Harm
Reduction:
Drug
Czar's
Office
Opposes
Letting
Heroin
Users
Have
Easy
Access
to
Overdose
Antidote
8/4/06
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/447/drug_czar_on_philadelphia_heroin_overdoses.shtml
When heroin users around Philadelphia started overdosing on junk laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate, a local harm reduction group began working with a sympathetic physician to provide addicts prescriptions to naloxone (brand name Narcan). The Office of National Drug Control Policy thinks that's a bad idea.
In many cities, paramedics carry Narcan with them, but by the time they arrive on the scene, it can be too late, explained Casey Cook, executive director of Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that runs the city's needle exchange program. "If people have to rely on paramedics, more often than not, the overdose is going to be fatal, just because of the amount of time for people to get there," she told the Associated Press in an interview last Friday.
But the drug czar's office is worried that providing addicts with the means to survive an overdose would prove "disinhibiting," much the same way social conservatives argue that providing teenagers with condoms to prevent pregnancy and disease "disinhibits" them from remaining abstinent. ONDCP doesn't want to appear to condone drug use. "We don't want to send the message out that there is a safe way to use heroin," said Jennifer DeVallance, an ONDCP spokesperson told the AP.
There were some 16,000 drug-related deaths reported in 2002, the vast majority of them involving either heroin or prescription opiates, and at least 400 people have died in the wave of fentanyl-related heroin ODs in the past few months. Better they should die than people think heroin is safe, huh?
-- END --
|
Issue #447
-- 8/4/06
Editorial:
Sometimes
They
Tell
the
Truth
|
Feature:
British
Parliamentary
Committee
Slams
Drug
Classification
Scheme,
Calls
for
Evidence-Based
System
|
Feature:
As
Fighting
Flares
in
Southern
Afghanistan,
Support
for
Licensed
Opium
Production
Grows
|
In
Memoriam:
Methadone
Pioneer
Vincent
P.
Dole
|
Announcement:
Sick
Editor
=
Short
Issue
|
Law
Enforcement:
This
Week's
Corrupt
Cops
Stories
|
Harm
Reduction:
Drug
Czar's
Office
Opposes
Letting
Heroin
Users
Have
Easy
Access
to
Overdose
Antidote
|
Marijuana:
Seattle
Hempfest
Sues
City,
Art
Museum
Over
Permitting,
Access
|
Latin
America:
New
Report
Says
Colombian
Cocaine
Production
Seriously
Underestimated
|
Web
Scan
|
Weekly:
This
Week
in
History
|
Weekly:
The
Reformer's
Calendar
|
|
This issue -- main page
This issue -- single-file printer version
Drug War Chronicle -- main page
Chronicle archives
|
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