Prompted by “Massachusetts Police Force Offers Free Drug Treatment Instead of Arrest”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/massachusetts-police-force-offers-free-drug-treatment-instead-arrest
I’m close enough to this issue that I can quickly spell Massachusetts right, so in addition to that prompting piece, I have to suffer through comparable local news interviews with police officers about health issues involving the heroin problem that prohibition fails to address (a fact still journalistically unethically ignored for all intents and purposes). I’m too busy to find the video of those interviews now, but feel free to check it out and suffice it to say here — it’s just obviously wrong for police officers to be the dominantly interviewed group as credible sources expressing health expertise.
“While most law enforcement agencies across the United States continue to treat drug users as though they are common criminals, some have cast out their old school methodologies and adopted a more common sense approach to combating the scourge of addiction on their city streets.”
Common sense would mean removing law enforcement from a purely health issue.
“Instead of arresting drug offenders and handing them over to the criminal justice system, the Gloucester Police Department in Massachusetts has decided to offer complimentary treatment programs for which they will pick up the tab.”
They will reportedly pick up the tab with money seized from drug dealers, so what happens when drug dealers continue to bypass law enforcement efforts to continue contributing to the “scourge of addiction” prompting this “common sense approach”? Are we to believe that no taxpayer money will be involved towards logistics? Digressing a bit, one of my pet peeves is the notion of free government services. Taxpayers totally fund the government, so there are no actually free services, which is important to understand for public consideration upon proposed regulatory enhancement and the inevitable increase in taxes necessary to fund that enhancement.
“Under the philosophy of ‘attacking the demand rather than attacking the supply,’ Campanello, who worked seven years as a narcotics officer, understands that people addicted to opiates are not criminals, but rather, they are suffering from a debilitating disease comparable to an insatiable nicotine habit.”
According to the easily questionable (if not obviously corrupt) law — ruled constitutional by way of the Commerce Clause and negating the obvious intent of amendment nine — they are criminals. Not to press too hard on this here, but arbitrary enforcement of law is listed in our nation’s Declaration of Independence as one of the tyrannical abuses of law justifying government replacement. Moreover, there is a serious conflict of reasoning, because the “complimentary” nature of this law enforcement bridge to health services relies upon attacking supply.
Attacking the demand is problematic, because attack is a misfitting word. I understand the effort to be “tough on crime” to send the powerful message to wrongdoers (standard intimidation tactic), but being tough on health (what is clearly happening) is obviously ridiculous.
Heroin (and any other painkiller) demand comes from two possible sources. One is the embraced recommendation of how wonderfully high you can be on painkillers, and like an advertisement, the failure to mention the necessary and horribly balancing low as the inevitable cost probably negating any wisdom in trying recreational painkillers. That source likely applies to younger folks tending to take greater health risks for the sake of fun. The second comes from the combination of seriously unhealthy stress (due logically to poor social dynamics — e.g. excessively rigid social constructs and the naturally resulting abusive favoritism causing mass unhealthy stress against public safety) combined with the easy availability of a serious painkiller (often in communities where visiting a health service provider is often avoided, and similar desirable painkilling results are much more challenging to come by legally). If you experience the hell of war, for prime example, then the heaven of painkillers makes sense upon the assumption that tapering dosage to bring the user back to maximally smooth (so healthy) balance occurs. Otherwise, the stressful modulation between euphoric high and horrific low continues its ruining effect.
It’s important for us to understand that ultimately the answer to heroin (a painkiller invented and provided by Bayer — yes, that Bayer) addiction in professional health services is morphine (which is equally addictive, because of its automatic painkilling quality), so this is not really about heroin, but all painkillers in general. Arbitrarily demonizing certain painkillers sends a confusing public message, so leads to confusing (so ineffective) law and all of the resulting unhealthy stress upon society (including that ironically igniting drug abuse).
“This progressive approach to fighting the real War on Drugs is the result of an increasing fatality rate across the city.”
I feel perfectly safe in assuming political leftists dominate High Times magazine, and while I love their publication and appreciate their efforts, the “progressive” buzz word is discomforting for all of the reasons defying the actually progressive scientific constitutionalism necessary to greatly prevent and manage abusive law (and the abusive reasoning igniting that judicial abuse) and the resulting disastrously unhealthy stress being applied due to publicly unchallenged abusive favoritism — e.g. mainstream media refusing to concisely publicly express that law abuse against drug use is factually not the answer to drug abuse due to that law’s ineffectiveness and destructiveness.
While I truly appreciate the (sometimes often) brutal work that honorable police officers and other law enforcement members have to contend with for public safety (obviously including my loved ones and yours truly), they simply should not be in the role of health advocates. There is plenty of work involving actual rights infringement in the line of duty (murder, assault, theft, fraud, slander, etc.), and plenty of training required for optimal police discipline.
Not to get ‘tinfoil hat’ on you all, but Infusing police officers with health recommendations is a scary precedent. Blurring the lines between law enforcement and health services raises serious issues about what other health conditions prompt a risk against public safety requiring law enforcement to play a similarly sanctioned role (and all of the unintended consequences that ripple amongst society to culminate into exemplifying the saying ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’). It simply remains scarily odd to formally allow effectively confessing criminals to visit the police to turn in their “dope” without the police then upholding the law. At the very least, it raises the serious question regarding the credibility of the so-called health services being recommended by police. Those health services may instead be a euphemistic application of harsh punishment.
There logically should be a hard-line between law enforcement preventing repeat rights-infringement (their naturally prime role due to delays in addressing criminality) and health (and all other) services that may prevent rights-infringement from occurring in the first place (along with the necessary public education on the matter — the best option to reduce crime and improve health and therefore society).
Unhealthy stress is the enemy, so healthy stress is obviously the solution that nobody in the mainstream media (so properly reaching the public mainstream) is sufficiently addressing. Most people (including self-proclaimed stress professionals) seem unaware that stress can be healthy, so even the basic language (in addition to confusion between use and abuse) involved is confusing to obvious societal detriment.
The ‘almost bottom line’ is this a stress management issue, not a ‘certain drug’ issue.
If society cannot finally (after several decades) come to understand such painfully obvious conclusion and apply the necessary public pressure against entrenched abusive favoritism (what truly sustains the war on some drugs), then unhealthy stress will continue to oppressively rise, because dominant mass insanity is the real scourge.
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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