Vancouver native and Calgary Herald columnist Licia Corbella has touched a nerve with the Usual Suspects. After all, how “dare” she criticize Vancouver’s liberal drug policies. Vancouver blogger, Shannon Smart, mouths all of the Leftist talking points in challenging Corbella.
For speaking her mind, Licia Corbella has now:
- Had her life threatened by a recovering heroin addict with a long criminal history. The police paid him a visit.
- Been accused of being a “hardcore conservative”.
- Been accused of being an “out-of-touch wing nut” who “is known for denying the existence of human-caused climate change”.
- Been told to “quit if she has any dignity” and if the Calgary Herald “has any credibility” then “they should fire her”.
But remember folks, Canada is a “progressive” country where we believe in having open & honest discussions. Leftists remind us of this constantly.
Related: David Berner recently wrote an op-ed questioning the statistics used by Insite proponents.
“….The methodological and analytic approaches used in these studies are compromised by an array of deficiencies, including a lack of baseline data, etc…….”
Bet you there’s another ‘hockey stick’ graph.
Anyone who has used addictive drugs recreationally or who would advocate for others continued use of addictive drugs, is mentally unstable – they may have stopped using drugs but the brain damage and abnormal personality remain (addictive-compulsive disorder marked by; impulsivity, morbid nonconformity, weak commitment to personal goals and achievement abnormal tolerance for deviance, heightened stress and lack of coping skills)- all of which were displayed in the attacks on Corbella. I’m not surprised druggies (ex or current) would violently threaten someone criticizing their government subsidised drug use.
These people should be in institutional care and hard cure programs, not offering advice to utopian politicians.
Ah Lefties always have trouble with that inconvenient “free speech” thingy. So American don’t you know…
Robert, if I may—who cares about the little jackass? All he ever achieved was pretending to be a high school boy in another piece of pro-queer Hollywood propaganda. He killed himself with heroin. Nothing of value was lost that day.
The truth is—and I say this as an unrepentant anti-communist—the only country that ever came close to solving its drug problem was Red China. Chairman Mao ordered dealers summarily executed and users who refused to quit rounded up and hauled off to re-education camps in their hundreds of thousands. Because defying Mao and continuing to enable the family junkie was itself a death sentence for the whole family, everybody who still needed one had the incentive they needed to finally wash their hands of the family junkie. And it worked. Cleaning up the Downtown Eastside by similar methods would be child’s play.
In a better ordered world a journalist called by a junkie daft enough to ask her where to score would have called the cops not to do the junkie’s research but to report the junkie’s name and address. The junkie would be put in handcuffs on the next flight to a mining camp in Labrador, to help finance the national dividend, never to be heard from in Montreal again.
A few days of flu-like symptoms would be a small price to pay in comparison.
morbid non-conformity?
Thats a plus as a personal trait, not a minus. A miss label in this case, they completely “conform” to a certain fringe code.
Good article by David Berner
“Harm reduction and Insite are palliative. They both spring from a deeply cynical and arrogant world view: You are an addict and you are hopeless. We will keep you “comfortable” while you continue to die.”
“Dignity”?
You have got to be shiiiiting me!
Go poop on another police car.
The hypocrisy of the leftist morons is un F-ing believable. They would rather save some junkie who chooses to poison himself but they want abortion, to harm those who cannot choose. The comments on the Calgary Herald article are proof to that. Wow, what a messed up society have we become.
Heroin addiction is a problem with a built in solution. Unfortunately, morons on the left always feel sorry for society’s human garbage. They enable junkies to live longer, unproductive lives at tax payer’s expense. It may be time to be as tolerant as the left and actually riot. I have no problem running junkies, and their protectors, out of town. If the police won’t actually enforce the laws then maybe it’s time they were swept aside and the citizens do it for themselves.
Baby Seal Clubber >
It’s all upside down.
Seriously, upside down and backwards in every conceivable way.
If I was religious I’d see more into it than base human nature run amok.
Reporters talking to people at the memorial for the actor who self medicated (self inflicted)
himself to death got comments such as “He was a great roll model to our kids”.
I feel like puking when I hear people say a drug addict is a roll model.
I guess now it is the people who work hard or own businesses that are the dregs of society. All we
have to do is look at the LOONS that get elected to lead city council in Vancouver, 30% voter turn out,
and guess why the bicycle lanes are more important than getting people to work in a reasonable amount of time.
