Common sense being ignored in addictions discussions
By Lethbridge Herald on July 19, 2023.
Re: Advocates for safe supply for drug addicts.
I have never believed this to be a viable option. In fact, advocates for safe supply are admitting that nothing is working and that’s why they need it. Safe supply is just another example of enabling rather than treating the addict.
Sadly, a “practitioner of safe supply”, succumbed to his own failure. The higher learning advocates will of course state it was not done in “their highly paid medical laboratory”. https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/store-owner-who-sold-hard-drugs-dies-after-suffering-fentanyl-overdose
Common sense never enters these discussions. It is solely based on emotion, tear in the eye, and fawning over something that quite admittedly is difficult to watch.
What I see everywhere is the “congregation of the emotional” all of whom, avoid common sense as if it were the Black Plague!
Does it make them feel better to publicly display their emotions so others can coddle them as being “caring people”, making the opposition heartless swine? There has to be some payback?
I was part of a SACPA discussion as a “concerned citizen.” What I saw was “emotion dropping” from start to finish. Applause broke out in unison when discussing “emotional interactions and communications” as being the wonder drug that solves all. Giving everyone a home was met with resounding applause and encores called for, as if in an opera. Common sense was met with eye rolling.
Yet, not a word of amazement, when I produced a chart that showed up to 80 per cent of addicts die in the homes just proposed as a solution, just support for the person who wanted to house them?
My barrack like facilities was met with; “where is the Indigenous art” as if I should have painted it myself? I said, If you want to save lives start by not putting them in a home of their own! Dead silence ensued, then the synchronization of the eye roll by panelists and audience alike occurred?
One questioner wanted to hear from panelists that supported the evidence, knowing full well that my approach was based on common sense, and not evidence! Evidence is not a proof. The proof is your evidence has failed!
Do not put the wet facility in the downtown because saving lives and killing livelihoods is “forever.
Please remember that! The “evidence and proof” is every other city in Canada! Let’s think outside the box before it’s too late!
I will debate with anyone, anytime!
Dennis Bremner
Lethbridge
16-15
I totally agree. Safe Supply is not the answer. It is only another pharmaceutical drug ‘band-aid’ for addicts – treating drugs with drugs doesn’t work. It is reported over and over that the Safe Supply drug hydromorphone (an even stronger derivative of morphine) is eventually abused by taking more than what is prescribed as they are sold too on the street by the addict so they can buy their drug of choice. It is yet Another tax payer burden besides sheltering, clothing and feeding the addict. The do-gooders (Safe Supply, Non-Profits and MSTH) mostly shared by NDP and Liberal beliefs, think that they can either give the addict drugs or shelter as the answer to addiction! Downtown better WAKE-UP as the City is already in negotiation to purchase Lealta and the Kitchen Center, where Eldorado has already been bought and perhaps the ATCO building too! Because of the PIT count taken by a Non-Profit, I might add, last September (when encampments are at their all-time high) the City wants to home approx. 450 people. If you look further into the PIT report, 90% admit to being substance-users (which in itself is mentally-ill never mind if there was a mental illness prior to drug-use). Therefore, do we want a psychiatric hospital right in the center of our city??? With the ‘New’ Direct Control rezoning, they can put Anything in the area. It’s kind of funny, that council keeps asking to ensure that there will not be another SCS. If you don’t already know, there is OPS (just a different name for SCS) right beside the shelter. Also, it’s not only SCS’s that an addict is attracted to. It’s All the benefits such as housing. I wish the city good luck on that one, if you’ve ever seen a residence that has housed one and lucky not to have lost the house altogether due to damage, you’ll realize that it is a Very costly endeavor housing these people in just ways of maintenance… but I guess the Province or Fed’s will pay for that! Aka Us, the taxpayer!
Downtown businesses please WAKE UP, if you think because this all will be located in the ‘North’ (50 feet away from the existing wet shelter) will be an improvement to what you’re experiencing, you’d better think again! You haven’t seen Anything yet. As in other Regional Community Care Centers, there will be more people Outside wanting in then there are Inside. So now we’re looking at 1,000 and this number will keep growing as guess what, the ‘housing Non-Profits’ will say they need to buy or build more buildings. It is proven ‘build and they shall come’. Just because we can get Liberal Federal funding for housing, does not mean we need to take it AND on top of it, put it Right in the Center of Lethbridge. This needs to be built OUT of TOWN. But hey, a child’s playground in Galt Gardens will make a Huge difference… Remember, when you get use to abnormality and lies, they become normal and truthful but in REALITY abnormality is abnormality and lies are lies.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-learn-from-the-past-but-dont-erase-it. Interesting from an unlikely source.
If you think that the Toronto Sun is an unlikely place for this sort of article, or maybe you are referring to Lorne Gunter, it would seem that you are unfamiliar with that newspaper and that columnist.
Personally known the columnist since 1989, so there is that. As for your comment, the usual attack the messenger as any thoughtful or factual rebuttal would be impossible. So you would erase the past including the “Greatest Canadian” who thought sterilizing was a means to an end. What happened to all your SACPA compassion??
Now, now, buckwheat. Everything’s okay. We understand why you would feel personally threatened by the reprehensible concept of eugenics.
Mr. buckwheat, very sorry if you thought it was a personal attack. That was not my intention. However, I am still at a loss as to why anyone would think that a story of that sort, came from an unlikely source. The story and the way in which Mr. Gunter framed it is entirely within the wheelhouse of the columnist and that newspaper.
Now, if I had wanted to launch an ad hominem attack, I would have said something like this: Only an idiot would say something like that. I might have even added an exclamation mark. But, of course, I didn’t.
SACPA has lots of it as they go back to their protected Sunset acres.
“… my approach was based on common sense, and not evidence!”
I think, Dennis, that ‘common sense’ is also an emotion.
It’s so sad that SACPA got all evidence-based on ya.
Yes Sophie. You being delusional is also an emotion.
If SACPA were evidence based they wouldn’t support single resident occupancy(SROs). But they go home to their Sunset Acres so what else would you expect?
A UBC Clinical Professor and BC addictions doctor, Launette Rieb, told the Globe and Mail that despite anecdotal reports, no existing evidence suggests that “safe supply” reduces fentanyl usage or deaths, adding: “‘Safe supply’ is a misnomer. It is NOT treatment. It is an unproven intervention” with well-established medical risks including heart and spinal infections.
https://youtu.be/eCsMZHYMsrE
So true: That whole evidence thing is way over rated. Cooked up by a bunch of pin-head, Ivory Tower “academics.” So, with this in mind, when I went to my family doctor today about a throat infection and she recommended a two-week course of tetracycline, I rolled my eyes (of course) and asked for “common-sense” therapy as opposed to an evidence-based one. I’ll report back on the results.
Roll yours at what works and give standing o’s and hearty applause to what doesn’t. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. What side effects did you get from your prescription. One is very hairy and another is uncomfortable. Did you get addicted and go back for more? Did you run out and smash a garage or steal a bike? Eye roll all right. At you!!!!!
Update #1: The lemon and honey in hot water did relieve some of the “discomfort”, but the damp sock around my neck did nothing for the actual infection. My throat is still quite red and my temperature is still elevated. Will consider an evidence-based therapy tomorrow. Stay tuned for additional updates.
Common Sense would caution against expert advice, Red. Them schooled folk will probably tell you it is a corona virus and shove Big Pharma at you. My buddy at coffee assured me that Sudafed is a gateway to meth addiction.
See young have been having coffee with the other regular conspiracy theorist “Fed Up”.
Sounds like you got the black hairy tongue a d the rectal discomfort from that tetracycline.