On a separate note - will someone please (nicely) explain to me what the controversy is that's expected in the comments? (preferably without igniting said controversy.) I know I can be naive at times, but I'm not really sure what is controversial about this.
Calling out the excesses and irresponsibility of the activist class takes nerve for a journalist these days. Kudos to Adam for staying on the case. I'm sure there are some days when he is made very uncomfortable for doing so. And credit to The Line for publishing his reporting.
Jesus H. Christ. This is one wild piece of journalism. I’ve been a fan of Zivo for quite a while. This is like Zivo unchained. You couldn’t publish this in the NP. I’m liking the direction here Matt and Jen.
Checking back after a couple of days in the USEh (speaking engagement in Montana) and it appears my bet on our Line Editors being busy in this comment thread was a good one. Unsurprisingly so.
Adam, I appreciate your article in the broader context of our seeming 'acceptance' of the use of illegal and destructive drugs. I grew up in the big city during the late 60's and early 70's when drugs were just begining to show up in high schools. I lost a school chum who tried to stop a train when high and watched other classmates gradually slip away from school to get stoned with the expected results.
I have watched the war on drugs fail to control the use of them. I have watched drug (I include alcohol in the group) use destroy people's lives adn all the while health authorities preached against drug use - remember the "This is yuour brain on drugs" ads??
What shocks me now is our apparent belief that condoning drug use, providing 'safe' injection sites and 'legalizing' posession of small amounts of controlled substances for personal use is going to solve the problem! Providing drugs to drug users or providing a 'safe' place for them to use is like giveng alcohol to an alcoholic and expecting that to help him/her quit using. If a politician actually stood and said "our government will provide alcohol in 'safe' use bars to alcoholics and we will also provide chips and sugary pop to the obese to help them change their lives" there would be an outcry and accusations of insanity. Propose to provide drugs to addicts or to encourage the sorts of activities you mention and you are a progressive hero who shouldnot be questioned. What sort of Alice in Wonderland thinking is that???
I don't believe we should be locking up drug users but I do believe we shold not be encouraging drug use - period. Let's provide rehab sites but let's stop promoting the acceptance of the use.
The original point of harm reduction was to give addicts free drugs so they wouldn’t be mugging people and breaking into houses to steal stuff for drug money. The focus of harm reduction was the non-drug-using society that was getting robbed by druggies. We didn’t care if the addicts OD’d and died. One less thief.
Nowadays harm reduction focuses entirely on the addict, regarding him as a precious human being who needs to be saved from himself no matter the harm done to the rest of us. With predictable results.
I hear you Susan and you are correct yet we have seen no reduction in crime at all let alone a reduction in drug related crime. Regina has a needle exchange program, and has had for years, yet I have seen no documentation of any positive outcome. I recognize that proving that by doing this (needle exchange) we prevented that (HIV for example).
I don't know what the answer is but what we are doing is not working.
Drugs are just so cheap now and the stigma around them has eroded. Back in the 1970s, a heroin habit cost $100 a day. (John Prine mentioned it in his song, "Sam Stone.") An addict had to steal maybe 4 times that to raise the $100 from a fence. Every day. Nowadays fentanyl and meth cost so little. Michael Shellenberger says $10 a day will feed a meth habit in San Francisco, and fentanyl is really cheap because enormous quantities take up very little space and can be transported without much risk of detection and seizure. So the dealers and wholesalers can make good profit off much lower sale prices than they had to charge for heroin back when we were learning about drugs (preferably learning not to take them!) It got so that the money for a heroin drug deal took up more space in the car trunks of the players than the bales of drug packages. (No room for the guns!) That was why Canadian $1000 bills were popular, and why they have been taken out of circulation because that became their only use.
And of course the appearance of HIV now means that there are very costly externalities from i.v. drug use. It costs society much more than it used to and we feel we have to make costly efforts to control it. If you were trying to imagine that a hostile foreign power was making war on us it would be hard not to be convinced. Flood the country with cheap poisons and it's not so much the users but the larger non-using society that rots out from within.
This may not be directly related to the topic of Adam Zivo's piece but maybe it's safer to talk about.
With respect though, funding should not be “reevaluated”. It should be cut immediately, permanently and all those running such groups be permanently blacklisted so no organization can receive public funding of any kind if they are associated with those people.
The reason is trust.
They have gone so far beyond acceptable that trust can never be reestablished. The public and the government can only trust entirely different organizations with entirely new people. There are good people who can do this.
A “harm reduction “ group promoting meth orgies is like an anti child abuse org that promotes trafficking children in “safe” ways. You don’t “reevaluate”. You eliminate because the trust can never be restored.
I've got a relatively permissive attitude towards adults consuming drugs if they can do it in a way that doesn't make them a menace and a burden to themselves and those around them, but that's fucked up.
