The US isn't. The City of Seattle is. This is an important distinction.
Ok, we replaced the US with Seattle above.
Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
91–100 of 193 posts
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#92They should also sell heroin in pharmacies so people can inject an accurate dosage. This would greatly reduce overdoses and drug trafficking.
Suboxone, methadone, buprenorphine, and several other non-narcotic medications are all available through an outpatient pharmacy with a prescription. They are regularly and widely in use with mixed results. You would be extremely hard pressed to gain support for adding pharmaceutical grade heroine to the mix without extremely compelling data.
Any pharmacy that administered or dispensed pharmaceutical grade heroine would suffer public backlash from their communities. They would be forced to specialize and essentially become a new flavor of methadone clinic.
Plus, there is the whole acting in good faith and professional judgement thing that seems like it would be a large hurdle to overcome.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#93Yes, finally people are starting to see drugs addicts as the valuable people they are and not as disposable felons. Addiction is a sickness that affects people not a failure of morals that needs a jail sentence.
I know a high-functioning heroin addict who's a programmer by day. It's surprising to discover seemingly-normal people who have this monkey on their backs, given the popular perception of addicts.
I recently heard that George Michael's song Monkey was about addiction too..
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know a high-functioning heroin addict who's a programmer by day. It's surprising to discover seemingly-normal people who have this monkey on their backs, given the popular perception of addicts.
That's me, or was anyway. Addict for 6 years, clean for 4 (well, on Suboxone)
How is it planned ? you try to decrease heroin then switch for another molecule ?
Do you think it's possible to go off this drug without substitutes.. say by forcing small sever periods etc etc ?
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#95I was at a law enforcement armorer class with some police officers from various agencies in the Northeast recently. The most impactful thing I heard "People who get narcanned multiple times should just be killed" -- maybe not his literal belief, but the problem seems to be out of control. He had stories of "frequent customers" who kept coming to hospitals/police stations/fire departments to shoot up in the bathrooms,…
> As a King County resident, though, I want this facility nowhere near me. As long as it stays in Seattle or near SeaTac, I'm ok with it. Yes, this is NIMBYism.
At the risk of being flagged into oblivion, this is why I f-king hate the Eastside. I live and own property in Seattle (so I pay King County taxes just like the rest of you lot) and I'm sick and damn tired of Seattle being the dumping ground for whatever crappy problems Bellevue, Redmond, Shoreline, Kirkland, Sammamish, Issaquah, Duvall, and Fall City don't feel like dealing with.
This is on top of the city then getting a reputation as being "dirty" and "crime infested" so that those exact same cities in a "regional partnership" can troll bait in front of the people and businesses of Seattle to induce them to move out of the city, thus taking away the tax base to deal with those dumped problems.
I guarantee that there are heroin users near you and those people would greatly benefit from this kind of service. Oh, and there are also homeless, unemployed, and special needs people around you, too. Seattle--and SeaTac--isn't the receptacle for the entire region's problems, especially if we're going to get looked down by you lot from high atop your long noses for receiving them.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#96I was at a law enforcement armorer class with some police officers from various agencies in the Northeast recently. The most impactful thing I heard "People who get narcanned multiple times should just be killed" -- maybe not his literal belief, but the problem seems to be out of control. He had stories of "frequent customers" who kept coming to hospitals/police stations/fire departments to shoot up in the bathrooms,…
Every day I commute through Seattle greenbelts absolutely littered with needles. You say 'nowhere near me', but it's occurring throughout the city, in the shadows.
I don't think some kid is going to get into heroin so they can hang out at the injection point, but if they do get hooked then I hope this buys them some time to escape.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Prescribed heroin would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in ER OD cases and the acquisitive crime that this disorder causes. If you get a prescription for heroin that would probably lead to addiction right? Now as an addict you want more, so you go back to the doctor but they won't prescribe anymore ostensibly to prevent overdose. So now you have an addict looking for a way to score more outside of a…
I think you're using the incorrect mental model of addicts popularized by DARE, etc. I mean first - > If you get a prescription for heroin that would probably lead to addiction right? Decently sure OP is suggesting replacing obtaining heroin from the street with obtaining it through a doctor. As such, only existing (and new) addicts are effected; you would not create addicts. Alternatively, this story you have told i…
You have a great comment, and I agree with much of it. However, Rat Park doesn't replicate and probably shouldn't be touted as a good example of addiction behavior.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (under heavy regulation) ... and this is where most Heroin addicts start, actually, through prescription opiate use. Once a physical addiction is formed, heroin can be a cheaper or more accessible alternative to a prescription for say, Oxycontin. I thought John Oliver had a good segment on it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o
> Once a physical addiction is formed, heroin can be a cheaper or more accessible alternative to a prescription for say, Oxycontin. Something is wrong with the system for prescribing Oxycontin if black market heroin is ever cheaper or more accessible.
Why? Black market heroin can be produced without quality control standards, intellectual property licensing, in a country with cheap labor, and imported without paying tariffs. The distribution network is a little inefficient, sure, but you can pay a lot of mid-level dealers' markup for the cost of a 30 minute doctor's appointment.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#99I was at a law enforcement armorer class with some police officers from various agencies in the Northeast recently. The most impactful thing I heard "People who get narcanned multiple times should just be killed" -- maybe not his literal belief, but the problem seems to be out of control. He had stories of "frequent customers" who kept coming to hospitals/police stations/fire departments to shoot up in the bathrooms,…
As a resident of Capitol Hill, I want this right near me. And I want to see another one in Belltown. And another near the waterfront. And another on Aurora. And then another twenty throughout the city. There are junkies shooting up around me every day. They deserve safety and dignity, just like everyone else.
As an adult, you have to make tradeoffs. Given that the supply of money is finite (unless you're Bernie Sanders who believes that money grows on trees), you have to decide whether to spend the money on this, or on, perhaps, kindergartens, schools, public transportation, and the like. TBH, I'd rather the junkies got a different kind of help: forced rehab. Got caught with heroin in your blood? Off to rehab you go. That'd be a good way to spend this money. Facilitating their addiction and making their death spiral "dignified" is a weird take on "help" in my opinion.
Re: Seattle Is Opening First in U.S. “Safe Injection Facility” for Heroin Addicts
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Just because the war on drugs was started for a racist reason doesn't make banning drugs themselves a bad idea. I don't think people can make valid choices about the use or not use of highly addictive drugs. We as a society can do better than to help people be strung out.
Did you read the whole piece? There's strong evidence that drug abuse is bad, and that the best way to mitigate it is through harm reduction policies -- and that these policies ultimately reduce use of drugs. Which is what you want, right?
I'm pro-legalization, but there is a good argument to be made that legalization increases access and as a result you'd see a much higher rate of casual use (orders of magnitude higher). Any slight increase in healthcare costs or negative outcomes on a per-person basis multiplied across a large population is a factor worth considering.