why does Stephen Harper hate drug addicts

Most politicians have come,over time,to realise that people addicted to opiate drugs are not a problem for the criminal justice system but rather belong somewhere in the realm of the medical health system.It is unfortunate that this has,since the election of Stephen Harper and his reform party government(disguised as PC's)been lost in the conservative tough on crime policies that have halted all of the work that was being done in the harm reduction and four pillars approaches.As a result,what we have is a mi-sh mash of half measures and canceled programs that have had the effect of making drug problems in the major cities look like they are getting worse.That's not to say that by making the problems more visible,nothing positive has been achieved.It must now be plain to everyone that we have a serious drug problem in this country and that the situation was getting worse every year when we were throwing people in jail for every conceived drug crime and is still worsening when areas are closed off and drug use is confined to those areas.Vancouver had the first heroin maintenance program in North America which gave certain addicts,those living on the street with the worst prospects,one year of what was probably the first glimpse at a normal life since their addiction (check out NAOMI)first began.A good example of this is myself.I was a mid level street dealer for 30 years.I was in and out of prisons both federal and provincial for a total of 12 years of incarceration in 25 years of my adult life.I then went to work for a few years and both dealt and used till losing my job.I then was tricked into trying cocaine(told it was a new batch of heroin)and was off on another of my eight year(this time)cocaine runs.I do well on heroin,using what I need to maintain but never losing control.Cocaine is a whole other story.I know this and avoid it religiously but drug dealers can be predatory and once they know you have a weakness for a certain drug they will see to it that you get just as much of it as necessary to get you rolling again.I came into contact with a drug resistant strain of strep virus which was so painful that I laid on my couch for a few months afraid to move as the pain was so intense.I went through almost four years of sheer hell before I finally found a doctor that put me on opiate drugs to control the pain.I now have my bills paid on time every month,don't have to duck the landlord,can answer my phone and have re established contact with some of my family.In short,I am living a fairly normal life because I no longer have to spend every dime on drugs.Unfortunately,I am on a long acting slow release kind of opiate which is of no help to the addicted part of my brain.My many attempts to have both my pain and addictive issues dealt with by using one drug that solves both problems fall on deaf ears.The medical profession is still as hung up on the fear that a person,unless near death,might actually achieve some relief from these drugs instead of just minimal blocking of pain?As a result I have a pain doctor that wants me off of methadone and a methadone doctor who thinks being off methadone will lead me to hell on the pain meds?The real point is that being on a regular regimen of opiate drugs has me living the closest to a normal life as is possible under current circumstances.Should I be on heroin,the best pain killer in the world?Of course I should.At the very least I should be on morphine that I can control so that when I have to do something I can increase the dosage and when I am just at home,working on the computer I can lower it and when watching TV,lower it even more.This is a common sense approach that is so far from what is being done that I am often in too much pain to do anything and I am always in pain when I have to go out.I am just one person.In my case is both the promise of a normal life that is being kept from me because if I was given the drugs that would work,I might enjoy them as well as be able to function,pain free and without the depression that comes with being unable to leave the house.This is just a small example of what our current system does to people with drug addictions.The four pillars was a work in progress that was destroyed by a government that has sabotaged every harm reduction effort in what can only be seen as a total disregard for any but the jail em and keep em there policies of the Harper government.This is a government that refuses to acknowledge the work that has been done over tha last 40 plus years and wants to turn the clock back to the days when addicts were tossed into a prison and left to writhe in their own vomit.I was one of those addicts.I still am.Such evil,ill planned and cruel programs will not now,did not then and will not in the future do anything but make the problems worse as they have done for the last 40 years.

If you duck the evidence you are living in a dream

How else to describe the Harper conservatives and their reaction to the recent release of a survey done by the B.C. society for excellence in HIV/AIDS showing that there has been an increase in the use of hard drugs such as crack cocaine and methamphetamine.There was a reduction in the sharing of needles but there was a need for another safe injection site and a need for a similar room for the consumption of cocaine.The governments reaction was,of course,to ignore the report in the hope that it and others like it will go away.Put your head in the sand and then deny that you've seen or heard of any such studies.Attack the science,place dogma above research and continue to feed people the same tired old lies that the right has been using to further this useless and costly drug war.Pure Straussian avoid,deflect and when all else fails lie and continue lying like it was truth itself.I'm sure you've seen the plan in use in the debate over the Afghan detainees.There is no doubt that everyone knew there because we had read and been told as much a long time ago and it's SOP in Afghan prisons.For Peter McKay to claim he was never told defies belief,unless he plugged his ears and shouted :"don't tell me don't tell me".It's not something beyond belief,as this government is the government of deniers.They are always apologising for their insults to one group of Canadians or another for insulting remarks.Apologies that always sound about as sincere as the rest of their lies.

