VIHA To Supply Pipes and Needles To Addicts This Summer

 "Safer" Crack Kits Supplied By VIHA

This Summer

In an effort to reduce the spread of HIV, AIDS and Hepatitis C among drug users, the Vancouver Island Health Authority will be giving out crack kits starting this summer.

The kits will be available from fixed locations as opposed to a mobile van. When VIHA was last handing out crack kits, they met the ire of parents who objected to having drug paraphernalia being distributed in their neighborhoods.

The kits will consist of condoms, needles, syringes, alcohol swabs, push sticks, plastic tubes and cookers. It is hoped the kits will reduce the risk of transmitting disease associated with the commonly used improvised means of getting their high.

The Only Thing Missing Is The Crack Cocaine

The kit being provided will give these addicted souls everything they need, except of course the crack cocaine itself. For this they will still have to engage in whatever criminal activity required to buy the drug.

Why not go a step further and provide the drug also? You remove the need for money, hence you should also remove the need to steal and prostitute yourself for the drug. I am being serious.

Of course, these health conscious souls would never share a VIHA supplied needle, and would never share a contaminated VIHA supplied crack pipe. And of course, every stoned individual will always be sure to properly put on a condom before engaging in drug enhanced sex. I am being facetious.

Lorna Medd, a VIHA health officer is quoted in the Bulletin as saying "The more we are able to offer useful tools that can prevent the transmission of these diseases the more likely we are to break the pattern and hopefully bring people in to other kinds of treatment".

It sounds like a noble motive and perhaps might work in a few cases, but it ignores the fact that people who like their addictions, need to be about as miserable as hell before they will want to get the monkey off their back. Then they might actually want help getting free, in the meantime VIHA is just making their addiction a little easier to deal with but no less costly.

Some of the risks associated with crack cocaine which will not be eliminated with the use of crack kits:

Cocaine, in any form, is a powerfully addictive drug, and addiction seems to develop more quickly when the drug is smoked--as crack is--than snorted--as powdered cocaine typically is.

In addition to the usual risks associated with cocaine use (constricted blood vessels; increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure; and risk of cardiac arrest and seizure), crack users may experience acute respiratory problems, including coughing, shortness of breath, and lung trauma and bleeding. Crack cocaine smoking also can cause aggressive and paranoid behavior.

Society seems totally unable to deal with the ravages of drug abuse and at best offers a bandaid to those who are hemorrhaging.