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Spanking The Lindesmith

Thursday, June 16, 2005 - dr.bomb

The Beasts(tm) of the "harm reduction" Movement.

The faces of the "harm reduction" movement.
(Still from Rational Recovery's DVD:
"Rational Recovery Defends the Untreatables")

While browsing the other side's web I found a site which is nothing more than where America's drug policy is heading when the irresolute drunks and druggies mandate our drug policies. Lindesmith.org is a pro-drug website which does what it can to support drug use underneath the guise of "responsible" and "medical" use.

Their current wet dream in potential politcal policymaking is the idea of "harm reduction" which, if anything else, is nothing more than a policy of AMORAL PUBLIC-SUBSIDISED DRUG USE (complete with medical supervision while getting the fix).

Now, I don't care if someone gets ripped, loaded and frothing-at-the-mouth fixed-up. That's their business and they're free to do as they want with their lives and bodies. What I DO take issue with is having my money fund another's fix, having these ticking time bombs harm some innocent person while they were too wasted to have the common sense to just sleep it off or my money spent on giving these people indoctrination into a highly destructive religious cult which teaches that they were never responsible for getting loaded in the first place.

It's an American tragedy, laid bare, in a point-by-point rebuttal to their "harm reduction" web page:


Harm reduction is a public health philosophy that seeks to lessen the dangers that drug abuse and our drug policies cause to society. A harm reduction strategy is a comprehensive approach to drug abuse and drug policy. Harm reduction's complexity lends to its misperception as a drug legalization tool.

Lindesmith.org is half-right and half-assed on this and many other points. Instead of doing the right thing and just telling the problem drug users to KNOCK IT OFF ONCE AND FOR ALL this counter-movement decides to adopt a defeatist attitude: "Yeah, we'll never get them to give it up so we might as well concede to their appetite for destruction...but we'll try to lessen the consequences." It's the antithesis of "health philosophy" and more along the lines of "the pleasure principle, damn the costs to whatever the market can bear".

The irony is that this movement is comprised of active addicts who are currently using. This is in contrast to the recovery group movement who are merely sober between binges/fixes. So while the latter movement boasts a self-proclaimed 5% success rate (read as a 95% FAILURE RATE), the former boasts a ZERO ABSTINENCE RATE!

Once you know these facts, you realize it's not a complex issue at all. They're just highly delusional IMMORAL idiots who regard the act of understanding the MORAL difference between RIGHT and WRONG as being too complex for their own drug-addled minds! The ultimate tragedy is that this policy is slowly being adopted by American society itself as a panacea to the failed "War On Some Drugs". It's not legalization but it sure does what it can to take the moral sitigma out of being a degenerate druggie/drunk actively engaged within their hedonistic behavior.

* Harm reduction rests on several basic assumptions. A basic tenet of harm reduction is that there has never been, is not now, and never will be a drug-free society.

My case here, which proves that "harm reduction" is a failure right from the start, rests upon a basic proven assertion that people are free to choose between being intoxicated or not. Liberty, in the form of one's own free will and the exercise thereof, is as obvious as the sky is blue. Anything which infringes upon that is doomed to fail for one simple reason: When feeling deprived of choice, people want to feel better, no matter what!

Besides, if drugs will be here forever, then what's the problem? One should learn to live with them and learning self-restraint to never put those drugs into one's own body in the first place!

* A harm reduction strategy seeks pragmatic solutions to the harms that drugs and drug policies cause. It has been said that harm reduction is not what's nice, it's what works.

Unfortunately, what "works" within the current "treatment" paradigm doesn't and what does work is never given enough exposure, much less even utilized to begin with! Only an irresolute drunk/druggie would consider total lifetime abstinence as "not nice". That's the only form of harm reduction available which is risk free and removes self-inflicted harm to one's self and society at large from unrestrained drug/alcohol use.

