Last week in Milton, Wisconsin, three eighth-grade children overdosed on Heroin (which they believed to be Cocaine) in a park right outside of the local Police Department. Sadly two of these three boys are dead. However one child was very lucky and his life was saved because of a nearby Heroin addict. This "junkie" had a drug called Narcan, or Naloxone. He used it to resuscitate the young man. You may have read about Narcan in the listings on sites like MAP (
http://mapinc.org); it is a miracle pill (or a solution) which instantly begins to reverse a heroin overdose and saves the user's life.
If you have indeed read about Narcan before today, you would know that the American government wants to control Narcan almost to the point of scheduling it right up there with Heroin (and don't rule that out, either.) A lot of people in government would like junkies to simply drop dead, you see. Some of these people actually try to argue that it should only be in the hands of paramedics and not available to the public, because they are not trained health professionals. As if NOT DYING was ever a poor health decision. Even when delivered with a syringe, while sober, Naloxone does no harm.
The (unnamed) Heroin Hero of Milton, WI would have never been able to save this child's life had the bureaucrats in his district managed to abuse him as badly as those in other parts of the country. Now he is saving lives. Even if you
still want him to die, you have to be glad he lived this long.
My problem is that I had to glean this whole angle from about three or four lines of the sourced article. The event hasn't triggered anything but the standard Heroin discourse anywhere but here yet, and it probably won't. It focuses on the children who died and mentions the survivor so briefly, it's as if the subject was changed.
Even the cops have trouble admitting it happened:
The addict "did save this kid's life, more than likely," said Lt. John Conger.
I'm not glad anyone is dead, but still I hope the addict had more than a single dose of Narcan. Imagine having to decide which child's life to save.
That one kid was lucky, for sure. But if the guy hadn't had any Narcan in his pocket, he could have just performed rescue breathing (CPR without the chest compressions) for a few minutes until paramedics arrived who do have narcan and know how to administer the stuff and what side effects to look for and how to handle them if they occur. Come to think of it, why didn't someone else perform rescue breathing for the other 2 kids so they would still be alive.
I think our government has gone nuts when it comes to drug regulation, but you have got to balance that with some common sense. Some drugs are not innocuous. Just ask Michael Jackson.
... It's not a war on (some) drugs, it's a war on minorities. HAD that heroin been legal and regulated, it'd be damn near impossible for kids to get it, short of stealing it from their parents, who shouldn't be parents anyway if they leave heroin laying around UNSECURED WHERE A CHILD CAN GET IT, like a gun. Just like a gun. Read tinyurl.com/1mn for the real history behind the 'war on (some) drugs.' (Hint: it's not a war on some drugs, it's a war on minorities to recoup the lost of slave labor by replacing it with prison labor.)
You're looking at it from a pretty narrow point of view. There are people out there that have overcome their drug habits, gone on to lead productive and full lives and are in no way someone who "deserve" to just drop dead.
No one can predict the future and as Rev.Ford pointed out, if someone goes through the terrifying ordeal of OD'ing and happens to be saved from Narcan, who's to say they won't have a new-found clarity on life?
The "junkies" that you obviously envision every Heroin addict as, are going to continue to abuse H regardless of a life-saving drug like this being around. No one is going to choose to overdose just because this is around, and that's just an ignorant statement. It's not like getting drunk and passing out and having some quick "sober up" pill around for you.
Try to open your mind a bit.
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