Zoe Dodd is a documentary subject all on her own. She rejects the term activist and yet is unmistakably an activist for any number of left-leaning causes. Her affiliations with public health protest movements (Toronto Overdose Prevention Society) and legitimate institutions (Unity Health) are why media outlets grant her the title of "expert", but her stock in trade rhetoric is truly from the outer limits of society's fringes and ought to be discounted on its face.
I'm trying to imagine what this harm reduction philosophy would look like if it was applied to street racing? "We know that street racing is fun, and it can seem EVEN MORE FUN if you do it without wearing a seatbelt and the airbags disabled, but really you should try to wear the seatbelt if you can. And if you can keep your speeding less than twice the posted speed limit, that'll reduce the risk of you getting into a collision that could severely injure you or other drivers and bystanders."
In truth, society brought in seatbelt laws for anybody in a car because the idea that it was a personal risk is an illusion: too many people were getting maimed or killed in car crashes, imposing costs on society directly or through the damage to families losing providers or loved ones. Speeding is illegal and penalties are enforced because of the risk to other people. Harm reduction approaches have drawn their control boundaries too narrowly, focusing on harm to an individual without taking proper account of harm to a much larger number of others.
Susan's on ice for a week. Not for the comment above — that one was fine. But for two others I need to get rid of. I'm not going to spend any time explaining why. The effort would be wasted on those who need it explained to them and it serves no purpose for everyone else.
People promoting this in the name of progressivism are not much better than abusive parents suffering from Munchausen by proxy, so they can pretend to be caring when it comes time to help those poor suckers pick themselves up, when they're ones promoting the unhealthy practices in the first place.
To add insult to injury they then come crying for taxpayers' money.
You should all be ready to take the pitchforks out and demand accountability.
Thank you Adam. Having worked for fifteen plus years in Public Health and sexual health I’m not surprised by the content reported but a little surprised to find it here at The Line (bully for you!)
The subtle homophobia of “low expectations” applies. We can do better.
Commenters will behave or I’ll shut them down.
On a separate note - will someone please (nicely) explain to me what the controversy is that's expected in the comments? (preferably without igniting said controversy.) I know I can be naive at times, but I'm not really sure what is controversial about this.
(maybe it's controversial to admit that, haha)
Calling out the excesses and irresponsibility of the activist class takes nerve for a journalist these days. Kudos to Adam for staying on the case. I'm sure there are some days when he is made very uncomfortable for doing so. And credit to The Line for publishing his reporting.
Thanks for this Adam.
It is absolutely astonishing how the normalization of dangerous behaviour is happening under the progressivism fog that has seized western societies.
As you point out, simply looking at some of these things from a common sense angle makes them look insane.
I have stopped asking why. I just shake my head.
I think that one of the things I like about Adam's work is that he does shed some light on how we got here.
Wow wow and wow, what an eye opener; I’m just an 80 year old grandmother well connected with things or so I thought.
Jesus H. Christ. This is one wild piece of journalism. I’ve been a fan of Zivo for quite a while. This is like Zivo unchained. You couldn’t publish this in the NP. I’m liking the direction here Matt and Jen.
Gosh, there's a whole world out there that I am entirely unfamiliar with.
I’m sure it will be prominently featured in this year’s Pride Parade. Shouldn’t bother the trans gate-keepers too much I shouldn’t think.
From what I can see, Canada's "harm reduction" advocates are in fact usually advocating loudly in favour of some form of harm.
This is an important piece by Adam that quite clearly is an explicitly cautionary tale.
If you quite literally FA with chemsex you will FO it will not go well for you.
I'm betting our Line Editors will have a busy time moderating the comments on Adam's article.
Personally, I hope it reaches his intended audiences, for their own good.
Checking back after a couple of days in the USEh (speaking engagement in Montana) and it appears my bet on our Line Editors being busy in this comment thread was a good one. Unsurprisingly so.
Adam, I appreciate your article in the broader context of our seeming 'acceptance' of the use of illegal and destructive drugs. I grew up in the big city during the late 60's and early 70's when drugs were just begining to show up in high schools. I lost a school chum who tried to stop a train when high and watched other classmates gradually slip away from school to get stoned with the expected results.
I have watched the war on drugs fail to control the use of them. I have watched drug (I include alcohol in the group) use destroy people's lives adn all the while health authorities preached against drug use - remember the "This is yuour brain on drugs" ads??
What shocks me now is our apparent belief that condoning drug use, providing 'safe' injection sites and 'legalizing' posession of small amounts of controlled substances for personal use is going to solve the problem! Providing drugs to drug users or providing a 'safe' place for them to use is like giveng alcohol to an alcoholic and expecting that to help him/her quit using. If a politician actually stood and said "our government will provide alcohol in 'safe' use bars to alcoholics and we will also provide chips and sugary pop to the obese to help them change their lives" there would be an outcry and accusations of insanity. Propose to provide drugs to addicts or to encourage the sorts of activities you mention and you are a progressive hero who shouldnot be questioned. What sort of Alice in Wonderland thinking is that???