Lifetime abstinence is what the fully loaded drunks/druggies and indoctrinated cultists of both the "harm reduction" and recovery group movement fear. They want to keep the option open for future intoxication open within their lives, as if they didn't experience enough bad consequences already from their own debaucherous behavior.

* A harm reduction approach acknowledges that there is no ultimate solution to the problem of drugs in a free society, and that many different interventions may work. Those interventions should be based on science, compassion, health and human rights.

There is no drug problem! Lindesmith.org said so already! If there has "never been, is not now, and never will be a drug-free society" then drugs in our society is normal by default! So what's the problem? I'll bet it's Lindesmith.org's own collective irresolute asses who wants fixes right now and wants to blame anything and anyone else other than themselves when they get themselves into an intoxicant-induced problem!

These people are a problem when they choose the risky and ever fleeting thrill of intoxication over the trials, tribulations and authentic sensory experiences, both good and bad, of life itself and refusing to take responsibility for their own actions. People drink and drug to enjoy the pleasure of the intoxicant and how it appears to enhance other sensory pleasures as well. Sometimes they enjoy it too much and get into trouble. To provide an explanation outside of that is the ultimate evasion of the obvious truth: People intoxicate themselves to feel better. It's the pleasure principle: People naturally want to feel better instead of feeling bad or merely okay. It's normal, indeed quite human, to feel that way!

Interventions, no matter how numerous, are failures when they do not take that fact into consideration and simply leave the person broken down and feeling worse. The current crop of interventions within the context of someone else's idea of "drug abuse" is not only an affront to science, compassion, health and human rights but also to human decency and dignity.

* A harm reduction strategy demands new outcome measurements. Whereas the success of current drug policies is primarily measured by the change in use rates, the success of a harm reduction strategy is measured by the change in rates of death, disease, crime and suffering.

The ONLY criterion of a successful drug policy is a dedication to permanent lifetime abstinence: When people just flat out KNOCK IT OFF ONCE AND FOR ALL (my drug policy) then everything else falls into place such as lower crime rates, less instances of actual human disease borne from risky behavior during the act of intoxication and suffering (we'll always have death though, after all death is a part of life itself). Since our current drug policies are failures based within the pseudoscience snake oil quackery of the Buchmanite-based recovery group movement and its business arm, the addiction treatment industry, any measure of any other statistic is an evasion of the obvious truth.

In other words, within the context of "harm reduction", keep using the same current ineffective strategies while not holding the problem user responsible over their own intoxication but just measure anything and everything else instead of the money shot of abstinence. Same problem, different "New And Improved" packaging. 100% pure unadulterated Bill$h!t!

* Because incarceration does little to reduce the harms that ever-present drugs cause to our society, a harm reduction approach favors treatment of drug addiction by health care professionals over incarceration in the penal system.

Incarceration itself only results in people becoming more skilled in crime itself by the hardened criminals used to life in exile from free society itself and more of a burden on the state itself. The fear of incarceration and its own curtailment of one's own personal liberties keeps most people on the level. It's when that risk of incarceration is worth the soothing pleasure of that intoxicated state of being in lieu of life's other less risky pleasures. This involves the irrational belief that there are no other choices available for pleasure! This leads one to not just being a slave to the intoxicants with the false belief that there is no other choice to do without but, eventually, a slave (yes, dependency) to the system itself. As Lindesmith.org stated earlier, drugs within our society is normal. It's the overindulgent drug-user, and the system which aids and abets that person's problem habit of intoxication, which are the problems!

The only cure to addiction is to end that problematic dependency and to become independent by learning to live without that poison. That means recognizing and exercising one's innate freedom of choice and accepting full responsibility of one's own actions and the consequences which result from those choices. The moment one KNOCKS IT OFF ONCE AND FOR ALL is one giant leap forward from addiction in their previous life and a jump-start into a new life of virtuous liberation!

