Government Sponsored Drug Use Sites

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Recommended: Social impact of drug abuse

In modern society, there are few behaviors that are more damaging than illicit drug use. The use of these types of drugs causes unnecessary expense to our government and to families all across the United States. According to …., there are between …. and …habitual users of heroin in the United States. Most medical professionals consider opiate addiction to be a psychological as well as physiological disease. If they do not inject heroin on a regular schedule they could become violently ill. Many of these people that have opiate addiction will end up in the various prison systems around the country. While in prison, they will receive little to no treatment for their addiction. However, some of these same opiate users will find their way to a methadone clinic. This is one of the main ways the medical community in the United States has decided to treat heroin addiction.
While being treated at a methadone clinic, each patient receives between 60 mg to 120 mg of methadone a day, and the dose is based on how much heroin that they were taking daily before they started coming to the clinic. One would think that getting opiate users to stop using heroin should be good for society as whole. Unfortunately, most methadone clinics are a for-profit business, and getting heroin users of heroin rapidly is not good for their business plan. According to the Center for Disease Control (2002), the average person continues to go to the methadone clinic for a minimum of 12 months; however, most users continue to go to the clinic for many years.
Despite the negative consequences of using heroin, there are many positive outcomes to seeking treatment at a methadone clinic. Some of the positive outcomes for the individual are reduced mortality rates fr...

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...es, the drug injection sites do not have any effect on crime or disease in the areas around the clinic (Health Canada, 2008).
The governments of the United States and Canada need to come up with programs that deal with the real issue of drug abuse, and that is addiction. They need to quit using therapies where one addictive drug is traded for another. The government of Canada should not turn their eyes to illicit drug users because they can create an environment where drug use is safer than usual.

Works Cited

Vancouver's insite service and other supervised injection sites: What has been learned from
Research. (2008). Health Canada. Retrieved from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/pubs/
_sites-lieux/insite/index-eng.php#util
Methadone Maintenance Treatment. (2002). Center for Disease Control (CDC). Retrieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/idu/facts/MethadoneFin.pdf

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