According to PBSNews, supervised drug consumption sites are now like magical cure-alls that stop overdoses, eliminate diseases, and perhaps even turn drug addicts into model citizens. It’s a fantasy modeled on a technique called harm reduction—or in other words—absurd liberal nonsense like this:
“It’s a loving environment where people can use safely and stay alive,” says Sam Rivera, the executive director of OnPoint NYC, a nonprofit that runs the centers. “We’re showing up for people who too many view as disposable.”
These so-called "consumption rooms," which, by the way, are stocked with syringes and all sorts of paraphernalia sound virtuous, but letting users get high under supervision does little to curb drug use! You might save a few lives from overdoses, but herding people into heroin shooting galleries doesn’t make them healthier. Hard drugs cause serious mental issues and continued use means many are so damaged they require long-term treatment, need more medical care, and become increasingly drug-dependent.
This is why only a liberal mind believes that advocating for hard drug use is showing love and kindness. Apparently, we should all be reminded that being dependent on drugs isn’t as rare as we think—as if that makes it okay! (Strike et al 2004, 270). Even believing drugs are harmful to individuals, families, and communities, means we must be living in the dark ages.
This twisted reasoning is slipping into studies that claim injection sites don’t increase crime and that society benefits from coexisting with them. The reality is, that these studies are incredibly limited in scope, likely riddled with bias, and completely dodge the root issues surrounding drug addiction. And let's be real here: the vast majority of people would find it utterly appalling to have their house next to a place where individuals are shooting up hard drugs!
Drugs and Crime
It's hardly a surprise that drugs and crime go hand in hand—as users still have to scramble for cash to score their fix of heroin, crack, and cocaine. It’s been estimated that cocaine abusers inject an average of six times a day, and heroin abusers inject four times a day.
The street costs of this use is estimated at around $100 a day or $35,000 a year. This is why hard drug users are 3-3.5 times more likely to engage in criminal behavior than those who steer clear of it! (Bennett, et al 2008, 112-3)
The War on Drugs
The war on drugs is a war without a clear enemy. Anything waged against a shapeless, intangible noun can never truly be won— President Clinton’s drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey said in 1996.
Despite the U.S. spending over 2.5 trillion dollars on the problem since 1971, drug use has kept steadily climbing, with users rising to 13% of Americans 12 years or older in 2019. Illicit drugs are now more accessible than ever, with increasing potencies, while overdose rates are rocketing to levels not seen before!
While the so-called "war on drugs" is an utter disaster, does this colossal failure suggest the answer is to just decriminalize, regulate, and supervise drugs in safe injection sites?
Lost in the debate are rates of death, addiction, and abuse through prescribed pharmaceuticals! Total prescriptions hit 6.7 billion in 2022, up from 6.1 billion just four years earlier in 2018! Nearly 108,000 persons in the U.S. died from drug-involved overdoses in 2022, including from illicit or prescription drugs (Source: CDC WONDER).
Legal pharmaceuticals and psychiatric medications are also proven to lead many to illicit drugs. So even with the strictest regulations and controls, legalizing street drugs would likely not make the drug epidemic better. This suggests that the failure of the War on Drugs isn't solely due to laws prohibiting narcotics.
To dampen the problem, the entertainment business needs to stop glamorizing the pro-narcotic propaganda, politicians need to stand in solidarity with anti-narcotic efforts, and laws need to be consistently enforced. But even with such drastic measures, much of the demand for drugs would remain.
The problem is that millions crave substances that alter their mind and dull their pain, because of an unfulfilled void—one without meaning and purpose—without spiritual direction. Because their wills are so weakened, they must have something to fill the void—but only as long as the high lasts. Then the emptiness returns—a little deeper, more urgent, and sharper.
Safe injection site advocates don’t tell you that drug addiction is a form of slavery that destroys the will. It doesn’t fit the agenda of the government drug dealers.
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