What do we do now?

As much as I have a real disdain for everything Gordon Campbell does and for his dishonesty and corrupt style of governing,he seems to get the addiction and drug scene.The recent announcement that the government intends to follow a health approach to addiction and a long term solution that includes those without any real hope of recovery is slightly disconcerting.How come these guys don't get much of anything else but seem to have this one in a reasonable facimily of reality?Is this just another of Gordo's lies or does he actually have a clue?Maybe a lifetime of living in Junkie central has made an impression.There's little doubt that putting addicts on a maintenance program will be the beginning of the end of the booming heroin scene in town.Nobody wants to be a sik fuck going in for a daily fix except those that are already sik.Get this stuff off the street where anyone can get it and it'll drop addiction rates big time.I just have a real problem believing that this government really gets that.

The people in charge never learn

With deaths and gunfire accounting for as many as 6 people on a bad day,our Premier ,with his usual knee jerk reaction to a situation,has decided to manufacture a prison for gang members only.I have been involved with the criminal justice system for many years and even I know that this is about as stupid an idea anyone could come up with.In the 60's and early 70's they useed to put all the drug addicts into one segregated area of the prison and all this did was allow the addicts to [plot and plan the best possible ways to get narcotics into the institution.It caused a whole lot of other problems as well and I am absolutely dumbfounded that anyone would be so stupid as to allow the same c onditions to occur again.Politicians are so out of the loop when it comes to the criminal element that for a premier to try to make policy on the run is just about as dumb as it gets.Everyone is using the current gang situation totheir advantage.They all want a piece of the pie.It's too bad that no one has the addict or the reality of the situation in theit thoughts.They're all out to try to capture as much of the tax dollar as they can.No one will be helped and noone will recieve any help from the beuraucrats who are all out to get what they can.

More police lies

With the current gang war raging in the lower mainland,police have taken to exagerating their victories and downplaying the reality that this war is all about the drug trade and the failure of our drug laws to control or even mitigate the trafficking of said drugs.Today an officer/spokesperson for one force or another was claiming that the recent seizure of guns and ammunition showed that criminals were using bullets that had the power to penetrate bullet proof vests.What they failed to mention was than any sporting rifle uses ammunition that would blow through a vest without slowing down.That's why they're called high power rifles and they are not illegal.What we are getting from our politicians is a lot of redundant legislation plus the piggy backing of drug legislation on top of the gang issue.The police will not reduce the drug trade with their current tactics.What they are doing is creating a market in which only the most vicious can survive.Like their models in the good ol USA,local cops are repeating all the same mistakes that have the Americans jailing more people than anywhere in the world.Canada,in my day,used to out imprison the Americans.The current crop of judges,the ones people are screaming at,were defence lawyers at that time and saw not only a lot of police misconduct and brutality but that what was happening was doing no good.Unfortunately,their efforts to try and send a message that it would no longer be business as usual were used by local police to create an open drug market that has led to a situation where we have none of the benefits of legalization and all of the problems are just multiplied.The war on drugs is a total failure and it has destroyed more lives than all the drugs combined.People that are cycled in and out of prison never come to any realization of what they're doing to themselves.They're in a race to have as much fun when out to make the time inside less brutal.In my day,we used to go to jail every 3-6 months until we had a run and then we went to jail for years.There were no more successes then than there are now and that must say something?Treatment is great for those who are ready to quit.Most addicts come to that point several times in their lives.I never did.The vast majority of addicts I know either died addicted or quit some time in their fifties.I don't know why but I think it's because they just can't get high any more.I know I can't but at 60 I need narcotics for considerable pain,which I have yet to be able to mitigate.The police have always lied to do their job.They lie in court to get convictions.They lie to the press to further whatever their current agenda is.They lie to politicians because they want more jobs and higher pay and they lie to the public for so many reasons besides these.Police officers know the drug war is a loser and a waste of resources.They won't admit it for their own reasons.It's imperative that anyone that wants to know the truth about the gang war and the war on drugs do a little research.The drug laws are based on racisist and fear based rantings of a few men who lived at the turn of the last century.The same time that has caused governments to apologize for their misdeeds.The war on drugs will be another of the relics from that era that will one day result in apologies from a lot of people.How many more young men must fall into the trap of gang life or addiction through ignorance?We have to give better drug information to the young and stop this just say no bullshit.It doesn't work.