Work hard and prosper? Bull crap! Work hard and get criticized for having extra money in your pocket that
should be taxed from you to give to the non working dregs,
I am tired of the discussion on whether Insite is a positive or negative. No one answers the question where do junkies get the money to buy drugs? Crime – of course, break and enters or prostitution. The people supporting drugs should take 10 minutes to talk to cops who work that territory!
Now you have gone to far. Calling them the A word is beyond the pale.
The Supreme Court ruling that declared InSite was not just constitutionally protected, but effectively constitutionally MANDATED, will no doubt go down as one of the most monstrous judicial rulings in Canadian history. At least, if we ever reach a point in Canadian history where said history is not written by leftist drones. Might take a century or more.
I find it remarkable that leftists/socialists seem to think providing drugs is a good thing for people addicted to drugs. In the meantime, someone driving while intoxicated (which I don’t advocate) is -according to MADD- the worst possible human on this planet.
Yet, I don’t hear MADD complaining about this type of drug abuse that is sanctioned by the government of BC. Perhaps MADD should in the future also stand for Mothers Against Drugged up Dummies. For any government to support -with taxpayer money- someones deadly drug habit is absurd whether it be a welfare recipient alcoholic being allowed by buy booze or a heroin addict given free dope.
The cost of drug abuse in this country is far greater than or equal to alcohol abuse. The leftists/socialists seem to think drug addicts compared to alcohol addicts are just misunderstood people and never harm anyone. Maybe they won’t harm someone while driving a vehicle, but many rob, assault or infect others with STD’s to placate their need for their drug of choice. But someone who drives home at .09 who doesn’t cause a car crash is evil incarnate.
Here’s a one solution to the drug problem that I would like to see implemented.
Get caught selling drugs- 10 years no parole. Second offense 25 to life -no early parole. Get caught as the key trafficker -life in prison – no parole. Sooner, rather than later, the gangs will run out of people to sell for them and the problem will be muted dramatically.
Yes we will need more prisons. More jobs, more people with less time to do drugs. Drug dealers cause far more harm than most drunk drivers. Each dealer destroys the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, and the cost to our system of government (police, healthcare etc) is exponentially higher than drunk drivers.
The liberals/socialists will never understand this because they like throwing money at something that makes them feel good – even recreational drugs:)
As someone who has been clean and sober for two decades and counting, I am so, SO grateful that no Insite-like programs were available back then. That kind of kindness kills and, as it turned out, I had a lot to live for.
“Vancouver is a wonderful place. Included in that is the Downtown Eastside; while it is a complicated neighbourhood, it is not without redeeming qualities.”
While Ms.”Smart”,who should change her name for accuracy’s sake, didn’t ever live in the DES,I DID,back in the late 1990’s,and I worked on projects in the area beyond that for a couple of years.
The “redeeming qualities” were never apparent to me, it seemed like the whole place was peopled by “dead-enders”, people who had come here to die.
In the community I found drug addicts,alcoholics,mental patients by the hundreds sleeping in the streets,community activists and a few immigrants who actually DID work for a living and were struggling desperately to earn enough money to GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!
The company I worked for hired DES residents, not one could show up sober and drug free at 7 AM Monday morning,especially after payday. We went through so many of them I finally gave the boss hell because our regular crew was losing huge amounts of time looking after these guys. He said,”but they work cheap”.
Most Left-wing activists see something noble in suffering, mistaking the quiet dignity of the old and sickly former working people who bear their suffering in silence,for the self-inflicted suffering of the drug or alcohol addicted denizens of the DES.
The DES is a place of untold misery,but it’s a great place for activists to use as a springboard for their political careers. Think of Libby Davies who started out there,and now sits on her fat behind in Ottawa.
Corbella was wrong about one thing, the shi*head actor would have had drugs provided for him in any city,but the comments about the DES consequent to her column are just so much activist drivel.Take it from one who was there.
The discourse is certainly uncivil just as the arguments against Insite are dishonest. We’ve had the debate, you lost. All anti-Insite ‘analysis’ has been demonstrably misleading or otherwise flawed. It works, and will hopefully be part of the tip of the wedge in ending prohibition.
