Giving crack pipes to drug users is good actually.
Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2022 7:31 pm
Brief background:
Various amounts of money have been allocated by congress for "harm reduction" for drug users. The Biden admin was going to use some of that money to support drug kits that would have included pipes to drug users. Some right wing pseudo journalist working at one of the cult owner papers or whatever wrote that the Biden admin was going to do this, and said that some Biden official confirmed it.
Facts are, harm reduction money was going to be used for kits. Almost all harm reduction kits that actually exist include pipes. These ones probably would have. It does not appear that any Biden official actually confirmed they would. It's not even clear that the Biden admin would be responsible for deciding what is in the kits! Probably various state, local, and non profit orgs would be actually be setting up the kits using Federal money.
In response to the Right Wing Scare of The Week, saying that Biden would be giving "crack addicts" "crack pipes" the Biden admin entered into Democratic dumb shit mode and started both promising they would never do a good thing ever, and frankly, are offended you would even accuse them of helping people, and also Calling for the Refs to please please please just tell everyone they weren't going to do it because the Biden admin had NEVER explicitly said that.
But here's the thing. It's good actually to give drug users pipes! While most news agencies spoke exclusively to Biden officials in backpedal mode and never anyone who could tell them what good policy is, some spoke to actual activists on the ground and harm reduction managers and they were told that most kits do include pipes and that pipes are in fact good.
1) New functional pipes are much better then old broken ones, or worse, having people smoke drugs out of pieces of a heated up coke can. People are much less likely to end up with cut lips or burns that increase disease transmission.
2) Where drugs can be both smoked and injected, the smoking of the drug is almost always safer then injections, a preference for having crack users smoke crack instead of inject it makes basic sense.
3) You want people to be getting these things from health workers for the same reason you want them getting clean needles. The harm reduction above happening is good, but specifically having drug users interact with health care workers and associate them positively is going to greatly increase the number of lives that can be saved and situations averted.
Now, in response, Joe Manchin and some republicans, and probably some democrats are pushing a law that would ban the use of government funds to buy pipes OR NEEDLES, so that's fucking fun.
A minor not to all this is that these have been explicitly cast as "Crack Pipes" because Crack is associated with black people and all these people are racist (by which I'm including all the powerful people in the Biden admin and all the reporters writing poorly about this), but obviously, the drugs that can be smoked include a bunch of drugs, including ones that WHITE PEOPLE use. (White people also use crack too but what you gonna do.)
The lesson here is that when someone accuses you of doing a good thing to help people, instead of swearing you would never help anyone, maybe actually make the actual ideological argument in support of a good thing instead of trying to Fact Check your way out of having to have a position on any policy.
Various amounts of money have been allocated by congress for "harm reduction" for drug users. The Biden admin was going to use some of that money to support drug kits that would have included pipes to drug users. Some right wing pseudo journalist working at one of the cult owner papers or whatever wrote that the Biden admin was going to do this, and said that some Biden official confirmed it.
Facts are, harm reduction money was going to be used for kits. Almost all harm reduction kits that actually exist include pipes. These ones probably would have. It does not appear that any Biden official actually confirmed they would. It's not even clear that the Biden admin would be responsible for deciding what is in the kits! Probably various state, local, and non profit orgs would be actually be setting up the kits using Federal money.
In response to the Right Wing Scare of The Week, saying that Biden would be giving "crack addicts" "crack pipes" the Biden admin entered into Democratic dumb shit mode and started both promising they would never do a good thing ever, and frankly, are offended you would even accuse them of helping people, and also Calling for the Refs to please please please just tell everyone they weren't going to do it because the Biden admin had NEVER explicitly said that.
But here's the thing. It's good actually to give drug users pipes! While most news agencies spoke exclusively to Biden officials in backpedal mode and never anyone who could tell them what good policy is, some spoke to actual activists on the ground and harm reduction managers and they were told that most kits do include pipes and that pipes are in fact good.
1) New functional pipes are much better then old broken ones, or worse, having people smoke drugs out of pieces of a heated up coke can. People are much less likely to end up with cut lips or burns that increase disease transmission.
2) Where drugs can be both smoked and injected, the smoking of the drug is almost always safer then injections, a preference for having crack users smoke crack instead of inject it makes basic sense.
3) You want people to be getting these things from health workers for the same reason you want them getting clean needles. The harm reduction above happening is good, but specifically having drug users interact with health care workers and associate them positively is going to greatly increase the number of lives that can be saved and situations averted.
Now, in response, Joe Manchin and some republicans, and probably some democrats are pushing a law that would ban the use of government funds to buy pipes OR NEEDLES, so that's fucking fun.
A minor not to all this is that these have been explicitly cast as "Crack Pipes" because Crack is associated with black people and all these people are racist (by which I'm including all the powerful people in the Biden admin and all the reporters writing poorly about this), but obviously, the drugs that can be smoked include a bunch of drugs, including ones that WHITE PEOPLE use. (White people also use crack too but what you gonna do.)
The lesson here is that when someone accuses you of doing a good thing to help people, instead of swearing you would never help anyone, maybe actually make the actual ideological argument in support of a good thing instead of trying to Fact Check your way out of having to have a position on any policy.
