U.S.A.
Everyone Else
Health
Science
Business
Technology
Sports
Video Games
Entertainment
Future
Humour
NEWS > HEALTH > VANCOUVER ADDICTS LOVING THE FREE CRACK PIPES FROM THE CITY
VANCOUVER ADDICTS LOVING THE FREE CRACK PIPES FROM THE CITY
January 1 2012
Vancouver, Canada – For years countries all over the world have struggled with how to deal with addiction. For the most part, the attitude has been one of prohibition, punishing both producers and users with increasingly harsh punishments but changing attitudes, and relatively little success, has encouraged many governments to try different things.
In North America there is one city that has struggled more with addiction than any other and now officials in that city, Vancouver, have tried one of those new ways of doing things, actually handing out crack pipes to the city’s addicts.
Ostensibly, the new pipe program is designed to help reduce disease that spreads when sharing pipes, something all too common in the city, but for users it is an entirely different opportunity, one that will allow them to use without having to share, making it much easier to smoke more crack without worries of getting knifed and left for dead in a gutter or a back alley.
“What this boils down to is it’s about disease prevention. It’s about preventing more communicable diseases which land these people in hospital on a frequent basis and clogs up emergency rooms,” said Trudi Beutel of the Vancouver Health Authority.
The new crack pipes, which come in a package with other clean drug paraphernalia, will be distributed throughout the city’s eastside, which has the highest crack addict population, and highest number of crack pipe-related stabbings.
Back alley stabbings, particularly in areas where emergency personnel are afraid to go, tend to be fatal, much more so than AIDS or other diseases spread through sharing crack pipes.
“It’s great. Great. I ain’t used a new crack pipe in years. This one I stole off this guy I found in the street. I didn’t stab him in the gut, I just found him there already dead. I figured we wasn’t using the pipe so I just took it and now it’s mine. I still want a new one though, the crack is much better with a new pipe,” said Michael, a local addict.
The packages have also made their way to local High Schools, potentially creating a new generation of addicts throughout the area.
“I get good money for these. Younger users don’t want to use old dirty crack pipes and so these new ones are great. They sell as soon as I get them,” said a local dealer. “And it don’t take nothing to get them. A little knife in the gut and it’s all money from there. It’s been great.”
At least 60,000 kits will be handed out as part of a trial run. It’s not clear how many have ended up in the hands of new users and addicts.
Local emergency rooms have reported a decline in both stabbings and crack-related diseases, though bodies tend to bulk up inside abandoned buildings during the winter which may account for the change.
Lauren Hebert, Health Correspondent
NEWS > HEALTH > VANCOUVER ADDICTS LOVING THE FREE CRACK PIPES FROM THE CITY
LINK IT! http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Health/pages-2/Vancouver-addicts-loving-the-free-crack-pipes-from-the-city-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side-2012-01-01.html |
TWEET IT! http://goo.gl/HJnlf |
BOOKMARK IT!  
|
|---|
Scrape Store