Let’s examine Shannon Smart’s post…
Nowhere did she say that Corbella should not have been allowed to speak her mind. Nowhere. It was in fact quite polite and reasoned, acknowledging that this is a necessary debate, and that Corbella’s perspective is valuable. (You’d know that if you bothered to read it)
That Corbella poorly reasoned opinion illicitted an over the top response from a handful of the many thousands who would have read it shouldn’t be a shock. Reporters and columnists on all parts of the spectrum deal with crazies all the time. No excuse, but you can’t go saying “oh these leftists”, when the right is equally guilty. It’s just that this blog chooses to ignore those moments, because truth is not something you’re interested in here. (Note that I acknowledge poor behavior on the left, whereas you guys never, ever do so for the right. This is because you guys here at SDA are extremists, blind to your own failings.)
As for Smarts’ take down, she’s bang on. Very, very few people are actually afraid of the DTES. Sure, you might keep your eyes peeled a bit more for somebody trying to pick your pocket, and you might be a bit more cautious at 1am, BUT you are like that in any part of a big city. You’re more likely to get beaten up in the club district by some testosterone retarded drunk than you are to be threatened by a junkie. That’s a fact.
As for access to drugs… trying to link this to safe injection sites is just plain goofballs. For one thing, despite Corbella befriending a prostitute and speaking to police about how hard it is to find drugs in other cities, addicts everywhere some how manage. And let’s not forget that the whole idea behind illegal drug sales is to keep the cops in the dark, so they’re hardly the people to ask, but any cop who doesn’t know where the city’s drug district is, is either lying, or couldn’t find a doughnut tied to his own @ss.
Drugs are cheaper and easier to access than ever before. The war on drugs is a complete and total failure. It has wasted billions on a failed strategy, and ruined countless lives that it was allegedly there to help. For every person who becomes addicted to drugs, there are dozens who have an awesome time, then get up and go to work like everybody else. Just like with booze. That’s a fact.
If you people truly are libertarians, (which you’re not), you would agree that cognitive liberty is crucial in a free society. If you want to get high, go for it. We can place restrictions on where and when you can be high, such as driving a car, using firearms, or going to work, but if you want to get stoned on your time, that should be your business. You can pretty much bet the farm that Cory did not go to the DTES to buy heroin. More likely he knew somebody who knew somebody who sold a bunch of stuff. If he actually had gone to a safe injection site, he’d probably be alive, as they would have monitored his dosage, or warned him against using if he was drunk. That’s the whole idea behind those sites.
Study drugs, legalize, regulate and educate around the least dangerous, and decriminalize the worst, so that users are treated as people with health issues, and the dealers are the ones who go up the river for peddling poison. What is a dangerous drug? Probably meth, heroin, and cocaine. What isn’t? Probably pot, MDMA, mushrooms and LDS under the right conditions and dosages. (Don’t use and drive)
There’s a lot to hate about the DTES. Safe injection sites are part of the solution, to a complex problem.
“I find it remarkable that leftists/socialists seem to think providing drugs is a good thing for people addicted to drugs. In the meantime, someone driving while intoxicated (which I don’t advocate) is -according to MADD- the worst possible human on this planet.”
Because a junkie sitting around shooting heroin is harming themselves. A drunk in a car is hurdling around in a giant chunk of metal, and a danger to all. Is that really so hard to understand? There is no safe way to drink and drive. There are however, safer ways to use heroin.
I agree with the comments here. Probably 99% of drugs are acquired with money that was gotten illegally. I know, because as a former Vancouver resident, I was broken into many, many times. Me, I’d rather just give the junkies the dope. Here’s the case:
Give them drugs. Instead of spending their days scrounging for money, doing things that make their lives even worse (requiring more drugs to forget all the stuff you’ve done), they can get bored and start figuring out how to get off drugs.
For citizens, I’d rather pay an extra $50 per year in taxes to give these guys drugs than have them break into my house, steal things like cameras, computers, and my dead father’s pocket watch to make a few bucks selling to people who know they’re buying from thieves to feed their addiction.
Sorry, but Corbella’s article does rank high on my BS meter. Her friend couldn’t find heroin in Montreal. Really?! Oh right, and then she phoned a Montreal cop and asked him — it turns into farce. Then, the linking of Insite with Monteith. The guy was a former addict who cleaned himself up (for a time) and fell back in – happens ALL THE TIME. It’s more to do with being back with some old friends and old world than anything. If he’d been a drug user in Toronto, cleaned up, and then was back in Toronto, he would have been much more likely to fall back in as well.
