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This Bold Plan to Fight Opioid Overdoses Could Save Lives--But Some Conservatives Think It's "Immoral"
With Ohio beset by a massive public health around opioid use and overdoses--more than 4,000 Ohioans died of opioid overdoses in 2016--the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent travel editor Susan Glaser to Amsterdam in search of innovative approaches to the problem. While there, she rediscovered Holland's long-standing, radical, and highly effective response to heroin addiction and properly asked whether it might be applied to good effect here.
The difference in drug-related death rates between the two countries is staggering. In the U.S., the drug overdose death rate is 245 per million, nearly twice the rate of its nearest competitor, Sweden, which came in second with 124 per million. But in Holland, the number is a vanishingly small 11 per million. In other words, Americans are more than 20 times more likely to die of drug overdoses than the Dutch.
For Plain Dealer readers, the figures that really hit home are the number of state overdose deaths compared to Holland. Ohio, with just under 12 million people, saw 4,050 drug overdose deaths in 2016; the Netherlands, with 17 million people, saw only 235.
What's the difference? The Dutch government provides free heroin to several score [where a score=20] hardcore heroin addicts and has been doing so for the past 20 years. Public health experts there say that in addition to lowering crime rates and improving the quality of life for users, the program is one reason overdose death rates there are so low. And the model could be applied here, said Amsterdam heroin clinic operator Ellen van den Hoogen.
[...]"It's not a program that is meant to help you stop," acknowledged van den Hoogen. "It keeps you addicted."
That's not a sentiment sits well with American moralizers, such as George W. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, whom Glaser consulted for the story. He suggested that providing addicts with drugs was immoral and not "real treatment," but he also resorted to lies about what the Dutch are doing.
He claimed the Dutch are "keeping people addicted for the purpose of controlling them" and that the Dutch have created "a colony of state-supported, locked-up addicts."
Your humble Ed (who rechopped the quoting, so head off to the full article(s) to see the full story) adds: of course, this is quite a contentious issue, digging deep into moralistic debate, and where clearly there's little agreed-upon objective truth and plenty of opinions. However, we are a community dotted widely round the globe, and so I'm sure there are plenty of stories of what has or has not worked in different locales.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:23PM (4 children)
also think it's immoral?
If I think it's immoral, does that make me conservative?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:00PM
No, drug abuse is immoral even if the damage done is only to yourself. However, forcing morality upon others can have serious negative consequences so it is safer to try and fix problems without prohibition.
Note the *abuse* aspect, there are no problems with doing drugs if they don't become a problem for you or anyone else.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:03PM (1 child)
A better question: Is it more cost effective to society to provide the addict with drugs, or is it better to pay for losses to crime, increased insurance costs, violence due to crime, law enforcement costs, incarceration costs, property devaluation costs next to drug houses, etc.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:16AM
Given that the actual cost of enough heroin to kill a horse* is about ten cents**, providing free legal drugs to addicts is a clear winner, by about a million to one.
(* for the hard of thinking, I am not advocating killing either horses or addicts.)
(** production cost not including legal and/or law enforcement costs )
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:01PM
I also think that personal morals should not be confused with societal ethics, and that laws and policies should be based on the latter rather than the former, even if the latter is a consensus based on the former.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves