As far as I know.. in Canada.. you dont get such an option. Docotors are not willing to transplant a perfectly healthy organ into a person who has addictions like Alcohol or Smoking because its just a waste of an organ.. doctors and money. How do you know people arent robbing other people for booze/smokes. I can understand the reasoning behind the program. If they can receive free needles certainly I can also receive free needles. I dont expect free medication for my disease because its expensive and would be unfair for taxpayers to pay for them.
I don't know. I would just go get free needles from them anyway and say it's because I'm a junkie. I wouldn't mind my tax money going to pay for free medication for diabetes. My whole family has had it before and I will probably get it in another 10 years or so if I don't take responsibility for my diet.
Well the argument is for the those with diabetes and those with heroin problems to receive free needles. In particular with heroin addicts, there is very high risk of a user catching HIV if they share needles. Obviously, free needles limits the chances of having to share them. I'm all for giving out heroin on prescription if it works. At the moment, the heroin substitute is methadone. There's a number of problems with this but users tend remain on the substance rather than breaking their opium habit. The cost to society of feeding a habit (though crime) is astronomical, and in Britain as we have some 200k users, I'm all in favour of trying new approaches to tackle the problem.
I think the main motivation behind issuing free needles and medicine to Heroin addicts instead of Diabetics is because: Heroin addiction effects others (Crime and AIDS), where as Diabetes only effects the person who has it. If one of the symptoms of Diabetics was to go out and rob people and spread AIDS, I bet that the government would get more involved.
In the UK Methadone is given out free in nearly every city and town, I dont know where you got the 'trial' idea from, its a massive drain on public funds. In my opinion heroin junkies should be locked in a cell and made to go cold turkey, after they have gone through that they wont want to start again. I think the difference between smokers, drinkers and heroin addicts is the government does not give out free cigarettes or bottles of whisky to the addicts. The UK has become too much of a welfare state, it is actually more financially sensible for many people to go on the dole ratehr than get a job, this is NOT the way it should be. (There have been several cases where young teenage women have been advised to get pregnant so tehy can get a conucil house and additional benefits) Giving out Heroin to Addicts is a clear indication of society gone wrong, why in gods name should we make it easier for addicts to have access to these drugs when they really need to be taken off the drugs. The policy of giving out heroin to addicts has obviously been brought in by someone who does not understand true addiction itself. When you are addicted you know what you are doing is abd and may kill you, but you also want to carry on, every impulse in your body is telling you to do so. Cold turkey is the only real way to get heroin users off the drug, methodone is effective only in a small number of cases and extra heroin will just be used in addition to a users normal intake.
I like the way the man implementing says he is no medical expert and he is just doing it to cut crime. maybe we should give all the theives and robbers free TVs and sterios instead, or maybe just mail tehm a £5000 cheque every month?
This is true in every aspect. For two years I was an alcoholic. Even though I knew it was hurting my body I still craved and needed to drink every day. Even when people around me were telling me to stop and tried to help me it did nothing. Until I woke up one morning and said thats it I need to stop. Now sober for two months.
That is one thing I never had to resort to with my addiction. Money was always available to feed the need.
Robbing: People who can't afford AIDS: Nearly everyone who has drunk sex does it without a condom (those things are a bitch to get on when you're shattered) which puts them at risk of STD's, AID's etc.
Yes that is very true and with that also brings unwanted pregnancy and ultimately leading to more issues.
Too bad you have biology working against you there. While there are plenty of addicts who have remained off drugs such as meth(amphetamines I mean) and heroine, you do NOT have the same brain with the same number and type of receptors as someone who's never used, and you are always addicted forever. You can be off them for 40 years. You are still an addict with an addict's brain, and that's a physical change which cannot (at this point and time anyway) be undone. You can give a mouse meth and when you remove his source, he will do untold painful things to his body to get more. He is no longer a rational mouse, and even if he was, he still would do what he needed to for his fix. I worked in a hospital in a county that is rife with meth. Children come in with chemical waste embedded in their clothing and hair and toys... entire homes need to simply be destroyed because you can't get the stuff out. And every cop would swear meth(amphetamine) was the hardest drug to stop (the parents usually came in with "police escort"). I don't want to give the parents meth, but so long as the opportunity's floating around, they just continue stealing from farmers and drug stores and making their own anyway. Farmers are losing big money from all the destroyed tanks and fires that result. The overall debate of what you do with people who choose to destroy their bodies in a country where healthcare is either free or socialised (the two are very different, I actually don't know any countries where healthcare is actually Free) is always a difficult one. It can easily drain coffers and stop investments in other things like infrastructure. But health and biology play important roles here, and those roles seem to sometimes be ignored by those who think in terms of wills, morals, and values (this is why religion may help any particular person stay off a drug, but is not an overall society solution.. nor is pure punishment). The free needles program is very very important. We all know, the larger the population of people with communicable diseases within a community, the more chance there is of spreading, and the higher the cost is of eradicating it. Just like the United States being rather silly with "we will not allow hospitals to treat illegal immigrants from Mexico." Sure, you can't really afford to, but you also can't afford NOT to-- so long as those people are within the community, you canNOT afford to have hepitits, tuberculosis, and drug-reisitant strains of ANYTHING floating around. Untreated, or half-ass-treated, these diseases will spread through the rest of the population, and removing an already-present disease is always more expensive than preventing it in the first place (see TB in Russia). I call that a "Jared moment". That Subway guy, his dad was a doctor and it's not like he didn't know he was morbidly obese. But just one day, he was like, This has to stop. Amazingly, he did. Kudos to you too. : )
In the UK, drinkers get liver operations for free, smokers get lung operations for free, obese people get liposuction operations for free - all of these cost a hell of a lot more than prescribing some drugs to an ex-heroin addict, and the heroin addict is far more a nuisance to society. If you start cutting funding on these self-inflicted injuries, where would you draw the line? A rock climber who knew the risks, but still fell down and broke both his legs? Someone who got drunk one night, got in a fight, and had a glass smashed on his head? Someone in a car crash who wasn't wearing his seatbelt? These are all self-inflicted to some degree. I believe it should be at the doctors discretion with regards to the drinker, smoker, obese, heroin addict - if the doctor really doesn't ever see the drinker showing any motivation to quit, and thinks he may continue to drink after the operation, then give the organ to someone who does.
Pretty much all healthcare is free in the UK And there is a scoring system for organs in the UK, new livers are not just given to those who need them, people who have not or are not likely to quit the specific abuse lose points and have to wait longer for a liver. There was a big discussion about this a while back because children were getting livers right away because they scored so highly, where as adults who even did nothing wrong had to wait months. I think what the problem is with free needles and heroin is that it does not give any incentive to drop the addicition, it actually gives more reasons for continuing it. You do not give alcoholics more beer, you give them incentives to stop, You do not give smokers cigarettes, you give them patches which remove some of the craving but give next to no pleasure. I am a slight addict to alcohol, I get cravings if i do not drink and I am usually in the pub most nights, I have however stopped for 2 months before of my own free will, I thought it would be a good idae to give my liver a break, but I would be lieing if I said I didnt feel like I had achieved something, so congratulations to the guy who managed that! I am not going to stop drinking now till after my next european road trip, I dont want to damage my alcohol tolerance but after that I will be taking about 3 months off the booze I think.
Yeah but giving free needles stops the spread of HIV AIDs, which is far better than giving free smoking patches. Needles also don't give the addict pleasure, definitely not a fix to their craving as patches. Plus needles are a lot cheaper.