I have a lot of problems with DTES — but Insite isn’t one of them. The ghetto-by-design policy by the city and province with all the social housing and services in one place is much more of a problem.
And Berner is simply wrong. He clearly pines for the old days but they’re not coming back. He’s needlessly dogmatic and doesn’t want anything to work except his own “cold turkey” method. Insite is not palliative. It’s about keeping addicts alive, keeping viral diseases down (which benefits the wider population), and being there when these folks do want to quit. Yes, some of them will die on heroin. But, they’ll die while Berner waits for them to want to get treatment as well.
For the record, the last municipal election in Vancouver had only a 23% turnout. 🙁
“Nothing changes if nothing changes.” – 12 Step program saying
Putting aside the fact that attending InSite would be an incredibly effective — and legal — method of getting hooked up with a good supplier, there’s a more fundamental issue at stake here.
I have literally known at least a couple thousand addicts of all stripes over the past two decades. Most are alkies, but many are dual-diagnosis with their drug choices ranging from mild (weed) to extreme (smoking crack/shooting smack). In every single case, the biggest threat to addicts — particularly early on in their recoveries — are their own learned patterns of behaviour. You have to extensively deprogram these people of their bad habits, replacing them with positive, healthy ones.
That’s why, when you show up at a 12 Step program, the regulars will basically mob you. They will try to take over your life. Not to shove religion down your throat, but because they know how vulnerable you are when you are on your own and you are at risk of doing what you are used to doing, seeing who you normally see. So they try to get you to five meetings a day. Take you out for coffee and visit incessantly. Take you for walks. Keep you BUSY, and keep keeping you busy until you start to develop new habits as the old ones (like visiting your old friends who say, ‘just this once’) will freakin’ KILL you.
I can think of nothing more deadly than encouraging people to do the same deadly things they always do, with the same destructive friends they are used to associating with, promising them safety all the while. This will just embed the bad behaviour even deeper and make it that much more difficult to remove. Because if they can’t break habits like shooting up with their friends, they will never experience true recovery.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
All anti-Insite ‘analysis’ has been demonstrably misleading or otherwise flawed
Er, you did read Berner’s linked piece, didn’t you? That the pro-analysis of Insite was conducted by the very people who run and profit from it? That they cherry-picked their data, erroneously reported easily checked facts (e.g. number of Vancouver overdose deaths has not gone down, despite Insite’s presence), etc? That every one of the four studies that is “pro” Insite has been found to be flawed and misleading? You did read that, didn’t you?
(crickets)
Kevin… who profits?! The healthcare workers? Are you suggesting they’d be out of work if they didn’t work there? No. They’d find other jobs. And no, there isn’t a private business at the core of Insite, so not motivation to operate if it didn’t work.
By all means though, post those links that backup the claims you are making. I am willing to call into question Insite’s numbers, but we should also question those who question them.
Most vehemently anti-drug organizations are standing around desperately beating the dead horse that is prohibition, refusing to acknowledge that their strategy has been a massive failure. Destroying more lives than it saves, and doing zero to control drugs, which are more plentiful and cheap than ever. And, they’ve done wonders to support criminal activity. If I were president of Hell’s Angels, you can bet your @ss that I would be making major donations to anti-drug groups to help keep the activity illegal.
Bottom line, the op-ed was stupid beyond all imagining. Aside from the threats, she and her editor, deserves the browbeating she is getting over this fact-free piece of drivel.
Hey John, I’m one of those libertarians you seem to be taking shots at. You really don’t do very good job of understanding libertarian philosophy. You think people should be able to take whatever drugs they want? Sure, why not? I’m willing to give you that as a libertarian. Still, as a libertarian I also believe that the individual should shoulder the consequences of their choices. The “disease” model of addiction is simply a way for people to avoid that responsibility. Treating the logical consequences of repeated bad choices as a “disease” and then expecting the rest of society, the productive members who do not “have an awesome time” taking drugs, to pay for places like insite and rehab is not very libertarian. In fact, it screams socialist. So please, pick one or the other, try not to cherry pick the best of each -ism like a child who only wants to eat dessert.
I don’t understand. Why would InSite have killed you?
I just received a reply from this advocate of Insite, on my post on disqus:
From: “Matthew Elrod
“when does the Second Pillar start?”
