{"id":3083,"date":"2009-07-24T15:56:18","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T15:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2016-09-20T20:09:09","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:09:09","slug":"no-crack-pipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2009\/07\/no-crack-pipes\/","title":{"rendered":"No crack pipes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">Making it easier for vulnerable people to use damaging addictive drugs is not often a campaign plank for politicians; nor does it turn up as a pronounced goal for health officials.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yet that&#8217;s precisely the effect of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority scheme to give out free &#8220;safer-use crack kits&#8221; to crack cocaine users.<\/p>\n<p>This is the taxpayer as enabler.<\/p>\n<p>Opinions vary greatly about the idea of needle exchanges and &#8220;shooting galleries&#8221; for heroin users; these too enable addicts. They are defended by some on the grounds that a re-used injection needle is a superhighway for HIV and other dangerous viruses.<\/p>\n<p>The Winnipeg medical officer of health, Dr. Margaret Fast, claims the same virtue for her crack kits &#8211; glass pipe, screens, alcohol swabs, matches, even a pipe cleaner &#8211; saying shared pipes, like shared needles, can spread disease. &#8220;If you&#8217;re sharing pipes or if you&#8217;re having oral sex with someone, that could lead to transmission of these agents.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe. But crack can also lead to death by overdose, suicide, accident, or confrontation with police.<\/p>\n<p>And what a slippery slope! Should government also provide the drugs, so that addicts don&#8217;t have to meet dangerous and rapacious dealers?<\/p>\n<p>Helping people to ruin their lives &#8220;safely&#8221; is not a suitable object of government policy.<\/p>\n<div style=\"font-style: italic; text-align: right;\">Source: The Gazette (Montreal) September 7, 2004 Tuesday SECTION: EDITORIAL \/ OP-ED; Pg. A18<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Making it easier for vulnerable people to use damaging addictive drugs is not often a campaign plank for politicians; nor does it turn up as a pronounced goal for health officials. Yet that&#8217;s precisely the effect of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority scheme to give out free &#8220;safer-use crack kits&#8221; to crack cocaine users. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-sector","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}