Because Drug Users Deserve to Die
(posted by Mona)
Reason’s Radley Balko on why drug warriors — including those in the White House — don’t want to see an antidote to heroin overdose made widely available; it would reduce the number of people who end up in the ER and/or dying. Ameliorating fear by reducing overdose deaths is, doncha know, immoral. If an overdosed person can counter the problem at home, s/he won’t be put in touch with the medical system that will rehab them. Better, oh by far, to risk that they DIE.
As Balko sums it up: “…drug warriors are willing to write off the loss of human life as collateral damage and engage in all sorts of morally dubious practices in order to prove their point.”
Or: Destroy the addicts in order to save them. (And yeah, yeah, I know the drug warrior response is that the addict is destroying himself. In this context such a retort is depraved.)