Is ‘being kind’ to addicts right thing to do?
Comments requested by Alastair MacGregor, MP, re: Community Survey
People who know me well have described me as a ‘bleeding heart’, a ‘soft touch’, an ‘easy mark’. I preface my comments in this way to intercept the usual knee jerk reaction of folk who think that ‘being kind’ always means being right.
I am incensed that this province, British Columbia, in partnership with the federal government, has coerced me and all Canadian taxpayers into becoming accessories to crime. Administering/enabling the use of illicit drugs is a criminal act in Canada, and yet that is exactly what we, as taxpayers have been supporting through taxation. That is the situation until laws for drug use are revised, approved and enacted.
What part of ‘illicit’ do our elected officials not comprehend?
Clearly people who have become addicted through ill-advised, over-prescribed addictive substances should be promptly treated by the same system that created the problem. But addicts who make a choice to flout the law must be treated as any other criminals.
Other citizens who choose self-destructive behaviours are not sheltered as are drug addicts. We don’t provide safe drinking sites for alcoholics who choose to drink themselves into a stupor. We don’t cordon off areas where speeding motorists can exceed limits until they self-destruct.
Is ‘being kind’ to addicted individuals the right thing to do? We are creating a permissive society that succeeding generations are adopting at an increasingly early age. When once parents expressed concern if the subject of drugs was even mentioned, now the inevitability of the occasional joint or amphetamine being part of the ‘teen scene’ is accepted, even shared. And why worry? The government is there to save me if I get in over my head!
Already the deterioration of family structures can be identified. I understand that for the most part safe-site users are required to provide their own drugs of choice and as one addict is reported to have said “There’s always a dealer close to MY site”. If it can be presumed that addiction limits career opportunities, gainful employment to support expensive drug habits is unlikely. It would be obtuse not to recognize the connection between the exponential increase in addiction and the escalation of street crime.
If I offered a clean needle to help out an addicted friend I could go to jail. A government gets elected.
Irene Hawkins
Chemainus