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“Harm Reduction”
Harms
But its failures notwithstanding, psy- chiatry plows ahead with another justification—“harm
reduction”—the idea that “drug abuse is a human right and that the only compassionate
response is to make it safer to be an addict.” This has led to such infamous
developments as Australia’s “shooting galleries,” Switzerland and Germany’s
“needle parks” and Holland’s needle exchange programs.
In the mid 1990s, Baltimore proclaimed that harm reduction would be more effective
than law enforcement. The results were tragic. Baltimore’s drug-overdose death
rate rose to become five times that of New York City’s. Its homicide rate was
six times greater.
According to psychiatrist Sally Satel, “Harm reduction holds that drug abuse
is inevitable, so society should try to minimize the damage done to addicts
by drugs (disease, overdose) and to society by addicts (crime, health care costs).
… But since harm reduction makes no demands on addicts, it consigns them to
their addiction, aiming only to allow them to destroy themselves in relative
‘safety’—and at taxpayers’ expense.”
While the National Institute of Drug Abuse might claim that addiction is a
“chronic, relapsing brain disease,” Dr. Satel calls this “pessimistic.” Candidly
she states, “When the treatment system doesn’t do a good job, you just fall
back on that [excuse].” She insists that addiction is fundamentally a problem
with behavior, over which addicts can have voluntary control.
Dr. Tana Dineen, Ph.D. states: “It seems, whatever the results,” addiction
treatment in psychology’s and psychiatry’s hands, “is identifiably a business
that ignores its failures. In fact its failures lead to more business. Its technology,
based on continued recovery, presumes relapses. Recidivism is used as an argument
for further funding. …”
Harm reduction and psychiatric or psychological drug rehab programs overlook
the real victims—the mother who loses a child through a drug overdose, the family
that can’t go out at night because of neighborhood drug gangs and the many others
who live in fear of drug violence.
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