Quote:
Originally Posted by Agamemnon
Sure... except that your tax dollars end up treating them anyway in the form of health issues, overdose cases, long-term poverty/homelessness, etc. You're already paying for their addiction with your hard earned tax money whether you like it or not. The idea of the centre is that its a place where people might get support to kick their habit as well as make their addiction a 'cleaner' activity, reducing the chance of getting serious infectious disease, reducing the need for your precious tax dollars to support them in the future. If funding for this treatment shelter ends up saving more of your tax dollars in the future that would otherwise go to treating other symptoms of their addictions, wouldn't you, an apparent bottom-line dollars and cents guy, be in favour of the centre? Wouldn't this be a great C/conservative way to deal with the problem and potentially save a buck?
Or should we shut down the study and never figure out the answer to all that?
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I never voiced opposition to the center, i voiced opposition to calling drug addiction a mental illness. Although i will tell you my thoughts on the center and the whole issue in general:
I just believe authorities in Vancouver take a far too lenient stance when it comes to this whole issue. As i have said, as well as many others on the news and residents of Vancouver - the situation there is getting worse. When you hear on the news and read news reports that police don't even arrest users and do little to enforce their presence or to take the dealers off the streets, this is where the problem lies. It's especially worrie-sum when there is a police station located just over a block away from all of this activity as well as having a large police presence on the streets. Police need to do some sort of intimidation, make it so it's hard to deal drugs in that area and make it so those who use and those who deal are very wary of police presence. Police showing up, and groups of users/dealers just walking away with not a care in the world is clearly the problem here.
Let's face it, Vancouver has long had a far-left leaning stance when it comes to the issue of the DTES, and in the last 2 decades, it has got it absolutly no where. It's time to get out there and start throwing people in jail - thats certainly a good start to sobering up.
I'd much prefere to pay for warm meals and a roof over these peoples heads instead of "safe injection zones" which are only feeding these peoples habbits - weather it's clearer or not. This way, they are provided a clean enviroment, access to education as well as nutrition. They are brought off the streets and away from those who might influence them in a negative way. By the time they are released, they will have been sober for awhile - making it easier to fully quit as well as having a better outlook on life.
For a lot of these individuals, all they need is a fresh start and thats certainly not going to come from one of these "Safe injection Zones" but might very well come from a "timeout" so-to-speak, as in JAIL.
I'd also support tougher sentancing for the scum bags who are distributing these drugs and killing these people - which the Harper government is trying to accomplish. Get these individuals off the streets and these drugs won't be as easy to come by, making the amount of users and more importantly, the amount of
new users decrease. The less available the drug is, the less people who will use. The more fear these people have in tough sentances for dealing and jail time for possetion, the less users. It's time to take a real tough stance on this issue, and not this far-left crap that envolves everyone getting off the hook, while we waste time encouraging peoples habits, this pandemic has got absolutly no where.
If a city of just over 2 million people can be in a worse situation than such cities as Chicago, then we know there is clearly a problem and those who think the problem has nothing to do with the policies and strategies being used - are blind.