Syringe vending machine plan

Herald Sun: Syringe vending machine plan [08jun05]:

"The controversial plan has been mooted by taxpayer-funded drug support network Anex, the Association for Prevention and Harm Reduction Programs Australia."

Controversial? I should think so. Makes me really cross when the Melbourne people, who appeared to be very bone fide in their intentions, who drugs tested at the Adelaide rave at the weekend to try to help save lives might be prosecuted under our laws...Drug testing is illegal here.

So, let me think about it. I do not agree with drugs in any way shape or form. On the lighter side, have you ever tried to have a conversation with some one who is stoned or someone who is gibbering at 90 miles an hour? On th serious side, drugs cause addiction. They cause a slow, painful, agonising death and they are heaps stupid. Some people manage to survive the ravages of drug taking but a lot of young lives are lost and a lot of older people just go through too much pain.There is plenty of graphic evidence around to support that. Then, a lot of people make way too much money out of people's misery and drug users are often in the position where they become violent because their body is run by a drug instead of a brain.

In recent years it has been obvious that far too many people have needlessly died from drugs and mostly they are very young. It's horrible and their parents are left to carry on. Some people would say, bad luck, that was their choice, but that's not how I feel about teenagers.We have to go back to square one on the drugs issue and drug proof the littlies so that they do not become victims of a very lucrative market . No one puts drugs into you , but they certainly can be given a very tantalising, attractive image. So, our bottom line should be to get rid of them, make them irrelevant and not part of how our society lives. Big ask, but I believe it's possible . Team effort. Use the anti smoking approach which required no laws really just a whole heap of reeducation and "encouragement".

We still have the problem of those who currently use drugs on a regular basis. Those who are dependent and those who see it as a lifestyle choice. Same thing applies here as with the smokers. Look at how to minimise and confine their behaviour and redirect them. The drug testers may have stopped some people from dying over the weekend. It makes me sick to support drugs but it makes me sicker to know some fourteen year old ended up in the morgue because she took a bad dose of something. I do not, however support the syringes at all. I think it gives the impression it's okay and it's not. I think it is morally wrong to support drugs but I also think it's morally wrong to let teenagers die because they are caught up in the scene. Clean syringes already can be obtained elsewhere and the machines will then not be there to be vandalised and a part of our normal living.