Faith Based War on Drugs I saw an announcement by George Bush this morning announcing that religious faith and spirituality help drug users and so he is pushing for more faith based charities to work in this area. This is not a real solution to drug addiction and dependence on such substances. For those in real need who have no help then they have no hope. What Bush is recommending is a false hope. What they really need is real hope. It is a great shame that a world leader can be so foolish to mix politics and religions in such a manner. The damage he is causing is going to take us many years to repair. In the meantime 7000 Americans die each week due to tobacco related diseases. This is the equivalent of the WTC deaths TWICE EVERY week. If Bush was really serious about saving lives then he could use the many millions being spent on bombs and warfare to close down the tobacco giants and save millions of real lives. The perceived damage being caused by terrorists is insignificant compared to the disease and death being played out in hospitals throughout the country all because of the power of big business and with Bush as their puppet then real hope is not even on the horizon. I found the sight of this ignorant and arrogant man preaching religion this morning quite sickening. Cris
Cris ... Here, here! Or should it be: Jeer, Jeer! (for Dubya, that is) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Take care.
A non believer I'm a non believer. I agree with Cris about using faith or religion to remedy any of life's problems. I became a non believer because faith and religion seems to me to cause most of the problems happening around us. I just shake my head and roll my eyes when someone hands out that old adage "It's God's will". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! "God" is not a nice person. Addicts have enough to worry about without being preached to, but sadly, most rehabilitation clinics use religion as some sort of magic formula for getting better. I find it all very sad. To people trying to get off drugs - it's within yourself - that's where you'll find the strength. Take care, Teri
What about faith in people? Why turn the drug problem over to faith in God? While I'm always happy to have the churches working toward societal benefit, I think a greater benefit would be to entrust humans in a few ways that don't require the invocation of God. Needle exchanges, for instance, seem to have a certain set of benefits. Despite objections that needle exchanges foster continued drug use, what we seem to learn in practice is that they actually lower the rate of new HIV cases attributed to needle sharing, and the availability of counseling referrals has actually seen an encouraging success rate in directing users to addiction relief. (I've got statistics on that somewhere on this board; I'm too lazy right now to dig them up on the web ... DRCNet, Common Sense Drug Policy, and other legalization/decriminalization sites will contain them. If anyone truly wants to debate the success of needle exchanges, I'll be happy to drag those numbers out of the cellar. CDC, as I recall, even notes the power of needle exchanges.) What is it about the exchanges that works at all? It's a sense of normalization that allows better communication. In the normal context, drug use and users are frowned upon, and there is a climate which feels as if one can only get help if they repeatedly confess their drug-related felonies and create a massive evidentiary record--this is not encouraging to the paranoid, and paranoia in various stages is common among addicts. Throwing pancake mix to the starving does nothing if they're illiterate and can't read the directions to just add water; whoops, where's the clean water? Analogously, offering help to the fundamentally afraid does nothing if the offer includes more fear. This is one of the primary benefits of legalization: take the felonious specter away and an artificial stumbling block evaporates. As we see in the case of needle exchanges, when everybody understands that the addict is on drugs, and that's the whole reason everybody's coming together here (e.g. limited normalization) a level of communication exists that helps foster recovery So instead of putting faith in God's guidance, which I simply do not feel has earned this merit, I propose that we put faith in people. We should put our faith in people and educate against addiction, show true compassion toward the addict, and create an environment in which recovery seems like a welcome state, instead of a fearful suggestion of an accusing future. We can put faith in those who choose to stand on the front lines against addiction, and free them from the fetters that makes their work so difficult. We can put faith in those who are addicted that when they want help, when they want to get off, they will be less afraid to speak up and ask for what they need. We have to remember why people destroy themselves with drugs: empowering the conscience with eduction will help prevent addiction; empowering the addicted conscience not so much with absolution, but with the trust of, Welcome back to the world, there's nothing in this to forgive ... that is, empowering the addicted conscience against fear and doubt can only help to break the shackles of addiction. We've put our faith in law and order, and that has failed. Now we are expected to put our faith in God and his institutions? Why do we always trust the institutions? Why not trust the people the institutions are supposed to serve? It cuts out the middleman, and eliminates certain distractions from the process. thanx, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
