Harm reduction strategies in Canada, such as safe injection sites (SIS) have been proven to be an effective strategy to control the effects of injection drug use (Small et al., 2011). The proven effectiveness of these strategies renders the governments’ “war on drugs” and criminalization strategies ideological. The Toronto Board of Health meeting that took place on July 10, 2013 where public health officials, community organizations, previous injection drug users (IDUs) and their families spoke in favour of opening a SIS. Furthermore, the Conservative government has recently started a “Keep Heroine out of our Backyards” campaign and created Bill C-65 to make it more difficult to open SIS. I wish to look at different newspaper articles from the Toronto Sun and
History and Literature Review: War on drugs, harm reduction and Insite
The war on drugs, which started in the United States, has become widespread in many countries around the world, and increasingly so in Canada (Odeh, 2013). It has been shown that the war on drugs is an inefficient way to minimize or even control drug use and possession (Odeh, 2013). This begs the question then as to why the war on drugs is still being waged with increasing force. The United States, which started the war on drugs, now has the highest prison population per capita in the world, with 730 of every 100,000 people imprisoned (Odeh, 2013). Furthermore, more than half of these people in prison are serving sentences for drug crimes (Odeh, 2013). Despite the fact that it costs taxpayers a lot of money, with no results; drug use and the amount of drugs in the US hasn’t decreased, the war on drugs has not stopped. While some Americans, even very conservative ones (CBC, 2011) have come to the conclus...
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Smith, C. B. R. (2012). Harm reduction as anarchist practice: A user’s guide to capitalism and addiction in North America. Critical Public Health, 22(2), 209-221.
White, C. L. (2001). Beyond professional harm reduction: The empowerment of multi- marginalized illicit drug users to engage in a politics of solidarity towards ending the war on illicit drug users. Drug and Alcohol Review, 20,
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Wood, E., Tyndall, M. W., Montaner, T. K. (2006). Summary of findings from the evaluation of a pilot medically supervised safer injecting facility.
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Bruce K. Alexander’s essay “Reframing Canada’s ‘Drug Problem’” is about shifting the focus from intervention to prevention. Alexander explains that in Canada there have been three major waves of drug intervention: “Criminal prosecution and intensive anti-drug” (225), “medicinal and psychological treatment” (225), and the ‘“harm reduction’ techniques” (225) being the most resent. The “’harm reduction’” (225) consisted of: clean injectable heroin, clean needles, methadone, and housing for addicts. Although each of the methods is devoted and knowledgeable, they have done little to decrease the deaths or suppress the unhappiness. While clean heroin did work well few addicts quit using and many found
Perhaps one of the most pressing concerns is health and the assumption that to a certain degree criminalization is justified by preserving health. Illicit drugs are, in reality, not as hazardous to public health as accustomed views present- particularly in relation to certain recreational activities that are legal. Of the 25,000 illegal drug use-induced fatalities the National Institute on Drug Abuse has brought to light, the majority is more correctly due to drug prohibition than consumption. Also, some 14,300 of the casualties are a result of diseases like AIDS, transferred (generally) because of contaminated drug injection needles. Needle exchange programs for sterile needles are encouraged by the World Health Organization, amongst many other international organizations, as it is considered as possibly the greatest innovation for the health improvement of users. However, the federal government disallows the appropriation of its funds to these programs because the possession and sale of syringes still remain largely illegal. Furthermore, - as I explain later on- between the sellers and producers, there is no real confidence in the contents and hence, dangerousness of a given street drug. Considering the already growing level of consumption, imagine the gains of, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supervising illicit drugs, parallel to their work on food and
In the early 20th century, the Progressive Era would dominate for nearbly two decades in the United States and its system. This Progressive Era would be a result of Anarchism. Anarchy actions would take over in the U.S. ,and Anarchism would arrive in the nation, in 1901 during the attempted assassination of President McKinley. Little did they know the assassin’s name would be Leon Czolgosz, who investigators would later discover that Czolgosz would be apart of anarchism. Anarchy propagated the idea that governments and laws only served to restrict the freedom of individuals, and prevented them from practicing their own liberty; therefore this anarchists would act with violence in order to reform or shape the system differently. “Anarchist violence had claimed the pro-business president of the U.S. Worse, anarchism represented only the tip of
In Australia the Government uses three methods to tackle drugs; Demand reduction, supply reduction and harm minimization. Needle and syringe programs are under harm minimization category. Supply reduction is focused on drug dealers and drug makers and is brought about by law enforcement. In the Demand reduction method it is tried to decrease the number of people taking drugs through anti-drug advertisements and campaigns, legislation, rehabilitation centers. On the other hand harm minimization recognizes the fact that drugs can never be eradicated fro...
Bruce K. Alexander’s essay “reframing Canada’s drug problem is about how the focus needs to be shifting from intervention to prevention
America's War on Drugs: Policy and Problems. In this paper I will evaluate America's War on Drugs. More specifically, I will outline our nation's general drug history and look critically at how Congress has influenced our current ineffective drug policy. Through this analysis, I hope to show that drug prohibition policies in the United States, for the most part, have failed.
