Our Views

Yet another step in the wrong direction in the war against drugs – Copenhagen is setting up safe ‘health rooms’ where addicts can inject their medically prescribed methadone. 275 people in Copenhagen died of drug related causes in 2005 and health officials see ‘health rooms’ as the first step in addressing the problem. Unfortunately, there was no mention of actually getting the addicts drug free through methadone detox or rehab.

Perhaps they don’t know the statistics. Do they know, for example, that 1,881 people died from heroin in the U.S. in 2004 and 3,849 people died from methadone in the same year? We don’t know how many methadone users there are, but we do know about 200,000 are in ‘methadone treatment’. And there are about 800,000 heroin addicts.

Maybe officials in Copenhagen are going to improve the scene with ‘health rooms’, but it’s still just a jump from the fire to the frying pan. Not much better.

Why not just get them off drugs for crying out loud? It can be done. Millions of people have done it. Why mess around with a solution that just becomes another problem? It amazes me that intelligent people concerned about drug addiction think some drugs are okay.

Methadone addiction, heroin addiction – what’s the difference? Really? What are they thinking? If they were really serious about handling the drug problem, they’d get these people into a methadone detox program and finish the job.

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