Unfortunately, the "harm reduction" movement wants to move from a mandated prison/welfare state which our current "War on Some Drugs" dictates to a mandated therapeutic state based in evasions regarding one's own desire to intoxicate. There is ZERO effective treatment against the desire for pleasure just as much as there is no medical treatment for addiction. The desire for pleasure is the desire for life itself! Some people just get intoxication confused for life, that's all. All one needs to do is to change their behavior by first changing their irrational belief that intoxication is really necessary to begin with.

* Because some drugs, such as marijuana, have proven medicinal uses, a harm reduction strategy not only seeks to reduce the harm that drugs cause, but also to maximize their potential benefits.

Alcohol and other recreational drugs' primary effect is pleasure! Pleasure, in and of itself, is not harmful. It just feels better. Side effects, such as DUI's and other drug-related crime to legal and financial hardships right on down to contracting REAL diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis and AIDS, and ultimately death itself, can result from one's own poor choices regarding irresponsible intoxication. Comparing and confusing medical drugs with recreational drugs does nothing more than to blur the issue of drug use in general and serves as a red herring.

What's the benefit of "harm reduction" within that context? More of the pleasure with none of the guilt from those nasty side effects? Are physicians going to start issuing prescriptions for pleasure-inducing fixes instead of bonafide treatment for medical ailments? Are we going to start subsidizing the procurement of a junkie's implements for that fix? Actually, we're on that track now.

Needle exchange programs, under the ghoulish threat of "pay for and give the junkie clean needles or more AIDS outbreaks will occur, you heartless normie cretin", are here now. Note that it's we, the taxpayers, footing the bill for a junkie's clean fix within a private sterile taxpayer-subsidised room (out of sight, out of mind...while the medical establishment lets the Hippocratic Oath burn in the process) and absolving the junkie of any personal responsibility to buy their own damn needles or shooting up in the privacy of some other shelter! They can afford the drug! They can certainly also afford the responsibility of avoiding all of the nasty side effects of their bad habit on their own dime and in their own time. Their fix. Their problem. It's their choice to either choose between a life free from the complications of their fixing or to endure them in pursuit of pleasure.

* A harm reduction strategy recognizes that some drugs, such as marijuana, are less harmful than others, such as cocaine and alcohol. Harm reduction mandates that the emphasis on intervention should be based on the relative harmfulness of the drug to society.

The specific pleasure-providing drugs are irrelevant. The mandate for Authentic Harm Reduction (AHR) is for someone to realize, no matter what their drug of choice is, that if their intoxication is giving them those nasty side effects mentioned earlier then that person should realize what they did or are currently doing is flat-out WRONG! To keep persistently engaging within that same problem behavior over and over is WRONG and therefore IMMORAL! To make the MORAL decision to KNOCK IT OFF ONCE AND FOR ALL and to stick by that decision, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for one lifetime at a time, is RIGHT! MORALITY itself is defined by one knowing the difference between RIGHT and WRONG and acting accordingly!

Clearly IMMORAL people who can't and won't see the difference between RIGHT and WRONG and prove it through their actions should be punished with impunity. If they can't learn to control their own volitional behaviors then and only then should the state intervene and control them through incarceration. Only they are the truly hardened criminals who deserve being locked away from society for as long as possible.

* A harm reduction approach advocates lessening the harms of drugs through education, prevention, and treatment.

In other words, take the burden of responsibility off of the user and blame the inanimate drug itself by spreading fear-based and highly misleading drug propaganda, mandatory sentencing into the therapeutic state if that person was intoxicated while they were committing their crime and engage within clearly unconstitutional cult-based religious indoctrination. All of this has failed in reducing drug-related recidivism within society.

* Harm reduction seeks to reduce the harms of drug policies dependent on an over-emphasis on interdiction, such as arrest, incarceration, establishment of a felony record, lack of treatment, lack of adequate information about drugs, the expansion of military source control intervention efforts in other countries, and intrusion on personal freedoms.

If someone is causing problems with their own debaucherous need to self intoxicate time and time again, despite the consequences, and refuses to KNOCK IT OFF (much less learn how) then they need to be put as far away from our free law-abiding society for as long as possible.