Alexandru about Denmark: Danish addicts to get state-funded heroin

Alexandru about Denmark: Danish addicts to get state-funded heroin

They Call This Health Care

I was a victim of the super virus back in 2003.It was the most painful thing imaginable and I was never put in hospital and never given proper pain medication for what was chronic and horrible pain.I foolishly thought that as I had been addicted to opiates for most of my life that it would be a no brainer to put me on an opiate pain medication and allow me to manage my pain for whatever time was left to me.I had my 60th birthday last month.The only thing the medical system has done is with hold any real help and to claim that they are doing this because they don't want me to be addicted.They have been giving me methadone for the last 10 years?Methadone is a lousy pain killer and the reason it's used in heroin treatment is that after a relatively short time it has no effect on you at all.So it does very little if anything to help with my pain and because it was designed to block the effects of heroin and other opiates it reduces whatever possible good I may have received from the morphine they give me.In fact morphine is what methadone is the most effective at blocking.I have to take the methadone and the morphine together in a witnessed ingestion daily.Just what a person in chronic pain really needs,a daily trip to the drug store.I have been on a waiting list for St.Paul's pain clinic for almost 15 months.I was just informed that that is not even half of the time I'm expected to wait for an assessment at St.Paul's.I lost the entire lumbar section of my spine and lost 5 and 1/2 inches in height.I am forced to spend 18-20 hours a day in bed or suffer incredible pain.I am depressed,have panic attacks which are becoming more frequent and suffer 10 times as much in winter.I have been getting by on the assumption(based on what I was told by my neurosurgeon)that I would be accepted by the pain clinic in 6-18 months.Now I'm told this is only the warmup for the real wait.I stopped all street drugs when I was first put on pharmaceuticals in the belief that I would rec eive timely and proper medical treatment.This is worse than a bad joke.I have been told that pain of a chronic nature shortens a persons life expectancy in direct relation to the time the persons pain goes improperly treated.I have been in pain since 2003 for a number of reasons.Some were of my own making through misunderstanding and most are because the system doesn't care one whit about my suffering.All they are concerned about is how it will look if an addict is given the necessary pain medication.I have never once been asked if the medication is working or how the pain is.I was crawling into my doctors office with two umbrellas as canes and not once was I asked why.Every practitioner I've seen has either lied to me or been deceptive to where it could pass as a lie .I have been met with concern for their careers and nothing else.What kind of medical system do we have when treatment is withheld out of fear of reprisals by the governing body.Specialists won't prescribe at all.Regular doctors know nothing about pain or how to deal with it.I was forced to take 20 full strength ibuprofen just to stop the spasms that were so painful death would have been welcomed.Now it looks like I'm to be left to suffer because I might get addicted to something other than the government approved medication.They've even taken to using methadone as a painkiller in short term cases so they can justify this kind of brutality.I'm sure the reasons they would give would be different but it's a known fact that as a painkiller,methadone is the worst possible choice. So why else use it.The methadone clinics even tell their cilents that they are to be considered as clean and should be allowed in 12 step and other programs that require sobriety.Do you get the feeling there's a whole lot of malpractise going on.Damn right.I seriously doubt that I'll live through two more years of the kind of misery that is my life.I guess I just wasn't punished enough in prison.We have no pain management in B.C.What there is is overburdened and underused.Waiting lists vary from over two years to your guess is as good as mine.Don't get hurt in this province.I don't know about other places but here they would rather sit back and watch you die than do anything humane.I have no idea how much pain medication I need to control my pain to where I have some semblance of a life.I do know that as long as I have to go through a methadone clinic to get it it will never do me any good.Have I asked to be taken off the methadone.You bet but it seems a methadone doctor can only prescribe medication to a methadone patient.Catch 22.I've seen the way the elderly are treatwed in this province and we all know how insane government gets when the word drugs is brought into the picture.Better everyone suffer than one guy get high on a lie.That leaves those of us with legitimate need and a neurosurgeons reference waiting for endless years while our health goes steadily down the toilet.