New York City Offers A "How-To" Guide for Illegal Drug Use
Usually it takes some insider knowledge on how to use illegal drugs, but the New York City Health Department has decided to give users all the proper steps to injecting themselves with such substances. In 2007, the New York City Health Department published a pamphlet on how to correctly use the illegal drug heroine. According to CNN.com, the health department published about 70,000 of these how-to guides, which were distributed to local homeless shelters, clinics, and other facilities. According to Erin, associate press secretary at the NYC Health Department, “The pamphlet provides potential life-saving advice for people until they get into treatment. The advice consists of ten critical tips for reducing the harm that illicit drug use, and especially injection drug use can cause, such as how to prevent overdose and prevent the spread of HIV infection.” If the health department is trying to prevent the problems arising from drug use, then why are they publishing a how to pamphlet using $32,139 of government money to tell people how to use heroin correctly and then telling them how to react if they overdose?
This sounds like a big deal that the NYC health department is publishing such a packet, but the health department says, “Accidental overdoses is the fourth leading cause of early adult death in New York City, claiming more than six hundred lives each year.” The health department is expressing that it is important to have this pamphlet to help prevent the use of heroine. Doesn’t the phrase “it’s like a drug” mean that something is very addicting? You have to see this pamphlet for yourself! I don’t know about you, but after I read the pamphlet, I learned almost all there is to safely inject heroin into my blood system and become hooked. The NYC health department may have had good intentions for publishing this document, thinking that it would lower the number of people overdosing. According to the health department, “Unintentional overdose deaths declined by twenty-five percent from 2006 through 2008 in New York City, representing at least two hundred fewer deaths.” Did the pamphlet cause the number of overdoses to decrease? One can only guess that the pamphlet had an impact, however, other factors certainly may have been at play. The catch is that more people could have become addicted to heroine by reading exactly how to use it. The pamphlet even tells the reader where to get the syringes and the supplies needed for the full “experience.”
The average person who was a little curious might get a hold of one of these pamphlets and have full knowledge of how to use heroine. Perhaps a better way to prevent heroine use would be to enforce the laws that crackdown on illegal drug selling and usage instead of giving out a step-by-step guide for using it correctly. The health department is telling addicts how to use heroine correctly, hoping that the addicts will change. However, the addicts are not going to change because they are hooked on the drug. If the health department wants to get down and dirty with the heroine issue, why doesn’t the health department regulate the syringe exchange program, which is one of the ways many users get free syringes and supplies for injecting themselves?
The health department also stated, “[The pamphlet] in 2007 [is intended to] help people who are injecting drugs to reduce the harm associated with this type of drug use until they are able to get into treatment and recovery.” That statement does make some sense. The health department wants to keep the heroine addicts alive as long as possible with the hopes of the addicts finding help. Maybe the pamphlet will help prevent some people from killing themselves and eventually they’ll hear the Word of Christ. The pamphlet may be a survival guide to those who desperately want to change their ways and escape the trap of heroine that has them in shackles. This could be a chance for Christians to minister to the addicted and provide them with a way to change their hearts before the sin that so easily entangles them takes over.
The NYC Health Department published an almost perfect “how-to” guide on how to use heroine. The heroine pamphlet is for people who are currently addicted. However, it does not stress the fact that taking heroine is wrong. Instead, it goes along with the idea that taking illegal drugs is perfectly safe and normal. The pamphlet is a very dangerous document because it gives most of the proper tools and supplies needed for the experience and could be a small spark that builds up to a fire of new heroine addicts. The pamphlet was a intended to help addicts quit and recover, but maybe it can also be an important survival guide for salvation of these users. Although poorly executed, this pamphlet just might be the only thing that keeps them alive.