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This is where assisted decision-making is imperative. The drug addled brain has corrupted processes due to the presence and interference of psychotropic toxins. The Judicial Educator actively engaged through problem-solving courts is the key circuit breaker needed to help facilitate the exit from this will diminishing haze. Punitive action is not necessary, if coercive mechanisms are able to recalibrate the dysfunction processes, through drug free recovery processes. This is why 'legalizing' drugs eliminates this vital, individual and community benefiting intervention and a care-less action for a society with increasing drug use induced harms.
https://clearskyibogaine.com/robert-downey-jr-and-drug-addiction/
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November, 2020
Children living in homes where with an adult experiencing one or more of the "toxic trio" of mental illness, domestic abuse or substance misuse, are more likely to be victims of crime, research has found.
Children living in households with an adult who reported going through mental ill-health or domestic abuse were more likely to have been a victim of crime in the previous 12 months than children living in households where the interviewed adult did not report mental ill-health (16.7 per cent compared with 10.8 per cent) or domestic abuse (16.1 per cent compared with 10.7 per cent). They were also nearly twice as likely to have been excluded or suspended from school.
Watch Toxic Trio & Child Harms
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Date: September 15, 2020 Source: University of Cambridge
Summary: Migrants arrested for tending plants in the flats, houses and attics where cannabis is grown in bulk are often victims of trafficking and 'debt bondage' - yet many are not recognized as such by police, according to a new study
While growers -- often Vietnamese nationals -- are not always imprisoned within farms, many work under threat of extreme violence towards themselves or family back home, with little in the way of language or contacts in the UK.
As such, migrants end up serving years in UK prisons despite being forced to commit the cultivation crimes by gangs who seize passports and threaten -- and administer -- violence.
"The abuses of freedom in cannabis farm cases do not tally with traditional perceptions of slavery. Victims may be held against their will, forced to work and unable to leave, despite an unlocked door," said Prof Heather Strang, the study's senior author.
Dalgarno Institute Comment: What’s egregious about all this, and Dalgarno has been highlighting is grotesque social injustice for years through it’s RIPPED OFF Seminars to schools and communities, is that not only severe environmental harms are done via these illegal grows with shocking misuse of power and water, but that human trafficking and slavery are part of this, and for what? So that carnage creating addiction for profit industries can meet the ‘demand’ of cashed up consumers, who continue to self-indulge or (now hooked) self-medicate their various ‘felt needs’ or perceived ills, and all to an ever diminishing and dysfunctional end.
These new ‘faux freedom rights’ and shameless profiteering not only harm the user, but the ripple effect on their families and communities is also devastating.
Do you know what will put the toxic ‘cherry’ on all this chaos? The pro-drug sector will attempt to harness these atrocities via misapplied drug policy to recommend that making these toxins legal and commercialize them for tax purposes will ‘solve the problem’ of crime and trafficking. That of course is now a completely busted myth, with jurisdictions doing this very thing, seeing their black-markets grow and slavery flourish.
Time to address the real issues. Time to reduce demand and facilitate drug use exiting recovery. #RecoveryMonth
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“Harm-reduction” advocates do little more than pass out drug supplies to the sick and dying.
Erica Sandberg September, 2020
San Francisco has a serious drug problem, particularly among its homeless population. Roughly 8,000 people live on the city’s sidewalks or in its alleyways, public parks, and playgrounds. People with needles in their arms and legs, holding glass pipes and lighters, are a regular sight. Users go limp in doorways and tents, or they career about, dazed and distraught, or angry and violent. Dealers selling heroin, Fentanyl, methamphetamine, and crack are ubiquitous.
So, too, are the advocates for “harm reduction,” which holds that widespread drug use should be accepted but its worst effects mitigated. Organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Drug Users Union, and even the Department of Public Health, in partnership with The DOPE Project, focus almost exclusively on “safe drug use.” In fact, the Drug Users Union’s goal is “to create a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs as well as receive services.” This attitude led to today’s humanitarian crisis: thousands of people living on San Francisco’s streets, languishing in an endless cycle of homelessness and addiction.
Every day of the week, nonprofits and churches such as Glide Memorial partner with the city to distribute drug use supplies to addicts at designated pick-up points. With an empty backpack, I visited three such spots recently in a single afternoon.
Through open doorways, friendly workers asked what I needed. They suggested items and eagerly gave me what asked for—needles (what size?), naloxone (do you know how to use it? Here, let me show you!), rubber tourniquets to pop my veins, little metal cookers for my dope, sharps containers, sheets of foil and straws for Fentanyl, and mounds of alcohol pads, gauze, and bandages. My backpack was soon bursting; I collected 170 needles.
Not one person asked if I was interested in treatment. No one discussed detox or gave me a flyer with listings for local 12-step meetings. No one inquired about my physical or psychological wellbeing. I could have anything I wanted—except for help getting off drugs.
The idea of harm reduction seems noble. Access to clean needles reduces diseases like hepatitis and HIV, and naloxone can bring overdosing people back from the brink of death. Carefully monitored methadone-maintenance programs can return individuals struggling with opiates to a more stable life.
Harm reduction has mutated from ameliorating the collateral negative effects of addiction to promoting drug use as a positive lifestyle choice. Yet the lives of San Francisco’s addicts clearly aren’t improving. They’re sicker, more numerous than ever, and dying in staggering numbers. The body count is rising from Fentanyl, the highly potent synthetic opioid that has become the substance of choice. Last year’s 441 overdose deaths represented a 70 percent increase, and 2020 will likely be another record-breaking year.
Still, true believers carry on, convinced that they’re doing right by helping addicts do more drugs. It’s an unconscionable position. All people deserve a chance to live free of the substances preventing them from a healthy, self-sufficient life. They need someone to say, “I believe in you; let me help you escape addiction,” not, “You’re a drug user, let me help you remain an addict.”
Question the self-described experts, though, and you’re dismissed as a rube, even as their grand experiment—the giant petri dish of San Francisco—is evidence that they’ve failed.
Condoning illegal drug use means accepting everything that accompanies the business: human trafficking, sexual exploitation, political corruption, and environmental disaster. Recognizing these connections is essential. It’s why we condemned the ivory trade and child labor. Why do we now give a nod to illegal drugs that perpetuate some of the worst crimes known to man?
We can change course and focus on recovery. Options exist. The Salvation Army Harbor Light Center gives homeless individuals and families a place to stay while they pursue sobriety; the San Francisco Adult Probation Department’s reentry division gives newly released prisoners up to a year in residential drug-treatment programs. It’s time to invest in organizations like Community First Village in Austin, Texas, which recognizes that possession of controlled substances is illegal and provides permanent housing to the chronically homeless—with a work requirement. Residents are expected to abide by the law and take advantage of on-site rehabilitation and counseling. Such organizations give more to those they help by expecting more of them.
Drug addicts need a lifeline, not a millstone. For those who doubt that it’s time to push back against harm-reduction advocates who do little more than throw fresh needles, fentanyl foil, and meth pipes at the sick and dying, I have a suggestion: come to San Francisco and have a look around.
Further Resources
- ‘Harm reduction’ drug policies are destroying San Francisco
- Drug Policy – Changing the Narrative: Prevent Don’t Promote
- Drug Use, Stigma & Proactive Contagions to Reduce Both.
- Help! I Need to Stop This!
- 30 Years of Harm Minimisation – How Far Have We Come?
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“Overall, the research consistently finds that sexual victimisation is associated with problem alcohol and other drug use. While earlier work established the association, more recent research has shown that child sexual abuse, in particular, is a general risk factor for problem substance use.”