Drugs fall into three main categories. The good, the bad and the ugly. Think penicillin, heroin and fentanyl.
We are sick of the subject and stunned by the deaths. And yet, our overall success rate with preventive measures or with reducing the body count is at an all-time low.
Bad drugs, like other ills of society, have been around a long, long time. How do we move the needle in the right direction or improve this terrible situation when our by trial-and-error efforts so far have fallen flat.
More snakes than ladders.
We have responded by throwing at this problem everything but the kitchen sink: Public education. Advertising. Money, bags of it. Billions of dollars, hundreds of fundraisers, dozens of government grants to build, staff and equip addiction centres.
We’ve listened to parents. We’ve followed the guidance of politicians, police, and mental health workers. We’ve tried all kinds of approaches: kid gloves, tough love, safe injection sites, drug dispensing programs.
Nothing works. Why?
We are warriors unable to admit defeat. Maybe it’s time to meet this foe head on, regroup, recharge and employ a very different strategy. Come out stronger. We must get this right.
It is not like the powers that be, the think tanks and the talking heads haven’t been hard at work. Recently we heard about a new FDA approved pain medication that is not an opioid. Okay.
The hope here is that given the new choice, far fewer addictions will result. However, as my pipe puffing, wisdom-dispensing, grandfather used to say: ‘You can lead a horse to water — but you can’t make ’em drink.’
Choice can be a good thing – or a bad thing.
Time to take some of the heavy load off police, parents and pulpit and put it on the shoulders of politicians who can actually make change and bring in new laws.
And here it does appear B.C. Premier Eby put his thinking cap on with a non-consensual treatment model for drug addicts. Or, in other words, the kid gloves are finally off. I texted a journalist friend, Neil, and asked him if he had any views on the drug crisis that won’t die. In about two minutes he wrote me back.
“People bent over in the fentanyl fold, aren’t really living or able to make informed decisions about their lives. Clean them up and let them make decisions. If they decide to go back on drugs, pick them up again.”
I didn’t ask him if he meant that physically or metaphorically, but either works for me. To that response I would add: “And give them help and hope, and a reason to return to the real life fold.”
I also asked a former heroin user, now aged 70, his views.
“The difference is back then we did our drugs straight up. Now it’s all about the mix, custom cocktails like meth amphetamine. Too much choice if you ask me.”
Well, I did ask. And it’s true. We all have choices. Here’s hoping we make good ones in the future and learn from our mistakes.
Teresa Mallam is an award-winning journalist. She won the Jack Webster Award of Distinction, BC Law Society Award for Excellence in Legal Reporting, the Canadian Authors Association award for Best Investigative Journalism and numerous newspaper awards.