Good news for Ottawa’s crack addicts and those who care whether they live or die: the province has stepped in with funding for our Crack Kit Program.
As you may recall, Ottawa City Council withdrew its share of funding for the program earlier this year. Evidently Council thought the lives of all of our addicts put together were worth less than $7,500, and believed taxpayers would rather pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat HIV and Hep C than a fraction of that to prevent it.
The province is providing $287,000 in funding for the program.
According to Jack McCarthy, director of Ottawa’s Somerset West Community Health Centre, the crack pipe program is an essential part of an integrated drug strategy, along with enforcement, treatment and prevention.
“Ottawa desperately needs a really integrated drug strategy, you can’t just do one without the other parts,” he said.
Ottawa is still sorely lacking at both the prevention and treatment ends of things, which is too bad because those focus on the ways in and out of addiction. All we’ve got is enforcement and harm reduction, which concentrate on active addicts, as if there’s nothing before or after addiction. Still, I think the crack kit program is a critical public health initiative, and I’m very pleased that the Ontario government agrees.
As far as I know, the Mayor has not yet officially responded to the news. He’s celebrating Christmas in Florida after announcing his engagement to a local real estate agent.
Tags:
She’s so successful that she has no active listings.
Meow, meow, regardless she is in the top five per cent of Royal LePage agents nationwide.
I just think that it is funny that they would use quotes from her own webpage to describe her…as an agent myself, I know how Royal LePage, RE/MAX etc awards work…it is in their favour to have as many award winning agents as possible on staff. There are awards for making not enough money to cover expenses. She may be a very good agent, but I just find it funny that they use her own words to describe her.
Good observation, however it is the press people that opted to use these words from a very ‘available’ source that is copied right of her Internet site! I always smirk when I see something like that on the Internet (her site), no date, no mention of the date she had this award. Heavens it could be the top 5 for 1993! I like current data not data that is allowed to appear current.
She’s so successful that she’s marrying a douche
Actually Kat, the new RECO rules insist that the dates that an award was won be included in the advertising. This was changed this year. Unless it is a Hall of Fame award which is forever, any award must have a year.
Why not have harm reduction and drug treatment programs financed by funds confiscated from drug dealers?
elmaks – that’s an intriguing idea. I wonder if any money confiscated by the criminal justice system is earmarked for any particular purpose?
We have the same problem with lack of funding here in Australia. I think the problem is twofold. First, governments are more concerned that helping citizens with health problems (like drug addictions) will make them look bad, and like they think drugs are a great idea than actaully helping said citizens.
Who don’t really count as memeber’s of our country/city/state/anything. being as they’re clearly worthless scum of humanity. Clearly. Becuase why else would they do drugs? Which leads into my next ppint.
Which is that there is a denial that drugs are fun. At least some of the time. And that people who do them, at least initially did them for a reason. And that reason is NOT that they are worthless human beings.
Drugs are always going to be around. Ignoring them won’t make them go away. governments are too fixated on ‘fixing’ an unfixable problem, instead of harm minimisation and realistic acts of helping.
Bah humbug, I say.