A Discussion: Needle Exchanges

[Kath]

So you'd rather just keeping feeding them needles until they die on the street of a heroin overdose. Because you care.

[Speaker to Animals]

Why not just give them heroin with your free needles? I am sure you will solve the heroin epidemic any day now..

[PartyOf5]

Rehab doesn't work unless the subject really wants change. It's just a waste. Better to make sure the offer is there when the motivation comes. That is why things like Needle Exchanges work. It keeps the contact alive and can offer hope if it works right.

I'm not sold on it. To me letting them exchange needles is accepting their behavior and telling them their drug use is ok. They can have the offer of help to kick their addiction without enabling them to do more drugs by exchanging needles.

What about the Narcan being given out? That's even worse enabling.

We should be focusing on preventing people from getting to that point.

[Kath]

What about the Narcan being given out? That's even worse enabling.

I don't agree with giving out Narcan. An addict dies, they die. Spending pennies to keep them from getting infectious diseases, though, is a public good.

[PartyOf5]

Because a needle costs 80 cents and rehab costs thousands?

What about the total cost to society? Where do the addicts get the money for the drugs?

I'm not saying we should force them into rehab, but if they don't want to quit what is giving them fresh needles and Narcan doing to help them kick the addiction? It doesn't sound too altruistic to be providing them ways to continue to destroy their lives with drugs because it's cheaper than paying for their HIV treatments.

The more I think about it, the Narcan upsets me more than the needle exchanges. That is pure enabling. At least the needles have the effect of reducing HIV.

[PartyOf5]

I don't agree with giving out Narcan. An addict dies, they die. Spending pennies to keep them from getting infectious diseases, though, is a public good.

Where are they getting the money for the drugs? Not as much of a public good if that behavior is condoned and even encouraged. That is part of the real cost.

[Kath]

The more I think about it, the Narcan upsets me more than the needle exchanges. That is pure enabling. At least the needles have the effect of reducing HIV.

That's pretty much what I said.

Keeping HIV out of the equation is literally a huge money saver. Despite their horrid behavior, drug addicts have families and sex partners. If we start gassing or shooting anyone showing up for a clean needle, the HIV will spread, because addicts will just stop showing up for a clean needle.

The ROI is off-the-charts insane. It's not enabling; it's keeping society safe from further HIV infections. No junkie is happy being a junkie, and giving them a clean needle is not an approval, nor do addicts see it as approval.

[Speaker to Animals]

liberals never want to admit the total costs of their politics and "solutions".

They don't want to pay for asylums and drug rehabs. So they shut them all down. Now the streets are crowded with drug addicts and schizophrenics who cannot care for themselves. Crime goes up. STDs proliferate. Organized crime grows to prey upon the drug addicts. The streets are covered in diseased shit and HIV-infected needles. Hepatitis outbreaks.

Now they have to pay for all the social costs one way or another. Then they have to pay for all these last-ditch efforts to mitigate the damage, such as needle exchanges. They have to pay for increasingly more police to deal with the crime they created. That results in more lost civil liberties, a growing police and surveillance state to keep us safe from the products of progressive/conservative politics.

It would have been cheaper to keep the mental hospitals. It's cheaper to institutionalize people.

If you have such little charity for your fellow man as Kath demonstrated, you might as well just become a national socialist and support gassing people deemed a burden on society.

[Kath]

I have a GREAT idea, STA... let's make heroin illegal! That'll fix the problem for sure!

[Speaker to Animals]

Okay Kathy Newman.

Now as to what I actually posted: let's rebuild mental health hospitals and start institutionalizing people again instead of leaving them on the streets to die.