Some of the best diversions away from addiction are the bad consequences of that behavior. Where it's self-imposed or state-imposed punishment, a zero-tolerance reprimand or revocation is an effective deterrent. The only people it won't work upon are people who refuse to make a MORAL decision between RIGHT (abstinence) and WRONG (intoxication). All of the information (more likely propaganda) won't make a difference when the person is an IMMORAL self-indulgent careless self-intoxicating asshole whose own behavior is clearly harming or has harmed someone else. They ultimately have the choice not to be an asshole to begin with!

In that case, they don't deserve personal freedom since they're making the free decision to choose WRONG over RIGHT. They deserve to be incarcerated so that someone else can control their own behavior which they choose not to control. Maybe they'll learn to be responsible for once in their life and KNOCK IT OFF for good! THEN we'll trust them to live responsibly within our free society.

* Harm reduction also seeks to reduce the harms caused by an over-emphasis on prohibition, such as increased purity, black market adulterants, black market sale to minors, and black market crime.

It's what the free market within the prohibition era bears for the price of substance addiction and this is the only point which Lindesmith.org gets correct.

Prohibition never worked with alcohol and has tragically failed within our "War On Some Drugs". Instead of legalization or medicalization of drugs why not just decriminalize them? The drugs are not the problem. It's the IMMORAL people who do stupid things too damn often and cause harm due to their own intoxicated state of being.

When people believe that they have no choice they're willing to pay any price for that pleasure. Any price.

* A harm reduction strategy seeks to protect youth from the dangers of drugs by offering factual, science-based drug education and eliminating youth's black market exposure to drugs.

Currently, such "factual, science-based" education does not exist short of this and other critical websites. Either the propaganda offered as "education" is in the form of putting a smiley face on fascism through dogmatic support of the prison/welfare state via programs such as D.A.R.E. or the propaganda offered as the "facts" on drugs and drug abuse in the form of dogma straight from the intensely religious cult-based 12-Step recovery group movement and its business arm, the addiction treatment industry, which financially benefits from being a part of the therapeutic state.

Neither will mention the real reason why people intoxicate themselves: "To feel better!" It's pure ineffable pleasure! That is the primary effect of recreational drugs!

Instead there is a generation of kids, brought up hearing only the dark side of drug and alcohol use that will experiment, discover the pleasure and regard all of that dogmatic propaganda as the Bill$h!t that it is. It's times such as this where it helps to have well-educated and responsible parents who can tell their kids the truth and tell them not to engage in such adult pleasures until they actually become adults.

Sadly, as responsible parenting and the need for emphasis on critical thinking skills flies out the window and hits the pavement in a bloody heap, rendering our once vital former democracy into a victimocracy, someone or something has to clean up the mess. The tragedy is that no one minds the mounting carnage.

* Finally, harm reduction seeks to restore basic human dignity to dealing with the disease of addiction.

There never was, nor will there ever be an entity known as the "disease of addiction". The most dignified thing a problem drug user can do is to simply KNOCK IT OFF ONCE AND FOR ALL! To claim that the problem user is powerless over their behavior, that they can't handle life without their intoxicant of choice, are insane and that only other people, places and things can help them is not dignified. In fact, the disease mythology is the perfect excuse for future intoxication!

The problem is one's own dependency on intoxicants. The solution to that problem is to learn how to live independently away from the need for intoxication! If the people wants to learn how to quit then abandon the disease mythology and teach self-effacy instead. Merely replacing one dependency with another teaches the problem user nothing in how to solve their own damn problems and creates more problems. Not just for them but for society as well in the long term.

I'm sure that this alleged "harm reduction" solution feels good in the short term but, when you look at the big picture, you realize that someone's monkey is being spanked. Too bad that they couldn't focus upon punishing the monkey on one's back instead by never feeding it and letting it die the death of deprivation it deserves.

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Last updated 2005/06/16

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