Free needle for drugs is good by Robert R. Odle.

Free Needles for Drugs is Good Robert R. Odle, Ph.D. an aspiring good citizen of the earth

..when is it okay to support what you are against?...

So, the Indiana governor decided to give a needle exchange in which the government would exchange clean needles for needles already used to inject heroin into a drug users veins. What motivated this action … HIV spreading throughout the drug community.  Of course, there is the fear that it will spread from the drug community to the non-drug community.

So, from a practical view it makes sense:  Doing what needs to be done to stop the spread of HIV.

What about from a moral point of view? Should we be doing anything to help someone use drugs.  But, that really is not the situation we are presented with … the drug user is not asking us for a clean needle.  When they need a hit, they are going to use whatever they can get their hands on.  We are asking them to use a clean needle, for the sake of us, not just them.  Our child could be making love to a person only a few persons removed from a drug user, protection be damned if the situation goes sideways.

Actually, give a user a needle is not enough … it does not go far enough.  Our current policy is based upon a war on people, mostly black people, not drugs.  A person that becomes a drug user already has problems before the first drug goes down his throat or up his arm.  We are looking at a person, probably a teenager, that is not well adjusted.  It is someone that is struggling with life, someone that does not belong to any group unless it is his drug group.  What ever other groups he has will slowly dissolve as his/her habit grows.  They go to a place far beyond help, far beyond our compassion.  They go to a place where we do not understand them, they no longer trust or understand us.  They know we no longer understand them.  Nothing proves to them that we understand them less than our desire to punish them and put them in prison for ending up addicted.  Few plot the road to addiction and instead they just find themselves there one day craving their next hit, sick as a dog as they start into withdrawal, desperate for one more small hit so they can feel normal.  And we tell them, just say “no”.

If we want to do this right, we give them more than needles.  We open our arms and say we want to help them.  Help them go through withdrawal.  Not just watch them but provide them with a medical staff to monitor their vital signs.  And after the drugs are out of their system, we help them with years of therapy, yes years of therapy, to address what got them there in the first place.  We help them get the training and education they need to survive in this world, like we should with all young people. And we love them and have compassion for them when they fall on their face a few times in their struggle to be free of their demons.