B.C. spends 10 times more on treatment than harm reduction, and about 40 times more on the law enforcement pillar.
“How many clients of Insite are successful in kicking the habit,”
About 20 per cent.
“thrifty cash-strapped governments of any political persuasion will be forced to close it down.”
It turns out that preventing infectious diseases is less expensive than treating infectious diseases, coping with open drug use on the streets, emergency services, paramedics, and so forth. Insite save both lives and money, and if not for Insite, there would be less money for anything else.
For context, the law enforcement pillar gets about 70 per cent of our federal and provincial drug control budgets, (versus 2 per cent for harm reduction), yet there is no evidence that the law enforcement pillar has any benefits.
Further, the law enforcement pillar interferes with prevention, treatment and harm reduction. And yet, cash-strapped governments in Canada aren’t even considering reallocating money wasted on law enforcement toward the other pillars, although cash strapped governments in the U.S. and elsewhere are.
2:29 p.m., Tuesday July 23″
The statement of the gentleman’s that interests me the most is ” about twenty percent”,who kick the habit.
That,imho,is a pretty poor success rate,20%.
If that’s the best they can do, maybe they had better look at some harsher treatment methods. As I said before, money for these programs is becoming more scarce,and inevitably there is going to be a public backlash against a program that has such a low success rate.
I haven’t even asked,how many of those recovered addicts are now gainfully employed and contributing to the system from which they took so much?
Compassion is NOT an infinite resource.
I’m not sure I can explain this to you as we don’t appear to share a common frame of reference. All I can tell you is that I — and all of the ‘recovered’ addicts I know — look at programs like this and facepalm ourselves because we intuitively understand how damaging they are. Those who have come back from the brink understand how dangerous it is to encourage others to dance at the edge of the precipice.
The “Vancouver is a wonderful place” line turned me off. Right now if anyone asks me about Vancouver, I tell them it’s a shithole with nice views. Haven’t visited there since I moved out my last load of stuff 4 years ago aside from spending time the airport while going somewhere else.
Insite is one of the few legally protected places where individuals can benefit from the proceeds of crime. Every junkie who goes there has likely caused a degree of social mayhem far in excess of the cost of their latest fix and this is supposed to be progress. If Canada had legal concealed carry and stand your ground laws, most of these junkies would be dead. That the Vancouver moonbats are totally unaware of this is not surprising.
What does surprise me is the support of the BC College of Physicians for this temple for the injection of the proceeds of crime. This same organization has recently decided to start clamping down on physicians who prescribe opiates for the treatment of non-cancer pain citing the increasing death toll from prescription opiates as the cause. Presumably any physician who prescribed morphine to an IV drug user would have their opiate prescribing privileges withdrawn, but this same regulatory body is perfectly fine with the epidemic of property crime that plagues Vancouver. If Vancouver wasn’t the moonbat capital of Canada, there would be a class action lawsuit being brought against the BC College of Physicians for their role in making Vancouver the crime capital of Canada.
The discussion on this thread is going in the expected directions and I’ve got too much to do today to get involved in the fray. My belief that all drugs should be freely available stands and I also believe that people should be completely responsible for any of their actions as a result of taking a particular drug. I can’t get upset over heroin overdoses as I’ve seen so many of them over the years. Often dead is the best way to go rather than permanent hypoxic brain damage.
WRT drinking and driving, people vary immensely in how EtOH affects them. I’m old enough to have driven drunk legally and often I was the one asked to drive as the owner of the vehicle was incapable. There was the minor issue that I didn’t have a drivers license, but I always ensured I drove safely and thus wasn’t chargeable under the Criminal Code sections regarding dangerous driving.
What would be appropriate would be a reaction time test and other tests which had bearing on driving ability. If a person passed these tests they would be allowed to drive regardless of the blood alcohol level. If they failed, they would have a license suspension. The reason this hasn’t gone over is that many elderly drivers would fail even when completely sober. Also, the primary goal in all such totalitarian laws is the expansion of the police state under false pretences.
The other thing that one needs to consider is that the victim industry of Vancouver is immense and, if all of its “clients” were to drop dead, there would be thousands of unemployed social workers and assorted riff raff without anything to do. Thus, it’s crucially important to keep those junkies alive. Any program which encourages abstinence, and gets people out of the DES lifestyle has the same effect as if these junkies had died — far fewer employment prospects for those in the victim industry.
