Society is not helping drug addicts by pampering them
By Lethbridge Herald on July 27, 2022.
Editor:
In Al Beeber’s Lethbridge Herald headline “Council addressing homeless encampment issue on Tuesday,” I noticed that the mayor and council are looking at throwing another $700,000 at the problem without really looking at any real solutions.
I’m tired of trying to change the choice of words used by many in society, so I’ve decided to embrace them and perhaps look at things in a different light.
Let’s start with “homeless.” Two types of homeless people are “camping” on Lethbridge city property. There are those that through no fault of their own, are truly homeless. I’d like to know how many of the people out there are truly “homeless.” Some of these people may have jobs but their income does not support finding proper accommodations. This should be a top priority and we should support these folks and immediately find them housing.
If necessary they should be afforded temporary housing until more suitable housing can be found. These people then would have whatever supports are necessary to improve their lives so that they can stand up on their own.
Then some are addicted to hard drugs and spend their days wandering around looking for ways to obtain their next “fix.” Seeing as society likes to call their drug addiction a “disease,” I’m going to play along. Let’s say I’m diagnosed with heart disease, cancer or perhaps diabetes. What do I do?
I go to a doctor, a specialist, or a hospital for further tests and treatment. So if drug addiction is a disease, then the same path should be followed, right? Not. We just keep enabling these people who will never give up their addiction unless things reach a point where it becomes too uncomfortable for them to continue down their path of self-destruction.
We are not helping them by pampering them, feeding them, giving them free stuff, and allowing them to disrupt others. Let’s change things whereas the people with the “addiction disease,” have no choice but to accept treatment. It’s a win-win. They get their lives back and so do the rest of the citizens of Lethbridge.
Will anything happen? I doubt it. In our modern namby-pamby world, we are so afraid of offending someone, we do nothing. One last thing. To the parents that want to “save” their child by letting them continue using drugs and living on the street, until they are ready to get help, you are not helping them. You are killing them through your misguided love.
Doug Cameron
Lethbridge
12-11
Shelter first, housing earned. As per noted in another article by turbine wine no one from the indigenous community across the river were consulted. There are clearly two types as you have described. Here are a couple of articles that are a vision of the future.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/vancouver-fire-department-orders-tent-city-along-hastings-street-to-be-dismantled/ar-AAZY851?li=AAggNb9&fbclid=IwAR2IyJUpfpUHW2GUUMJIffdpe1XKfeKDJ2r_4NDxViOikjB4BKkdOUYDIQY&fs=e&s=cl
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/concerns-flare-about-vancouver-tent-city-scaring-away-tourism-from-local-businesses
I man afraid that we will stay on the same old treadmill until those sacred untouchables, arts and tourism are affected.
This is our community and we have a choice and going down the same path as Vancouver is not an option.
There are sheep and there are leaders and we need leaders that will use ‘tough love’ to deal with the matter. The sheep are slowly killing these people while bleeding our bank accounts dry!
The vast majority of homeless on Lethbridge streets are by their own choice. They don’t want help from Whitey, they hate us.
you continue to come from a narrow place. many if not the very many of the addicts on our streets are affected – seriously so – by fetal alcohol related challenges, and/or suffer from the effects of serious trauma and neglect. those issues may present quite similarly, mainly, they impair, markedly so, one’s ability to make consistently rational choices. in other words, they are highly given to impulse. it is not a matter of a lack of discipline, and the better way cannot be learnt if one is affected enough by fetal alcohol.
look at it this way: the typical person works with a brain that has great filing system; when we need information and/or we need to consider things before we react, we can access the pertinent information from our prior experiences and learning and so then set about an action; the severe trauma and fetal alcohol victim’s brain is far less organised – it will reach into whatever pile is most immediately handy. hardly a recipe for effective living.
the net result is so very many addicts here in town have a mental/emotional capacity of humans that are far less developed than the typical adult. so, i ask, would we turn children to the streets to fend for themselves? is this practical. is this humane? one may see an adult on the outside, but the functioning capacity is not there.
i will keep on this: most people, even present addicts, do not want to be an addict. most people – the vast majority – use drugs and alcohol responsibly. the worst addictions we have are due to synthetics foremost – such as “opioids” and meth – and then next to substances refined from natural products, such as heroin and morphine (each refined from opium and each far more addictive than opium…ditto cocaine and so-called crack cocaine, which are refined from the coca leaf, which is hardly as addictive as is the cocaine derivative).
