Monday, June 16, 2008

Main Line

Well, here we go again with the whole war on drug thing. Except this time prevention and treatment is at the forefront. Injection sites lead the way in British Colombia after a judge ruled to let Insite-the first legal injection site in North America- continue its work. Of course the same contrary argument still exists. How can we combat the detriments of drug use and culture by helping people use them?

"Our lawyers never disputed any of the government's evidence during the court proceedings. We accepted that narcotics are both dangerous and illegal. What we argued, though, was that because of those facts, Insite is a crucial access point to health care and treatment. And the judge agreed."

So maybe the rest of North America can pay close attention to these actions that are taking place in a rumble and tumble area of Vancouver, BC and work towards similar projects continent wide. And perhaps we can make a positive change in the cultures were violence and disease prevail by providing safe and clean havens for already addicted people to use. With these changes perhaps we can divert the bulk of our financial resources to what should be more pressing issues like education and natural resource conservation, rather than fighting narco traffickers on the border and in the Caribbean. I know there are obviously other angles to this subject. These will be tackled in the future.

1 comment:

JBW said...

Some friendly advice on your links: when writing your post, highlight the words you would like to use for your link (they can be any words you choose), then click on the link button (little picture of a chain), this should provide a pop up window where you can now paste the url for the article or webpage you are trying to link to.

As for the so-called war on drugs, my thoughts can be found in this post and are elucidated upon in the following comment thread.