San Francisco opens up safe-injection room

[phr]

And when it comes to public, taxpayer-derived money.... Like Mariposa I pay a LOT of taxes, so I think I have the right to bitch when it's thrown away tilting at windmills like this.

I hope you bitch when your tax money gets used for other things as well...

 

[center]

Surprised to see this? Nah.

Only in California... :x

 

[phr]

Only in California... :x

This has happened in Canada as well as various countries in Europe. California is just going by the stats, safe-injection rooms save lives and provide people with avenues to seek treatment.

The same thing that people are thinking about this was once thought about needle exchanges. Now they're almost universally approved.

 

[GlassAss420]

Hurry the fuck up and make them nationwide in every city that has massive IV drug use.. I've thought about going to canada just to get to use their safe-injection site, well that and the good nuggets.

 

[ColinGibs]

man i can see cops just sitting around watching people go in and out of that place. amd busting them when there off the property. i would much rather hide in my house and IV than be around a bunch of stange people. but its whatever i dont live in SF i dont know how it is there.

hahaha man thats exactly what I thought. If you are headed toward one of these places, of course you have either smack, coke, or whatever other illegal drug on you, a cop could just like stand at the door and hand out arrests.. Unless there is just a technicality where you can be safe, but id still me mad sketched out... Prefer my buddies basement haha

 

[phr]

^
They don't fuck with people going to the needle exchanges and they're almost guaranteed to be holding.

(At least they don't fuck with them around here.)

 

[robd]

we should take what we can get, i dont see why anyone would be against something that will HELP us take the steps to become closer to our personal freedoms that we should have ALREADY finally being granted to us... 'if we've come so far as to provide needles and shooting galleries can we just legalize already?' well taking steps like this will bring us that much closer to eventually getting them to legalize, hopefully

 

[phr]

An amendment to a Senate appropriations bill that would bar cities that open safe injection sites from receiving federal education, health, and labor funding was adopted by the Senate last week. The bill is now in conference committee, where drug reform activists are working to kill it.
Sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) in apparent reaction to talk about such a facility in San Francisco, the amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education annual appropriation bill would cut off funding from those departments to any city that opens a safe injection site.

At least 27 cities in eight European countries, as well as Vancouver, Canada, and Sydney, Australia, are operating safe injection sites. They have been shown to reduce needle-sharing and the rate of new HIV and Hep C infections among injection drug users without causing increases in drug use or criminality.

No American locality has so far tried to establish such a facility. But in San Francisco, discussions are underway.

"Drug war extremists in Congress are trying to ban cities from adopting a drug policy reform that no US city has even adopted yet," warned Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, in an email to supporters in states whose representatives are on the conference committee. "That's how scared they are of the growing drug policy reform movement. And they might win unless you take action today. We're in a major fight and we urgently need your help because at least one of your members of Congress is a key vote."

The measure needs to be nipped in the bud, Piper warned. "If this amendment passes, we can expect members of Congress to try to pass bolder amendments, like denying federal aid to any city that decriminalizes marijuana and cutting off highway funding to any state that enacts alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug law offenses," Piper wrote. "Obviously no city will consider such reforms if it means losing all their federal aid. That's why we have to stop this amendment right here, right now. We have to show the drug war extremists that there's no support in Congress for escalating the war on drugs."

Residents of Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin need to call their senators now, Piper said. "The bill is now in conference. If we don't get this stricken from the final bill, it could be years or decades before this draconian ban is repealed," he predicted.
Link!

Dayummm, they moved quick on this shit!

 

[bingalpaws]

so, if they cut federal aid on said programs, do they reduce the amount of federal taxation that said an offending state pays into that? Seems only fair, if the state wants to do that and the fed doesn't like it, then just remove the whole taxes ->gov-> state again! Of course that wouldn't happen, but it'd make sense!!

 

[Mariposa]

I hope you bitch when your tax money gets used for other things as well...

Yes, I bitch about how my tax money is (mis)used all the time. I could sure use the almost 1/3 of my income a lot more than our "interests in Iraq" or "the drug war" could - in the interest of not getting off topic or smoke beginning to come out my ears, I'll stop there.

But as my tax dollars pertain to addressing the problems associated with drug use (illegal or otherwise), I believe they should be allocated to education and outreach; not funding a facility for addicts to continue their maladaptive patterns.

SevenLyrBrto, I came here in 2003; perhaps our paths have crossed and we probably have mutual friends. Drop me a PM if you're attending a fun event in the near future or if you'd like to join in a meetup. You need not make excuses for speaking out against a program that only looks like harm reduction on the surface; that doesn't make you right wing - it makes you smart. And MUNI is a complete fucking disgrace - ALL of the city's citizens deserve good public transportation. Give it to our infrastructure, our schools, and disaster planning.

As said before, I support decriminalization of personal amounts of drugs. It is ridiculous to incarcerate someone for having a small baggie of whatever. I do not think legalizing drugs will eliminate the black market, nor will it reduce crime. If what has happened with medical marijuana (which averages $60/eighth plus tax) were to happen with heroin, prices would ostensibly go UP.

I have never heard of anyone coming out of the needle exchange being arrested, although I am sure it has happened.

Lastly, the issue of personal responsibility must be again brought to the forefront. Don't have a place to do your drugs? Can't afford your drugs? Then don't do drugs. Do you have a private residence in which you can do your drugs? Are you able to afford drugs? Then do them as you please; in a personal amount, without street dealing to support your habit. Doing drugs is not a right (nor for that matter is it a privilege) and if being disinclined to support someone else's problem with IV drugs by creating new programs for counseling, life coaching and rehabilitation makes me a right-winger, then slap an elephant pin on my lapel and toss me a cowboy hat.

 

[bingalpaws]

As said before, I support decriminalization of personal amounts of drugs. It is ridiculous to incarcerate someone for having a small baggie of whatever. I do not think legalizing drugs will eliminate the black market, nor will it reduce crime. If what has happened with medical marijuana (which averages $60/eighth plus tax) were to happen with heroin, prices would ostensibly go UP.

This paragraph is just plain wrong.
- eliminating the illegality will reduce crime, there is so little debate there it's not even funny
- medical marijuana prices are NOT free market prices and as such it's ridiculous to use them as a baseline comparison for the prices of other drugs, were full scale legalization adopted
- decriminalization for small amounts only is kind of pointless anyways as people still need to be dealing so you're saying, on the one hand, that possessing the stuff is okay, but on the other that selling it is not - therefore you've still got the same problem of being told on one level the stuff's bad, you still need to deal with a criminal to get product.

Doing drugs is not a right (nor for that matter is it a privilege)

That's definitely one opinion on the issue. Others may call the act of using drugs responsibly a part of their pursuit of happiness

 

[phr]

We'll have to agree to disagree.

In the meantime, bingalpaws will take over arguing my position.
(Above, he made the same points I would have made.)

 

[bingalpaws]

haha I'm done!!! I'm watching for newness but won't keep repeating shit lol! I'll go further on aforementioned points but not gonna keep re-stating same shit.. Plus half that stuff you already mentioned earlier in this thread iirc.