Comments on: Please do your dying elsewhere http://www.thesheaf.com/2010/01/27/please-do-your-dying-elsewhere/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:51:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Tomas Borsa http://www.thesheaf.com/2010/01/27/please-do-your-dying-elsewhere/#comment-1175 Tomas Borsa Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:42:02 +0000 http://thesheaf.com/?p=2597#comment-1175 Al: how do you propose that one rounds up the addicts of the DTES and corrals them into treatment? Do you think, speaking out of your personal experience, that these are rational individuals capable of making carefully weighed, major lifestyle changes on their own? Judging by your closing line, the answer is no. So - short of completely removing an addict's autonomy and forcing them into treatment, what are the alternatives? As far as I see it, Insite is (by far) the lesser of two evils - death or leniency. Al: how do you propose that one rounds up the addicts of the DTES and corrals them into treatment? Do you think, speaking out of your personal experience, that these are rational individuals capable of making carefully weighed, major lifestyle changes on their own? Judging by your closing line, the answer is no. So – short of completely removing an addict’s autonomy and forcing them into treatment, what are the alternatives? As far as I see it, Insite is (by far) the lesser of two evils – death or leniency.

]]> By: CA http://www.thesheaf.com/2010/01/27/please-do-your-dying-elsewhere/#comment-1141 CA Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:39:46 +0000 http://thesheaf.com/?p=2597#comment-1141 Here's what I agree with this. First of all, we are stopping people from dying. Second of all, maybe this gets a few more people into rehab. You can't really force someone to go to rehab, so you have to convince them it is a good idea. They try to do this at insite. Here’s what I agree with this. First of all, we are stopping people from dying. Second of all, maybe this gets a few more people into rehab. You can’t really force someone to go to rehab, so you have to convince them it is a good idea. They try to do this at insite.

]]> By: Al Arsenault http://www.thesheaf.com/2010/01/27/please-do-your-dying-elsewhere/#comment-1126 Al Arsenault Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:41:35 +0000 http://thesheaf.com/?p=2597#comment-1126 As a long-time DTES beat officer who was walking those mean streets of Vancouver before HR ever showed up, I have seen the devastation that drug abuse has inflicted on this community. Do you call the very high rates of infectious drug-related disease quoted a success? Show me the plunging graph line of how infectious diseases were curtailed from the late 1980's with the “highly successful” Needle Exchange to the present slick Supervised Injection Site (SIS). I defy anyone in the medical community to plot this long-term course of ruin. Wake up! There are scores of people hobbling around now down there with missing limbs, so sick is that population. BandAiding them to death is so compassionate, isn't it? OD deaths went up from 50 to 64 in the (Vancouver) Health District that hosts the SIS in the first year of operation (2003-4). It was deviously hailed as a “success” by their spokesperson Gillian Maxwell (Google her name and the 2020 Group for the drug legalization aspects of the operation). She used the provincial decline stats from 186 to 171, citing a lack of knowledge about the deaths more pertinent to the operation of the SIS. Since then detailed health district by health district OD death stats have not been publicized. All sanctimony aside, no one dies from OD's, nor does anyone ever get a drug-related disease, in good treatment. Why? Because, by definition, they separate the addict from the drug. Period. Look up the Therapeutic Community Treatment Model. How's that for life-saving measures? How about the so-called ‘Center of Excellence’ doing a study on the relative benefits of long-term treatment vs. long-term Harm Reduction, if they really want to help solve them problem of drug addiction? Ever hear of San Patrignano? The sad reality here is that the rich get treatment while the poor get harm reduction. After over two decades of HR, you might have a live addict but most likely a diseased addict. Imagine what could be accomplished with just a few good years of treatment. If you look closely at those poor souls down there, those with one foot in the ditch and the other (if they still have their other leg) in the grave, you might see someone badly in need of treatment. They really don’t need a box of needles and a place to shoot up. Heaven forbid we judge their drug-related behaviour as per the HR mantra. But we do owe it to them to do just that- not to judge WHO they are as people, but to show how their drug use is costing themselves, their families and the community at large. The junkie industry thrives on the pandering to the whims of those too sick to ask for help (can they get help in a timely fashion in the shadow of HR?). True compassion lies not in giving an addict what she/he WANTS, rather it is based upon the sober, connected, and compassionate gift of what he really NEEDS- decent treatment. As a long-time DTES beat officer who was walking those mean streets of Vancouver before HR ever showed up, I have seen the devastation that drug abuse has inflicted on this community. Do you call the very high rates of infectious drug-related disease quoted a success? Show me the plunging graph line of how infectious diseases were curtailed from the late 1980′s with the “highly successful” Needle Exchange to the present slick Supervised Injection Site (SIS). I defy anyone in the medical community to plot this long-term course of ruin. Wake up! There are scores of people hobbling around now down there with missing limbs, so sick is that population. BandAiding them to death is so compassionate, isn’t it? OD deaths went up from 50 to 64 in the (Vancouver) Health District that hosts the SIS in the first year of operation (2003-4). It was deviously hailed as a “success” by their spokesperson Gillian Maxwell (Google her name and the 2020 Group for the drug legalization aspects of the operation). She used the provincial decline stats from 186 to 171, citing a lack of knowledge about the deaths more pertinent to the operation of the SIS. Since then detailed health district by health district OD death stats have not been publicized.

All sanctimony aside, no one dies from OD’s, nor does anyone ever get a drug-related disease, in good treatment. Why? Because, by definition, they separate the addict from the drug. Period. Look up the Therapeutic Community Treatment Model. How’s that for life-saving measures? How about the so-called ‘Center of Excellence’ doing a study on the relative benefits of long-term treatment vs. long-term Harm Reduction, if they really want to help solve them problem of drug addiction? Ever hear of San Patrignano?

The sad reality here is that the rich get treatment while the poor get harm reduction.

After over two decades of HR, you might have a live addict but most likely a diseased addict. Imagine what could be accomplished with just a few good years of treatment. If you look closely at those poor souls down there, those with one foot in the ditch and the other (if they still have their other leg) in the grave, you might see someone badly in need of treatment. They really don’t need a box of needles and a place to shoot up. Heaven forbid we judge their drug-related behaviour as per the HR mantra. But we do owe it to them to do just that- not to judge WHO they are as people, but to show how their drug use is costing themselves, their families and the community at large. The junkie industry thrives on the pandering to the whims of those too sick to ask for help (can they get help in a timely fashion in the shadow of HR?).

True compassion lies not in giving an addict what she/he WANTS, rather it is based upon the sober, connected, and compassionate gift of what he really NEEDS- decent treatment.

]]> By: frank gordon http://www.thesheaf.com/2010/01/27/please-do-your-dying-elsewhere/#comment-1125 frank gordon Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:47:20 +0000 http://thesheaf.com/?p=2597#comment-1125 The federal government does not fund Insite in anyway. In the past, it has funded the research activities, but it has never funded its operations. The federal government does not fund Insite in anyway. In the past, it has funded the research activities, but it has never funded its operations.

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