Of course, I neglected to mention earlier the most hideous cost of leaving drug users to share needles: they form a solid reservoir of nasty diseases that they pretty regularly pass out into the non-drug-using population. This is one of those public health measures that actually does help protect the general public from other people.
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The moral majority will never accept a solution to a drug-related problem that might allow some people to actually use drugs and not have their lives fall apart.
Most of the war on drugs is based on the assumption that illegal drugs ruin people's lives. Anything that might allow drug users to live normal lives must be rejected, because it tends to undermine this assumption.
Phil, the idea that it's possible to use illegal drugs on any frequent basis, and not have one's life fall apart, is itself one incredible assumption. Chemical addiction is a powerful master.
In any case, the whole point of the needle exchange has nothing to do with what you suggest; it's simply to mitigate disease pooling and spread caused by sharing needles.
People do incredible things, anony-mouse.
Anyway, I didn't suggest any purpose for the needle echange program. I don't know what its purpose is. I just know the reason why many people will instinctively hate it, whatever its true purpose.
Many people will see the needle exchange program as akin to providing bullet-proof vests to burglars so they won't get killed if a homeowner shoots them.
People do incredible things, anony-mouse.
Not when we're talking about things that require intravenous injection, they don't. Those kinds of drugs almost always take a harsh toll over time, and it's quite reasonable to be worried that a needle exchange program may fall prey to the "get more of what you subsidize" clause in the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Sure they'll have harsh health consequences over time, of varying degrees depending on the individual and his/her life expectancy and health before beginning use of the drug. How is that unlike all kinds of potentially destructive behaviours people engage in -- from extreme sports to extreme overeating?
Living is going to have harsh consequences for me over time -- I'm gonna die from it. More likely than not in a slow, and at least somewhat painful manner. Does that mean I shouldn't live?
For that matter, what about people who are already near-death from cancer or some other terminal illness. Any reason they can't live exactly the same amount of time, and in exactly the same health as they're expecting to anyway, but in a heroin-induced blur of happiness?