“Harm reduction” programs often cause terrible harm.
But sometimes they also are beyond absurd. Like this example: Canadian prisons are going to distribute paper straws to inmates for use while snorting drugs. From the National Post story:
The Correctional Service of Canada has confirmed that paper straws will soon be distributed in federal prisons to facilitate safe snorting of drugs.
This week a social media post included photos of a memo distributed to Corrections staff stating that paper straws were being newly “introduced” for “safer snorting” and “intended for inhaling substances in powdered form or inhaling vapour from heated substances.”
Don’t take drugs while imprisoned, but if you do, use a paper straw! Good grief.
How will paper straws reduce harm exactly?
The explanation provided was that paper straws will “reduce harm” by lessening the risk of internal nose cuts that could occur from homemade or plastic straws and reduce infections from diseases such as hepatitis B and C, while “recognizing that overdose and toxicity risk remain.”
The dreaded nasal passage cut! Oh, the humanity.
Well, Wesley, Canada has gone nuts in so many ways. Not our problem.
Oh no? Ludicrous progressive ideas are more virulent than the measles virus. I doubt it will be long before our own harm-reducing drug-use facilitators take up the anti-nasal-cut humanitarian cause.
Let’s take a survey. Which U.S. state and city will be first to hand out paper straws to prisoners for drug snorting? I say Oregon and Seattle.