People soon forget that Licia did an article on the RCMP arresting a fellow named Nixon (brother to Pat who ran the Mustard Seed) on the word of a druggie that he was shooting horses. The cops came and arrested Pat’s brother I think on the ground, arms behind him, in front of his kids, like a major criminal.
The druggie wanted the $25,000 reward money for “informing who did it”, as it turns out it wasn’t Pat’s brother and 1+1=2 the druggie did it for money.
This sadly tells me a lot.
Licia was the only reporter to expose the RCMP on this, but nothing more was said. So kudo’s for her.
we drove through Hastings and Main, and it looks like a movie set of WWZ. Zombie city.
Harm reduction and Insite are
palliativeparasitic. They both spring from a deeply cynical and arrogant world view: You are an addict and you arehopelessweak. We willkeep you “comfortable” while you continue to dieprolong your death rather than take the necessary steps to heal you.Las, you moron, go down there stick a heroin filled needle in your arm for three or four days straight and come back and give us a report, about what a “vital” neighbourhood it is.
I went through there 3 times today.They could film “Walking Dead” there, and use no “makeup”.
If you want to get stoned on their time….Soory …Our time.. We are paying for their party,and their enablers. They say a million dollars a day goes into that puke inducing hole. You are a party to that. Hell I don’t care what they do to themselves,as no one cares about my behaviour. But this “sore” is attached to the richest part of the city, and why should these handout artists hang there. The legitimate citizens in this area should be able to get on with their lives and prosper/or not, but they are held captive by people like you and Mayor Asshat and his bicycle princesses.Get a grip and stop enabling these victims of some dreamy eyed experiment.
“We’ve had the debate, you lost.” – LAS
Leftism in just six words. When a judicial or government edict suits their agenda it’s a done deal, never to be discussed nor revisited again. If a decision or vote runs counter to their goal(s) it’s an ‘injustice’ that will be hounded to the ground until it does become a done deal.
I. M., I agree, and I’ve been saying so right here ever since that infernal judgment came down.
The Supreme Court’s job was to uphold the law, not to give lawbreakers a spurious “right” to taxpayers’ money in the course of breaking it. The government should have invoked the notwithstanding clause on the Court’s ass. There should also be a way (perhaps a through public referendum) to fire high-level judges because they deserved it after this travesty (not the only one, sadly).
The bigger issue though is the Charter of Rights, which has numerous problems, enough that it should be remade from scratch. Among other things, it:
– omits some important and necessary rights (property)
– includes some trash that doesn’t belong (multiculturalism, affirmative action)
– denies proper legal rights — I suspect deliberately — to persons not “charged with an offence”, i.e., those up before kangaroo court human rights commissions (and “administrative law” bodies generally)
– includes some genuine rights that are routinely ignored in practice (section 2(b))
– and in total shows little understanding of the concept of rights or that the proper function of government is to protect them.
My take on InSite all along has been that its real purpose is not to help addicts but to waste taxpayers’ money in as cynical a way as possible. Nothing has happened in the interim to change my opinion.
LAS, I’ve probably agreed with your posts more often than anyone else who comments here regularly, but I think you’ve blown your cover on this one.
Berner’s article points out how the pro-InSite ‘analysis’ has been misleading/flawed, and apparently performed mostly by persons who had a conflict of interest.
I was under the impression that you were a libertarian, but that particular political viewpoint treats drug use as an individual, personal issue outside of the scope of state action in every way, that is, there would be no laws (prohibition) against drugs, and no state help to keep addicts from harming themselves. “Harm reduction” is a socialist’s or welfare statist’s viewpoint.
As for Shannon Smart’s “letter”, the best part was this comment from ‘Stan’:
Next up?
Drunk driving lanes!
John says: “This is because you guys here at SDA are extremists, blind to your own failings.”
Did others notice like I did that John failed to take into account the things that Sean, a man who has experienced addiction firsthand, shared with us? If Sean in his own experience says that programs like Insite are not that good for the addict, why is it that people like John can’t accept that point of view? Who are the extremists?
“In every single case, the biggest threat to addicts — particularly early on in their recoveries — are their own learned patterns of behaviour. You have to extensively deprogram these people of their bad habits, replacing them with positive, healthy ones.”
This sounds like wisdom to me. What struck me when I read it is that it surely applies to many criminals too.
All the more reason to abolish government intervention in the economy so that jobs can be plentiful, and the petty criminal freed from jail can have an opportunity to go straight and to do something productive.
More coherent than normal, John. Here’s the problem with “libertarianism” and drug legalization in a nutshell. We rescue them. If you’re at the point where your life revolves around heroin, and you’re willing to stick needles into your veins on a daily basis, you are trying to get dead. This goes beyond normal bad habits. You are determined, at that point, to be an self-murdering, society-destroying sleazebag. Bear in mind that, popular mythology to the contrary, heroin is not all that addictive, and withdrawing from it if you are addicted isn’t the end of the world.
Remember House? That was a good show. One exchange I recall: somebody – “h
Have you ever tried to kill yourself? Dr. House – “Not all at once”.
It pains me to agree with Slater, but he’s right about Mao. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-poppycock.htm
So if you want to take a “libertarian” approach to hard drug use, fine. But bear in mind that you’d have to let them die in the gutter, or get shot trying to rob someone. Their choice, right?
I’m not that cold blooded. Maybe I should be, but I’m not.
There’s nothing “libertarian” about the government supplying junkies with their paraphernalia and providing them, at public expense, with an easy place to score.
I’ll add that the state making something illegal and then actively promoting and enabling it makes a mockery of the law. Which is rarely a good thing.
More coherent than normal, John. Here’s the problem with “libertarianism” and drug legalization in a nutshell. We rescue them. If you’re at the point where your life revolves around heroin, and you’re willing to stick needles into your veins on a daily basis, you are trying to get dead. This goes beyond normal bad habits. You are determined, at that point, to be an self-murdering, society-destroying sleazebag. Bear in mind that, popular mythology to the contrary, heroin is not all that addictive, and withdrawing from it if you are addicted isn’t the end of the world.
Remember House? That was a good show. One exchange I recall: somebody – “Have you ever tried to kill yourself? Dr. House – “Not all at once”.
It pains me to agree with Slater, but he’s right about Mao. http://preview.tinyurl.com/o3t5h
So if you want to take a “libertarian” approach to hard drug use, fine. But bear in mind that you’d have to let them die in the gutter, or get shot trying to rob someone. Their choice, right?
I’m not that cold blooded. Maybe I should be, but I’m not.
There’s nothing “libertarian” about the government supplying junkies with their paraphernalia and providing them, at public expense, with an easy place to score.
I’ll add that the state making something illegal and then actively promoting and enabling it makes a mockery of the law. Which is rarely a good thing.
“For citizens, I’d rather pay an extra $50 per year in taxes to give these guys drugs than have them break into my house, steal things like cameras, computers, and my dead father’s pocket watch to make a few bucks selling to people who know they’re buying from thieves to feed their addiction.”
But they’d break into your house anyway. As Dalrymple says, drugs don’t hook people, people hook drugs. You think heroin is the only thing criminals want money for?
I am disappointed in the comments on this in this section. Now to be fair I really didn’t read the article and am more interested in the general discussion on drug addiction.
Personally I am a conservative, a libertarian to be sure. How one gets addicted to hard drugs is not a “Oh it’s Tuesday and sunny I think I will go out and become a Heroin addict today. For the most part these people have been through some devastating catastrophe or catastrophes. Your legitimate drug dealer that would be your doctor. Their label not mine. Restricts your tranquilizers because hey they don’t want you to get addicted yet the event or events that have traumatized you are beyond your ability to cope until time heals you enough to function. And through probably circumtstances you find yourself using Illegal drugs and voila it does what you need it to do stop the pain.
Unfortunately something in your brain is chemically screwed up and now the stuff owns you. If you feel this strongly about this then diabetics should be treated the same way. Think about it it’s exactly the same problem. One brain one pancreas. Both
are a chemical problem that you are unable to control.
So to the just say no crowd. Maybe you should understand the topic before blowing off in such grandiose manner on a subject that judging by the comments you nothing about.
Jeff, I won’t argue with your explanation of the genesis of addiction, but since you’re a libertarian, then you do agree that the government has no business wasting taxpayers’ money on places like InSite, correct?
Of course however the cost of those drugs are a government manufactured oligopoly. Allow the stuff to be sold over the counter or something like manufactured by legitimate businesses the price drops to the floor and now you have just brought a wasted portion of the population back to productive purpose.