I Have Watched People Killed By Our Insane Drug Policies

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/i-have-watched-people-killed-our-insane-drug-policies




It is hard to believe that there is so much resistance against the distribution of this inexpensive collection of items—the contents of "kits" distributed by Needle or Syringe Exchange Programs (NEPs and SEPs). Public health officials, AIDS researchers and activists involved in harm reduction are all in accord—NEPs save lives, reduce the transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C, and save millions of dollars in health care costs (from the NEPs and SEPs website):

Needle exchange programmes are one of the main harm reduction measures that aim to curb the spread of blood-borne viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis C among injecting drug users (IDUs). With an estimated 1 in 5 injecting drug users worldwide infected with HIV and 30 percent of HIV infections outside sub-Saharan Africa resulting from injecting drug use, such programmes are key to bringing the global epidemic under control.
Harm reduction programmes aim to reduce the negative consequences of drug use, by reducing the harm self-inflicted by the user through unsafe practices and the harm inflicted upon society. The provision of needle exchanges and other harm reduction measures, however, is generally poor, and opposition to them is impairing the fight against HIV.

I have lived in communities with high injection drug use, have lost close friends and former partners to AIDS which they contracted via unsterile syringe and paraphernalia sharing.

Those deaths were preventable.

[dkf]

1. Yet isn't it merely prolonging the inevitable?

Drug use will lead to an early death period I imagine.

I don't understand protesting the drug policy but not the drug use. Injecting drugs is suicide.

[HiPointDem]

3. which must be why william s burroughs lived to be 80. no, injecting drugs is not inevitably

suicide.

[dkf]

4. Studies show it cuts life expectancy by 18 years.

At time of admission (1962-64), the original cohort had a mean age of 25.4 and consisted of 323 Hispanic (55.6%), 212 White (36.5%), and 46 African-American (7.9%) heroin abusers. More than 60% of the sample started using heroin before age 20 years. Before age 18 years, more than 80% of them had been arrested and 80% had tried marijuana.

At the first follow-up interview (1974-75), 80 subjects were deceased. The number of dead was 81 at 1984-85 and 121 at 1996-97. At the 33-year follow-up, the total number of deaths was 282 over 581 subjects (48.5%), and the annual mortality rate was 1.5%. Among the 282 deceased subjects, the mean age at death was 46.9 years (SD = 11.2), and 160 were Hispanic (56.7%), 98 were White (34.7%), and 24 African American (8.5%). On average, potential life lost before 65 in our cohort was 18.3 years per person (SD = 10.7). There were 13 cases (4.3%) with zero value because their death ages were beyond 65 years.

The leading cause of death was heroin overdose, with a total 49 deaths and YPLL value of 1153 (Tables 1). More than half of the death (n=29) from heroin overdose occurred within fifteen years from admission (data not shown), which indicated the early age of death and high YPLL. Chronic liver disease followed heroin overdose in YPLL rank (722, 14.0% of the total YPLL in this group) with 42 deaths. Accidents ranked third by YPLL (10.2%), though they ranked fifth by annual mortality rate (0.12%). Conversely, although cancer represented 32 deaths and ranked fourth by mortality (0.16%), it merited only sixth rank in YPLL (5.4%). Cardiovascular diseases held third place in mortality (0.17%) and fourth place (9.4%) in terms of YPLL. Homicide was ranked sixth in mortality ranking and fifth in YPLL. Gastrointestinal diseases, legal intervention, epilepsy, renal diseases, and ill-defined causes had less than 5 people for each; therefore, they were combined in the “others” category.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2039886/

[otherone]

5. many medications cut life expectancy but raise the quality of the life that is left to live

I take a med that is very bad for my liver (for all my organs, but especially my liver). But without this med I would be in pain and unable to maintain employment.

Freedom means getting to choose how to live your life.

[dkf]

7. No you do not have freedom when it comes to illegal drugs

[otherone]

9. alcohol was once illegal

You have the freedom to change the laws.

[dkf]

10. Yes you have the freedom to change the laws but not to break them.

[HiPointDem]

6. and the main reason is 1) uncertain dosages in street drugs; 2) homicide from hanging out with

creepy people in the illegal drug trade; and 3) liver damage, usually caused by bugs on dirty needles rather than the effects of injecting the drugs per se.

it ain't the drugs or the needles so much as the conditions fostered by illegality.

you realize there are people who live a lot of their life legally injecting one legal drug or another, including opiates.

they don't live like street drug addicts and they don't die like them.

[smokey nj]

8. So you're against needle exchanges because junkies are just going to die anyway? Unbelievable.

[otherone]

2. My B-in-L died last year - synthetic pot stopped his heart

Now the stuff (Hyze or Spice "incense&quot is illegal.