how one achieves the goal of reducing abortion, isn’t it?
Ha, you quoted the part I was about to. If there were a place which offered the morbidly obese food with more nutrition and the chance to get into a program to lose weight plus also had research showing the kinds of place had success then I'd support them too.
Well, first of all, there is a big difference between killing someone and not preventing them from killing themselves, but that's neither here nor there.
Second, are you honestly making the argument that nearly 3.5 million people going to this place to shoot up over the last 12 years is a good thing? Even if only half of them were there to get high, that's still over 1.2 million people with a Government needle in their arm, and we're only talking about one location, in one city. That's not fighting opioid abuse, that's facilitating it.
And as for the "research suggested those who visited the clinic were more likely to pursue detox programs" bit, that's great. How many actually did? Hmm? How many of the Insite members actually went to detox or rehab? How many have actually stayed off drugs? "More likely" is great but "more likely" is a fairly deceptive term, I hear it all the time in economic circles from people who are usually selling something. Tell me how many people have actually gotten off drugs by going to this place because I gotta tell ya, 3.5 million people over 12 years and an ever worsening opioid crisis doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that this place is helping at all.
I'd say it's doing a significant enough amount of good that the Canadian government looks to be going ahead with another 19 sites of this type. Hopefully having that many can stem the tide of addiction and help reduce the crisis.
But they're not actually doing that much good, at least from a curative standpoint, hence the opioid crisis.
The goal should be to reduce the total number of people addicted to opioids, not to take all the opioid users from one place and put them somewhere else. I mean this is getting dangerously close to Sponge Bob logic.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for treatment over punishment for users, but I completely disagree that making it easier for them to do drugs is the right way to go about it.
Let's assume that the addictions are not wanted, by either the users or society as a whole. Let's assume that addictions are not voluntary, notwithstanding the users own personal choice to use leading to addiction. That kind of life puts many people in jeopardy, including the user. Disease both giving and receiving, crime both giving and receiving...bodily injury, death, economic loss...a whole host of unintended consequences comes from addictions.
So controlling the dispensing does serve society better than not. It saves lives, prevents disease, lessens economic loss and brings those chained in addiction at least the contact to begin a very long and difficult road to recovery. With out that contact, they are hopeless.
Well said, and exactly why these supervised drug injection sites are so damn important.
I’m not too squeamish too say I’ve wished death on junkies. Death as a policy outcome for junkies? There’s something to be said. Death can be a release, and it has a way of stopping the spread of a contagion. People that get others hooked? There’re tickets to be punched, for sure.
Still, yes, I’m saying Insite’s a good thing. It’s not like without that place there’d be no junkies, right? Let’s restrict our attention to people that aren’t junkies. Let’s talk about how the public and their government are going to be dealing with those same junkies if you have your way and there is nothing like Insite. There’ll be people attacked, mugged and robbed by dope-sick fiends, and emergency responders from cops to paramedics to hospitals and coroners to deal with them. There’ll be police departments, uniformed and undercover officers, making street-level drug arrests or even mid-level raids yet never managing to staunch the flow of opiates, which exists and is protected on some very exalted planes in our society. There’ll be district attorneys and courts and prisons, prosecuting cases, imprisoning offenders, and corrections officers overseeing government-run shooting galleries anyway as somehow, prisons are no less awash in smack and oxy than our streets. There’ll be neighborhoods, cities and towns full of bystanders and family members and a wary public like you that wants something done, but knows rationally if they think about it that none of what’s being done is working. Honest education, access to contraception and basic medical care are the most basic elements of family planning, and there are parallels for heroin users, prostitution, homelessness and the mentally ill. There will be costs, whether you deal with an issue or choose to ignore it. Programs like Insite lower those costs.
A government needle in their arm? A clean needle, you mean? There are worse things in this world.
Sounds like you’re talking about Weight Watchers...
Aye, my reply was a little tongue-in-cheek. There are all these organisations out there to help but obesity still exists which isn't to say these organisations shouldn't exist. The problem may be much worse without them so giving sites like Insite an opportunity to make a difference, however slight, is a step forward in lessening the opioid problem.
