Both the articles clearly show that our government is (or should be) a proponent of harm reduction and health among the population. It is very interesting to note that none of the articles spoke about the population doing anything, rather the blame falls largely on the government. It is also interesting to note that both articles seem to say that the government should be sympathetic towards the public, and specifically in the Harm Reduction article we see that banning drug use is NOT the answer to our problems.
What I took from this was a much better understanding of harm reduction. It always seemed obvious to me that in order for drug addicts to come clean, they really truly needed to do it on their own, and that if they aren’t sincere about the coming clean, then it wouldn’t matter, because they’ll always slip back in. I now realize just how much the government has to do with it. The government has to care for its people, because after all, the government is its people. In a democracy, the people run the government, not one person, nor a group of people acting on their own, but the population. The reason for that is so that everyone has a say in the government. So when everyone has a say, everyone needs to be taken care of, from the drug addicts to the poor, to the orphaned children, to the abused children, and to the homeless people of our population. Everyone deserves to be taken care of. The Harm Reduction article even shows just how helpful the government can be. It also shows that these drug addicts, who are frequently believed to not be able to return to society, can and will, and they do get better.
My question is: Why is the US so slow to adopt these principles if the Dutch government, which seems to share a lot of principles with the US government, was so quick to adopt many of the principles at once? We have the data to back up a lot of the assertions made in the Harm Reduction article. Why are we taking our time with this? Why are we wasting these drug addicts lives? We have so much to do, and so little time to do it.