The only things that will make someone want stop doing an addictive drug is if it affects their everyday life, if it affects their appearance, or if they are likely to die from it. Safe injection sites would eliminate two of those three things, leaving only their appearance. Safe injection sites will keep them from dying, and it will not affect their everyday life other than taking the time to go to the injection site. Bringing safe injection sites to the United States will not have the same results as in other countries because the United States and its population is like no other country in the world. People in the United States are influenced by not only their peers, but what is available to them; people here think more along the lines of, “what can I get away with without getting caught”. Safe injection sites are not the answer to fighting addiction in the United States, as Dr. Brian Johnson said, “Safe injection sites are yet another proposal that would have the government subsidize the addictive drug industry. “ ("Opioid Crisis." CQ Researcher, 7 Oct. 2016, pp. 817-840. CQ Researcher, pro cons paragraph 4). This means that the government would fund the safe injection sites, which is more money the taxpayers have to pay. Paying people to be present when opioid drug addicts do an illegal drug contradicts everything
The Government needs to draw the line somewhere. In Sweden the Government was giving out free heroin, in order to keep the drugs free from being impure. However, Margaret McKay (2001) declares that if we follow in same steps, soon we will be giving out not only free heroin, but also other illegal substances as well. It will then lead to problems with other drugs as well.
The War on Drugs is believed to help with many problems in today’s society such as realizing the rise of crime rates and the uprooting of violent offenders and drug kingpin. Michelle Alexander explains that the War on Drugs is a new way to control society much like how Jim Crow did after the Civil War. There are many misconceptions about the War on Drugs; commonly people believe that it’s helping society with getting rid of those who are dangerous to the general public. The War on Drugs is similar to Jim Crow by hiding the real intention behind Mass Incarceration of people of color. The War on Drugs is used to take away rights of those who get incarcerated. When they plead guilty, they will lose their right to vote and have to check application
A “drug-free society” has never existed, and probably will never exist, regardless of the many drug laws in place. Over the past 100 years, the government has made numerous efforts to control access to certain drugs that are too dangerous or too likely to produce dependence. Many refer to the development of drug laws as a “war on drugs,” because of the vast growth of expenditures and wide range of drugs now controlled. The concept of a “war on drugs” reflects the perspective that some drugs are evil and war must be conducted against the substances
Drug use has been an ongoing problem in our country for decades. The use of drugs has been the topic of many political controversies throughout many years. There has been arguments that are for legalizing drugs and the benefits associated with legalization. Also, there are some who are opposed to legalizing drugs and fear that it will create more problems than solve them. Conservatives and liberals often have different opinions for controversial topics such as “the war on drugs,” but it is necessary to analyze both sides in order to gain a full understanding of their beliefs and to decide in a change in policy is in order.
Deborah Peterson Small, executive director and founder of Break the Chains, Communities of Color and the War on Drugs and previously was director of public policy for the Drug Policy Alliance, asks an important question: “Why are we still not discussing the evidence: that the real gateways to addiction are poverty, trauma, mental health problems and the effects of criminalization and stigma?” She points out how these other issues are what cause these troubled people to begin using addictive drugs, and that “many promote myths about marijuana to justify the use of law enforcement and the testing of people for public benefits, jobs and exclusion from housing.” She explains how the majority of people that use weed are doing so in unproblematic ways, so legalizing it will protect them to do so without the fear of punishment. Comparatively, there is the fact that opioid overdoses fell with the legalization of medical marijuana. Colleen Barry, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research, says that by “using state-level death certificate data from 1999 to 2010, my colleagues and I found that the annual rate of opioid overdose deaths decreased substantially — by 25 percent on average — following the passage of medical marijuana laws, compared to states that
Drugs are used to escape the real and move into the surreal world of one’s own imaginations, where the pain is gone and one believes one can be happy. People look on their life, their world, their own reality, and feel sickened by the uncaringly blunt vision. Those too weak to stand up to this hard life seek their escape. They believe this escape may be found in chemicals that can alter the mind, placing a delusional peace in the place of their own depression: “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly halucinant,” (52). They do this with alcohol, acid, crack, cocaine, heroine, opium, even marijuana for the commoner economy. These people would rather hide behind the haze than deal with real problems. “...A gramme is better than a damn.” (55).
The current situation of drug control in the United States is imperfect and inadequate. Millions of men and women, both young and old, are affected by illicit drug use. It costs the United States about $6,123 every second because of drug use and its consequences (Office). Moreover, 90 percent of all adults with a substance use disorder started using under the age of 18 and half under the age of 15. Children who first smoke marijuana under the age of 14 are five times more likely to abuse drugs as adults than those who first use marijuana at age 18. Finally, the children of alcoholics are four times more likely to develop problems with alcohol (Prevent). Current legislation that has to do with the United States’ drug control policy is the Controlled Substances Act, which regulates the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances (Shannon). In 1966, Congress passed the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act also known as the NARA. This legislati...
Contemporary liberal and anarchist philosophy are two very different ways of trying to see what would be the best way to run a society. While discussing these two ideologies, I will try to show how both, in their purist sense, are not able to work effectively in today's society. Contemporary liberals are involved in every day politics, but through over regulation and dependence on government they lose their chances of running a reliable democracy. Anarchists have very good ideas of how a natural society could function without government or modern institutions, but the biggest problem they have is how to get to that point. Both theories look good on paper, but once they hit the real world they change due to alternating conceptions and individual influences.