Yes, we can all agree that drug addiction is bad for society, but this place isn’t fighting drug addiction it’s just managing it.
As I said before, the goal should be to reduce the total number of persons addicted to drugs. This program doesn’t do that, not in any meaningful way. If Insite were part of a mandatory treatment protocol, where members had to progress along a structured program designed to get them off of drugs completely, then that would be one thing, but it’s not. This program is no more effective than putting an AA pamphlet at the end of a bar and hoping for the best.
And there are better programs (that would actually produce results) that society could focus on. Things like: Law enforcement initiatives that offer amnesty for drug turn-ins (something I’ve been wanting here in the US for years), adult education programs on dealing with family and friends who are suffering from addiction, or even- and I fucking hate admitting this, faith based programs that have had decent results in fighting addiction using the church community as a support structure.
There are plenty of ways to get people assistance and help fight drug addiction, without the Government helping them shoot up.
If ‘fighting’ addiction is your tarbaby, let ‘im have it. A place like Insite mitigates risk, reduces harm and prevents the spread of disease. Make all the mean faces you want at heroin addicts, but at the end of the day, there will still be addicts… only with places like Insite there’ll be less HIV and Hepatitis C in a seething ferment around your family and friends.
You can have a ‘war on drugs’ and you can have courageous policy like Insite. They’re not mutually exclusive, even if only one of them does anything besides keeping prices up.
That’s the great thing about the War on Drugs. So many things’ve already failed. Or, like Methadone, succeeded disasterously.
No more effective at what? Realizing your mythopoeic dream of automagically ending heroin addiction? Let’s evaluate Insite against other things that will never work, like telling Trumplestilskin his name, or securing the poppy fields of Afghanistan from the Taliban, or having a Cabinet member head the Office of Naqtional Drug Control Policy.
You’re not serious with this, are you? “Hey gang, let’s turn those dopesick frowns upside down and hand the only thing keeping you together over to the police and see how grateful they are!”
Al-anon isn’t a mutually exclusive option from programs like Insite, but I’ll agree it could be mainstreamed.
I thought you’d already dismissed AA above.
These nostrums aren’t going to cure opiate addiction any more than Insite will. And that’s if you allow yourself to think of it as a sourge rather than the longstanding policy it really is. At some point, beyond the absurdity and denial, it’s worth trying what works to achieve what one can.
The issue here is that you, and the people who support programs like Insite, are laboring under the delusion that you're actually accomplishing something when you're not. You're simply sweeping a problem under the rug and declaring victory. Society should be working to reduce the number of people addicted to drugs, Insite does nothing to accomplish that goal. Insite is nothing more than society saying: "Fuck it, it's too hard to fight drug addiction so we're just gonna quit trying". It's the path of least resistance. Now if that's the kind of "progress" you're comfortable with then I guess there's no changing your mind, but personally I think we should expect more. Societies are better than that, even if they are Canadians (It's a joke people, relax).
On an unrelated note, did they stop highlighting upvotes? Because I upvoted this post but both arrows still show grey.
The way I hear it, Snapzu is more CPU-bound than traffic-bound and some significant savings were made by not making so many database calls for vote statuses. It'll still show correctly when you go to the snap itself, however. Another thing you may've missed in the meantime is that now there's now a rough equivalent of Reddit Gold. Applying Snapzu Platinum liberally around the face and neck may help with the CPU costs. Known side-effects include covering our hosts' hefty bar tab and moderate-to-persistent star alignment in accordance with prophecy.
It's just that by 'society fighting' I'm pretty sure you mean letting first responders deal with the mounting human toll in its sundry and various macabre forms while being helpless to address the underlying problems in any meaningful way. The 'fight' metaphor's broken.
Nobody I know here would ever downvote a discussion Chris. To downvote here is a not part of the culture here, though anyone is free to do so.
Well maybe Adelle would....kidding, kidding, don't kill me!
I'm a conservative, Trump-supporting, Republican on the Internet... trust me, I've made my peace with the downvotes. lol