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Sunday November 27, 2016

By Jim Taylor

Suppose 700 people died in a terrorist attack. Would you shrug it off, because it didn't happen near you?

            Suppose 700 people died from a toxic chemical sprayed on farm vegetables. Would you still expect to see those vegetables for sale at your local supermarket?

            Not ******* likely!

            So why do we blandly tolerate government foot-dragging on the 700 drug overdose deaths that will happen in B.C. before the end of this year?

            As of October, the province had 622 deaths. Two more months will push the toll over 700.

            And not one of those deaths resulted from drugs administered at a safe injection site. Not one.

            Don’t assume that the overdose victims are homeless vagrants or slum-dwellers. The majority have been young people with responsible jobs, budding careers, and growing families.

            They’ve been at a party, taken something they thought was safe. It wasn’t.

            Or they’ve been using drugs for years, with no ill effects. And then one day, it kills them.

Criminal sources

            They all have one thing in common, though -- they got their drugs through an illegal market.

            There is no point, any longer, in denying the reality of recreational drug use. It’s here. Just the way cigarettes were, 50 years ago. Almost anyone under 40 today has inhaled, ingested, or injected some mood-altering drug, at least once.

            Federal Minister of Health, Jane Philpott, assures us that the government is considering legislative changes related to opioid drugs.

Health Canada promised to issue an update on an action plan by next February.

            Not actually to do anything. Not even to have a plan. Just an update on a plan.

            “You move very, very slowly, even when you’re trying to be helpful,” B.C.’s medical health officer Perry Kendall told the media.

            Meanwhile, dammit, people are dying!

Safe injection sites

            Issuing the antidote naloxone to paramedics is a stop-gap – like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. It can reverse an overdose; it won’t prevent an overdose.

            A partial solution would be more safe injection sites. Vancouver has (or will soon have) three of these sites. No other B.C. city has even one.

            An addict in Kelowna or Prince George will not travel to Vancouver every day to receive safe drugs.

            But to open a new safe injection site, says Kendall, health authorities must meet more than two dozen conditions imposed by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. The failure of law-and-order policies is obvious south of the border, where the explosion of recreational drugs has taken place entirely during the Drug Enforcement Agency’s jurisdiction.

            Outlawing drugs hasn’t worked in the U.S. It’s not working in Canada.

            Prohibition – 1920 to 1933 in the U.S., shorter periods in Canada – applied the same punitive rationale to alcohol. It not only failed to conquer alcohol consumption, it fostered new kinds of crime.

            Driving drugs underground has had the same effect. The criminal market has no quality controls. No inspectors. No labels guaranteeing the chemical content.

Out of business

            Prohibition ended only when the government put the criminals out of business.

Granted, government liquor control didn’t end alcohol abuse. But it did ensure that the product was not adulterated with methanol, kerosene, or other dangerous fluids.

            The prohibition pattern seems to me to be playing out with recreational drugs. Heroin, cocaine, and apparently even marijuana (according to B.C. premier Christy Clark) are now being spiked with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine.

            Or with fentanyl’s even more toxic cousin, carfentanyl.

            And why not? Heroin, cocaine, and morphine are expensive natural products. They require elaborate refining. They have to be smuggled across international borders. A long supply chain jacks up the price.

            But the synthetic products are cheap.

            If the pill processors can replace, say, half of an expensive product with a microgram of a cheaper product, plus some filler, of course they’ll do it.

            The obvious solution is to put the drug marketers out of business. As with liquor, the government needs to control manufacture and distribution.

            Addiction is not, in itself, an evil. Many business leaders enjoy daily doses of alcohol. Your surgeon may have a heroin addiction; your accountant may rely on cocaine to keep going; your child’s teacher may smoke pot to unwind. That doesn’t stop them from doing their job.

            The problem is not the addiction. It’s the supply. Unreliable supplies force users to deal with criminals. Undependable quality may kill them.

            Safe injection sites are one solution. But they can bail out only a small proportion of recreational drug users. What’s needed is to put the underground market out of business.

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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Last week’s column argued that mass protests did not equal democracy. Donald Schmidt, Isabel Gibson, Jane Wallbrown, and Ralph Milton just said they thought it was right on. A few others offered supplementary views.

Here’s Tom Watson’s view: “Another exceptional article. One interesting point is that the form of government in the U.S. is not technically a democracy, it's a Republic. If people are interested in checking out the differences between democracy and a republic, here's a link:

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Democracy_vs_Republic

            “To your point about petitions, I get the same invitations you do, and some years ago I stopped signing them, no matter how well intentioned they seem. [Tom then described a situation in his early years of ministry.]…  I hadn't considered that I might have to minister to people on both sides of the dispute.

            “It was a lesson that stuck with me. It's easy to sign a petition, takes little thought at all, you can sign and be done with it. Trouble is it's imperative to think it through rather than use a knee-jerk reaction and sign without careful consideration.”

Rob Brown had a slightly different take: “Last year, some political scientists in the U.S. studied the American government and found it was an oligarchy, not a democracy. Oligarchy is government of the people by the rich for the rich. The study was done by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. 

            “To understand democracy today, perhaps you have to listen to the late Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘Democracy.’ Sad, but true, though another caricature of democracy, I’m afraid.

            “To see change coming, you might want to read Micah White’s book, The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution.”

Cliff Boldt: “It is my experience that when people don't like a decision, they question the process.

            “To protest the election of Trump in this way is the only way many unthinking people know. To do otherwise would require them reading, learning, becoming aware and conscious of what is going on in their world, our planet Earth.

            “So much easier to make a sign and walk on the streets, stopping traffic.

John Shaffer (of Auburn) wondered about media influences: “Many things upset me in this political climate, but lately I am most upset by mis-information. Obama goes to Japan and carefully does not apologize.  Rush Limbaugh says that he did.  His listeners, hating Obama, quote Limbaugh as gospel.

            “Trump loses the popular vote, but wins the electoral vote.  His supporters say that Trump won the popular vote. Is it deliberate, or stupidity?  Or both?”

Once a teacher, always a teacher. Jack Driedger caught me in error, “As a retired educator, I can’t help it. You say, ‘But as communities get bigger, every voice can’t be heard.’ I think you meant to say, ‘But as communities get bigger, not every voice can be heard.’”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.

    If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.

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    Unfortunately, the archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net have disappeared. The site was hijacked, and I haven’t been able to get it back I’m hoping to have a new website up fairly soon.

    I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

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PROMOTION STUFF…

Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)

         Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net

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