the criminalisation of drugs is what is criminal: it infringes on one’s right to their body, and. it has created far greater humanitarian issues than what that practice has resolved. the net result of that crimes against humanity drug laws nonsense is that we have a lot of unusually highly addictive drugs having come to the fore, and highly expensive drugs.
we will not, ever, legislate away addictions – is that not yet obvious to the thick headed, prejudiced, holier than thou fools that have witnessed close to 100 years of failed prohibition?
thus, to waste vast amounts of money and resource to police, prosecute, and jail users and addicts is each unjust, criminal, and creates an undue burden on user and the “good” folk of a society. if drugs were legal, they would be cheap. not too many at all steal from others to buy liquor. i have not heard of anyone stealing for coffee – and coffee is far more expensive to bring to market than recreational and self medicating drugs subjectively rendered illegal, drugs that have been around pretty much forever, and with few issues…save for where they have bee made illegal.
if we have legal drugs, we may be able to reduce addictions, having available natural and non-refined drugs that are much less addictive; most surely, we will significantly reduce, if not entirely eliminate, the criminality an addict presently needs to resort to in order to pay for well over priced drugs, made over priced by our crimes against humanity drug laws.
Did legalizing alcohol end the addiction? For years it was the indigenous alcohol addicted wreaking havoc downtown before the shelter moved to it’s present location, thinking it would stop the open drinking, urinating and sex acts in the business doorways, but it didn’t.
Your dreams of legalizing the very drug that caused the issues needs more thought!
I guess you are not aware of the locations in this city that addicts with opioid addictions can go get their free prescribed opioids despensed to them daily.
Sorry JC your ideas are flawed!
Make drugs legal? If that was the case and it made them cheaper then there would be more drug use and more addicted people hence more problems. Whats with you and “ones body”? Pathetic remark.
Thank you Doug Cameron! It is time for tough love to be deployed!
There shouldn’t be anyone on the street right now that wants to be sheltered or in residential accommodation of some form. Those services are there and being offered to the people in these encampments. They are their by choice!
The outreach groups have repeatedly offered people in the Civic Center encampment accommodations/housing, not in the shelter, but housing and they refused, As stated by Mr. Fox yesterday at the Council meeting, ‘some have been housed but later decided to come back to the streets.
This just didn’t pop-up and has been growing since March, starting with one or make shift shelters until we have the the 20 or so we see today. Outreach groups have repeatedly talked to them! Wake up people!
Come fall, they will expect to be housed in a hotel/motel at a cost of $200-$250,000 per month to the taxpayer. It doesn’t matter if it is municipal, provincial or federal . . . it is all taxpayer dollars! The donors that donate to non-profits are the taxpayers as well!
I know our Council has tough decisions to make, but we have enabled and encouraged this type of behaviour long enough! It is clearly time to deploy tough love and evict them!
They have been given choices multiple times and offered alternatived accommodations. It is time to act now . . . act now and stop the senseless carnage on our streets that the bleeding hearts believe is helping them, but in fact it is killing them.
Many of these people do have homes they could go to . . . but . . . they don’t want to follow any rules . . . show respect for anyone! They are not all chronic addicts and some should be in mental health facilities, not on our streets.
I believe most of our Council want the same thing . . . we have 2 though that are the old SCS supporters and pro-$100 million performing arts building after the city just blew $50 million on the arts in three areas, all downtown!
We are tired of this inaction and we are tired of having 150-200 or so people always been able to destroy our city . . . in this case it appears there maybe 60 people that presently are costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars and in this short term cost is $230,000, but that doesn’t include many of the other costs . . . $195,000 is only for wages and this is only covering a few months.
Time for tough love! Evict them, fine them, make them work off their fines or jail them! I am standing on my Charted Rights that state all are to be treated equal under the law and if I went to Nicholas Sheran park and pitched my tent there and refused to leave, I would be arrested, fined and if I didn’t pay the fine an arrest warrant would be issued.
Tough love will save lives and will help get some of these back into reasonably normal lives . . . If you don’t work, you don’t eat!
There is plenty of help out there now for them, including treatment!
Again . . . they have been given alternatives over the last 3 months!