The Herald Sun of January 7, p16, quotes Canadian Government figures of 49,000 deaths from opioid abuse between January 2016 and June 2024. This is a spine-chilling message for Victoria’s Labor Government, which has enthusiastically embraced pill testing at music festivals and has demonstrated a consistent determination to continue with a “harm minimisation” strategy that is a total failure in curbing the use of illicit drugs.
The CAA has long called for a completely new health-based approach that concentrates on getting people off their drug addiction rather than facilitating drug use. https://caainc.org.au/sometimes-there-is-just-a-better-way/.
The North Richmond so-called “Safe Injecting Facility” that has so devastated the lives of local residents is a further example of Labor’s disregard for the many adverse consequences of catering to drug users at the expense of the community.
Canada’s experience ought to be warning enough that Victoria is headed in the entirely wrong direction with its current illicit drug policy.
It is time for the vast silent majority to realise that they have the power to force change. If Labor won’t listen, the only remedy is at the ballot box to support any political party that will.
This is urgent festering and growing problem. A death the other day of a man on bail and on drugs in a stolen truck kills an innocent person. And, there are o many youth out there in stolen vehicles and on drugs. Music festivals are just an excuse for dealers to get more young people hooked. Your son, your daughter?
Just a few years ago, after my girlfriend died, probably cancer caused by stress, because her daughter had been on drugs since 14. I took that daughter into my home, as her boyfriend had a psychotic break and was removed from her flat in a straitjacket by police. 3 months jail for him. He came out, put into a motel somewhere and died from an overdose. She lost the flat. I took her in. Believing I could save her. 7 months later, some other people she conned, took her away from me. They believed her lies, not me. Three months later, she died of renal failure, one of the diseases created by drug taking. Because she was an educated girl, she was going to be given a chance and a kidney transplant. But, she took a pill she had somewhere in her clothing, and was blood tested prior to the operation. Turned away because it would complicate the transplant. She died at 2am the following morning. She was 32 years old.
WHY won’t these kids listen to ‘just don’t go there’?
Judy Ayre,
Thank you for extending such humane kindness to a person who was unable to help herself. Very sadly, while you dealt with that challenge, facing the addiction-odds that were stacked heavily against your efforts, our current State Government continued to work against the interests of both of you, and many others.
So called “safe injecting rooms” do not deliver genuine help to any of their “clients”. Nor does pill testing at concerts. They don’t offer meaningful care in the short term or long term. They don’t in any sense win the battle, and they certainly lose the war. The philosophy of “safe” injecting rooms defies logic. They are mostly an undignified way to delay recovery while supporting deeper addiction.
[Sarcasm follows]:…….To be similarly “fair” to more citizens, our Government should provide facilities [near schools] where “drink drivers” could sit peacefully and receive free alcohol [and supplies to take away] before walking unimpeded out into the street. Of course, parallel logic should apply to gambling addicts.
Our canaries are depleted! Here be dragons!
It continues to bewilder the rationale mind, that clearly run and done failed experiments in ‘harm reduction’ are either ignored, or data ‘reworked’ to present a faux positive outcome. Every compassionate effort, (including using the ‘Judicial Educator – the law) should be made to help people exit health and community destroying substance use. Not a punitive approach, which is so cynically wielded by pro-drug advocates, but empowering incentive toward recovery. W.A legal and prison systems have successfully done this without sustained punitive outcomes… It is way past time for a better approach
https://www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/index.php/resources/need-counselling/1364-re-tasking-the-judicial-educator-to-rehabilitate-not-incarcerate
https://www.theywerewrong.org/