Here, in the Commune of Massachusetts, the state (that is, we) has a policy that saves heroin users’ lives:
Massachusetts public health officials say a program to distribute medicine for heroin addicts to take in case of an overdose has helped prevent more than 1,000 overdose deaths in four years.
Officials say more than 10,000 people have enrolled in the pilot program which trains them in the use of the nasal spray known as Narcan.
There have been more than 1,000 reports of Narcan being used to save lives by reversing overdoses since 2007.
Narcan is designed to block the effects of opioids, such as heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, Fentanyl, codeine and methadone.
The program makes the drug available to opiate users as well as their family and friends.
One of the problems needle exchange programs face is a massive dose of hysteria blended with ignorance. As a result, they are incorrectly viewed as encouraging people to use drugs, as opposed to preventing the spread of disease (i.e., preventing an addict from getting AIDS–which is an even greater problem for the rest of us). Those nitwits would probably say something similar here.
Even though it would result in ~1,000 dead people.
‘Tough love’ for the dead is still necrophilia….
Related: Massachusetts seems to be very progressive in this area (along with Chicago)
mikethemadbiologist
The same they think about testing welfare recipients for drugs–that anybody who uses drugs is so morally corrupt that they deserve no support of any kind. “Let ’em die!”
That this program squarely answers the (bad) arguments they usually make is irrelevant.
We had a huge outcry in France when the Minister for Health wanted to introduce shoot-up centres so that addict who inject could at least do it in clean surroundings, with sterile equipment, and maybe trained staff on hand to deal with overdoses and help advise those who want to quit.
Even the media pointing out that a similar system had been shown to work, and even helped in reducing the number of addicts, in other countries didn’t save the scheme, unfortunately.
Can’t wait to see the cost-benefit analysis – because a dead addict is a cheap addict, right? You know someone is going to do that calculation, even if they probably won’t put it in those terms.
Along those lines, it was interesting to see the recent study showing that stopping smoking starts to pay back very quickly in reduced hospital visits and health care costs for a wide range of diseases – even if you’re a heartless bastard who considers a dead smoker to be less of a burden on society than someone who lives long enough to start to draw social security payments…