Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it - Albus Dumbledore
The Solution
Modern Society & Advertising
So how do we solve this massive drink and drug culture that we have. Ok so I think first and foremost we need to sort out our priorities i.e The fact that Alcohol costs the UK an estimated £3.5bn in NHS costs, yet nothing will be done about it because alcohol laces the governments pockets to the tune of about £14.6bn in tax revenues. Therefore it is not in the governments best interests money wise to address the problem. When it comes to drugs as well I believe that instead of looking up on drugs as a criminal problem we need to instead address drug addiction through healthcare and education. The legal status of a drug is irrelevant, if an addict really wants to use at most the legality of a drug is a minor inconvenience. We should focus more attention on treatment of the addiction and in educating people to the risks of addiction especially our younger generation. I shall speak more about the eduction side of things in a further post.
One massive thing I think we can do is to follow Canada’s example and open at least 1 site per major city where addicts can go and use drugs safely and supervised, that way we can ensure they are using clean new needles and uncut substances to prevent illness, also if a user was to overdose there would be medical staff on hand. Not only that but we could also have recovery professionals there for users who know they need to stop to reach out to for help. There is a place in Vancouver, below is an article about it;
Vancouver Offers Drug Users a Safe Place to Shoot Up
In an effort to reduce HIV rates that were approaching development-world levels, a government-run facility in the Canadian city welcomes people to use illegal substances under the supervision of medical professionals. In the United States, there's perennial controversy surrounding harm-reduction programs -- the idea that governments should try to mitigate the dangers of certain behaviours, even if those behaviours are inherently risky. Free condoms may reduce teen pregnancies, but critics argue that they encourage more kids to have sex. Needle-exchange programs might decrease drug addicts' risk of contracting HIV and other diseases, but opponents say they're a government-approved green-light to shoot up.
In Canada, there's one public health facility that makes the debate over needle exchanges seem quaint. This year marks the 10th anniversary of a government-run facility in Vancouver that provides drug addicts a safe place to use heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances under the supervision of medical professionals. The facility, called Insite, is located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest parts of Canada. Funded by the British Columbia Ministry of Health, Insite is run by Vancouver Coastal Health, the regional health authority, in conjunction with the Portland Hotel Society, a nonprofit serving people with mental health and addiction issues. It was opened largely in response to rising HIV rates among intravenous drug users that were approaching developing-world levels. The inside of the facility is simple, clean and well-lit, something like a cross between a test-taking facility and a dentist's waiting room. There's a central nurses desk and 12 booths where visitors can inject themselves. The facility doesn't provide illegal substances, but it does give drug users clean syringes, filters, tourniquets and other paraphernalia. Nurses and doctors don't inject the drugs, but they closely monitor visitors while they do. In 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 12,000 people made 312,000 visits to the facility. There's typically a line to get in before the site opens its doors at 10 a.m. Safe injection sites have been around for a couple decades, mostly in Europe. But for years they operated largely in a legal gray area -- funded perhaps by local health authorities and ignored by police, but lacking outright legal approval. In the past 10 years, that's begun to change. Starting around 2000, countries including Germany, Norway and Spain began granting full legal sanctions to safe injection sites. Today there are roughly 90 such facilities in Europe and Australia.
Insite has been controversial; Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a critic. There have been repeated efforts to shut it down. In 2011, however, a Canadian Supreme Court ruling essentially cleared all of the legal hurdles facing the facility.
Officials describe Insite as the "first rung on the ladder" from chronic drug addiction to recovery. Once drug users enter the facility, they may be likelier to take advantage of counselling, housing assistance, addiction services and mental health treatment -- all of which Insite staff helps to arrange. No users have ever died at Insite, and in 2010 the staff helped intervene in 221 overdoses. "These are marginalised people," says Anna Marie D'Angelo of Vancouver Coastal Health. About half the patrons are homeless, living in shelters or suffering from untreated mental health conditions. "They've been disconnected from society in lots of ways for many years. The idea is to slowly build up their trust."
As for alcohol there aren’t many things that can be done to stop drinking happening other then to prohibiting alcohol , but as America famously showed this did not work one little bit.
What about advertising?
Ok so one of the first things I feel we need to do is to have a watershed on alcohol advertising so that ad’s can’t be shown during live football or sport coverage or whilst minors might still be awake and watching TV. Secondly we need to address how alcohol is placed in shops, it should be 1 dedicated aisle, not stacks of on offer beer the second you walk through the door. Also i feel we should have warnings on alcohol products about the harms just like we do with cigarettes and the information on how many units are in a product should be more poignant for people to see instead of a tiny bit of small print. We also need to address the advertising alcohol law, at the moment its glamourised like its a good thing to drink, makes you a winner etc like i spoke about in my previous post. We need to follow other countries example which is as follows;
Advertising around the world
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has specified that the advertising and promotion of alcohol needs to be controlled. In September 2005, the WHO Euro Region adopted a Framework for Alcohol Policy for the Region. This has 5 ethical principles which includes "All children and adolescents have the right to grow up in an environment protected from the negative consequences of alcohol consumption and, to the extent possible, from the promotion of alcoholic beverages".[4]
Cross-border television advertising within the European Union was previously regulated by the 1989 Television without Frontiers Directive,[5] a harmonisation measure designed to remove barriers to international trade as part of the common market. Article 15 of this Directive sets out the restrictions on alcohol advertising:
- it may not be aimed specifically at minors or, in particular, depict minors consuming these beverages;
- it shall not link the consumption of alcohol to enhanced physical performance or to driving;
- it shall not create the impression that the consumption of alcohol contributes towards social or sexual success;
- it shall not claim that alcohol has therapeutic qualities or that it is a stimulant, a sedative or a means of resolving personal conflicts;
- it shall not encourage immoderate consumption of alcohol or present abstinence or moderation in a negative light;
- it shall not place emphasis on high alcoholic content as being a positive quality of the beverages.
This article on alcohol advertising restrictions is implemented in each EU country largely through the self-regulatory bodies dealing with advertising.
The EU law 'TV without Frontiers' Directive has subsequently been expanded to cover new media formats such as digital television. Now called the 'Audiovisual Media Services Directive', the provisions regarding restrictions on alcohol advertising are laid out in Article 22 and are identical to the above.
Some countries, such as France, Norway, Russia,Ukraine,India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka,and Kenya have banned all alcohol advertising on television and billboard.
We also need awareness adverts like the following;
So thats it for todays blog post, I will write more soon, take care x
-Recovery is a process, it takes time, it takes patience, it takes everything you’ve got!
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