The Swiss are giving in to the junkies.
GENEVA (AP) – Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.
Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.
Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.
The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.
Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.
The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it was begun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s.
Zullino’s office, part of the Geneva University Hospitals, is one of 23 such centers in Switzerland.
Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches.
In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work.
Junkies with jobs? What is the world coming to? Or rather what is the world going back to? The Swiss program is very much like one in effect in the US from 1914 when the Harrison Act was passed until about 1923 with the closure of last clinic in Baton Rouge.
It worked then, and it still works. Which is why we can no longer do that sort of thing in America. Which is rather fortunate. After all those drug cartels need to make a profit too. And think of all the street dealers such a system would put out of business. We certainly don’t want to be putting retailers and wholesalers out of business in a down economy do we?
There is one small problem with the program. Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the program began in 1994. Now think of all the police, prosecutors, lawyers, prison guards, etc. out of jobs because of that. Every junkie in America has a huge burden to bear keeping all those people working. If it were not for junkies taxpayers might not willingly pony up the dough to support all those folks. Another economic disaster in the making during hard times if this clinic idea ever caught on. As long as Americans keep hating junkies the jobs that depend on them are safe. So do your part. Hate a junkie today. A big part of the economy depends on it.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
10 responses to “Getting A Daily Dose”
Don’t forget that this would have the side effect of making pain killers more available to those suffering from serious diseases, like cancer.
It reminds me of stories my Dad tells about running a honky-tonk after WWII. It was in a tiny little town, but big enough to have a town drunk. The owner told my Dad to give him (I forget how many) beers every day.
That’s one reason I like small towns — they may not socialize with their drunks and crazies, but they take care of them. Or at least they used to.
At one time, doctors treated alcohol addiction by getting the user addicted to morphine. Morphine addicts aren’t as likely to beat their wives and kids, smash their cars into people, and be too far gone to go to work in the morning.
But that’s scary.
I am horrified by this program. Speaking, of course, as a free market conservative (there seem to be so few of us left). The government should not be operating a business like this (making heroin). That should be the role of the private sector.
As far as the jobs the junkies go back to, I’m sure those are in the public sector, too.
RH,
You realize that making drugs illegal was the innovation of radicals.
I propose that we do the conservative thing and relegalize drugs.
===
BTW what do you think a 60% drop in crimes committed by junkies is worth?
Phelp,
Another cure for alcoholism was to get alcohol users to convert to cannabis.
RH,
One point you are missing in all this is that heroin is so demonized that for the time being the free market solution is unavailable.
Baby steps.
Otherwise I agree – the free market solution should be our desired end result.
Simon Simon Simon.
My strongly-felt objection was to the part about the government manufacturing the heroin. Government can’t run business. It’s my understanding that in Pennsylvania, por ejemplo, the government can’t even make money running a liquor store monopoly. How the hell can they handle something like this?
I don’t recall typing an objection to any other part of the program. 😉
(For some reason I don’t understand, I find this program less objectionable than needle exchange programs, which seem to just be hastening death.)
RH,
My misunderstanding – apologies.
You know why we have needle exchanges? Because governments made them a prohibited commodity.
And yes. Government mfg. is the wrong way to go. However, government has whipped up hysteria for so long on the subject that for cosmetic purposes it may be the only way to back down from drug prohibition stupidity.
The very fact that you see needles as hastening death is an indication that you may have been influenced by the propaganda. Of course – again – it is possible I am mistaken.
Simon
Does the word incentive mean anything to you?
Chris,
Of course it does. As in if there is enough incentive the narcos will be taking over the government of Mexico.
And of course prohibition induced profits seem to be more than enough incentive.