I don't believe we should be locking up drug users but I do believe we shold not be encouraging drug use - period. Let's provide rehab sites but let's stop promoting the acceptance of the use.
The original point of harm reduction was to give addicts free drugs so they wouldn’t be mugging people and breaking into houses to steal stuff for drug money. The focus of harm reduction was the non-drug-using society that was getting robbed by druggies. We didn’t care if the addicts OD’d and died. One less thief.
Nowadays harm reduction focuses entirely on the addict, regarding him as a precious human being who needs to be saved from himself no matter the harm done to the rest of us. With predictable results.
I hear you Susan and you are correct yet we have seen no reduction in crime at all let alone a reduction in drug related crime. Regina has a needle exchange program, and has had for years, yet I have seen no documentation of any positive outcome. I recognize that proving that by doing this (needle exchange) we prevented that (HIV for example).
I don't know what the answer is but what we are doing is not working.
Drugs are just so cheap now and the stigma around them has eroded. Back in the 1970s, a heroin habit cost $100 a day. (John Prine mentioned it in his song, "Sam Stone.") An addict had to steal maybe 4 times that to raise the $100 from a fence. Every day. Nowadays fentanyl and meth cost so little. Michael Shellenberger says $10 a day will feed a meth habit in San Francisco, and fentanyl is really cheap because enormous quantities take up very little space and can be transported without much risk of detection and seizure. So the dealers and wholesalers can make good profit off much lower sale prices than they had to charge for heroin back when we were learning about drugs (preferably learning not to take them!) It got so that the money for a heroin drug deal took up more space in the car trunks of the players than the bales of drug packages. (No room for the guns!) That was why Canadian $1000 bills were popular, and why they have been taken out of circulation because that became their only use.
And of course the appearance of HIV now means that there are very costly externalities from i.v. drug use. It costs society much more than it used to and we feel we have to make costly efforts to control it. If you were trying to imagine that a hostile foreign power was making war on us it would be hard not to be convinced. Flood the country with cheap poisons and it's not so much the users but the larger non-using society that rots out from within.
This may not be directly related to the topic of Adam Zivo's piece but maybe it's safer to talk about.
Good article.
With respect though, funding should not be “reevaluated”. It should be cut immediately, permanently and all those running such groups be permanently blacklisted so no organization can receive public funding of any kind if they are associated with those people.
The reason is trust.
They have gone so far beyond acceptable that trust can never be reestablished. The public and the government can only trust entirely different organizations with entirely new people. There are good people who can do this.
A “harm reduction “ group promoting meth orgies is like an anti child abuse org that promotes trafficking children in “safe” ways. You don’t “reevaluate”. You eliminate because the trust can never be restored.
I've got a relatively permissive attitude towards adults consuming drugs if they can do it in a way that doesn't make them a menace and a burden to themselves and those around them, but that's fucked up.
Thanks for shining a light on this.
Zoe Dodd is a documentary subject all on her own. She rejects the term activist and yet is unmistakably an activist for any number of left-leaning causes. Her affiliations with public health protest movements (Toronto Overdose Prevention Society) and legitimate institutions (Unity Health) are why media outlets grant her the title of "expert", but her stock in trade rhetoric is truly from the outer limits of society's fringes and ought to be discounted on its face.
I'm trying to imagine what this harm reduction philosophy would look like if it was applied to street racing? "We know that street racing is fun, and it can seem EVEN MORE FUN if you do it without wearing a seatbelt and the airbags disabled, but really you should try to wear the seatbelt if you can. And if you can keep your speeding less than twice the posted speed limit, that'll reduce the risk of you getting into a collision that could severely injure you or other drivers and bystanders."
In truth, society brought in seatbelt laws for anybody in a car because the idea that it was a personal risk is an illusion: too many people were getting maimed or killed in car crashes, imposing costs on society directly or through the damage to families losing providers or loved ones. Speeding is illegal and penalties are enforced because of the risk to other people. Harm reduction approaches have drawn their control boundaries too narrowly, focusing on harm to an individual without taking proper account of harm to a much larger number of others.
Susan's on ice for a week. Not for the comment above — that one was fine. But for two others I need to get rid of. I'm not going to spend any time explaining why. The effort would be wasted on those who need it explained to them and it serves no purpose for everyone else.
Demons truly live among us.
People promoting this in the name of progressivism are not much better than abusive parents suffering from Munchausen by proxy, so they can pretend to be caring when it comes time to help those poor suckers pick themselves up, when they're ones promoting the unhealthy practices in the first place.
To add insult to injury they then come crying for taxpayers' money.
You should all be ready to take the pitchforks out and demand accountability.
What would Forrest Gumps’ mother say?
Thank you Adam. Having worked for fifteen plus years in Public Health and sexual health I’m not surprised by the content reported but a little surprised to find it here at The Line (bully for you!)
The subtle homophobia of “low expectations” applies. We can do better.