And so it begins, Norway mulls using medical heroin

DigitalDrifter

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Feb 22, 2013
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Coming eventually to America.

Norway mulls using heroin to prevent deadly overdoses

BERGEN, Norway (AP) — The pale, zombie-like addicts staggering through concrete underpasses make an unlikely scene in wealthy Norway's picturesque second city. As a gateway to the fjords which zigzag the oil-rich nation's long coastline, Bergen is the last stop on a global drug route that gives it one of the worst heroin problems in Europe.


Now with a change in local government here and in the capital, Oslo, there is an appetite to use radical policies to curb the alarming number of Norwegians who die from heroin overdoses each year. Alongside traditional replacement therapies, such as methadone, the new left-wing local leaders want to use a medical form of injectable heroin to treat the most at-risk users.

The official goal is to wean them off the drug entirely, but even the most ardent supporters admit the most achievable target is to bring them within a safer environment, while helping to tackle the crime associated with heavy drug use.

"We can't go on criminalizing our drug users. We need the trust between us and the health professionals," said Kim Arnetvedt, an addict and member of the Association for a Humane Drug Policy, a campaign group.

Norway has the worst heroin mortality rate in Western Europe with 70 drug deaths per million inhabitants in 2013, according to the EU's drugs watchdog, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drugs Addiction. In the continent as a whole, Norway trails only Estonia, with 127 deaths per million. The average is 16.

Like most of Bergen's estimated 1,100 regular users, Arnetvedt spends much of his time near the city-run Straxhuset needle exchange center between the housing projects and the industrialized western edge of the city where addicts can get clean needles, medical help and a hot meal. He reluctantly dips in and out of medical rehabilitation programs run out of centers like this, but is highly suspicious of a health system that he says is too close to the police and makes "every day of addiction miserable." He is treated with methadone and anti-depressants, but says he can't imagine ever shaking his addiction to heroin.

Norway mulls using heroin to prevent deadly overdoses
 
I hope it works


I do too. If it don't give you the good buzz they all chase? I don't know. If it just prevent sickness? Sounds like they already got some of the "chase" out of it, meaning the excitement to go score w/o getting caught. they let them deal it in open.

I was shocked on Drugs inc. the other day, Avg. Meth user lifespan is only 5 years in US. that too.
 
I hope it works


I do too. If it don't give you the good buzz they all chase? I don't know. If it just prevent sickness? Sounds like they already got some of the "chase" out of it, meaning the excitement to go score w/o getting caught. they let them deal it in open.

I was shocked on Drugs inc. the other day, Avg. Meth user lifespan is only 5 years in US. that too.
Yeah I wish it were as accepted by society for those people to seek help as it is with alcoholics. We applaud people for entering AA, but look down on other types of addiction.
 
Coming eventually to America.

Norway mulls using heroin to prevent deadly overdoses

BERGEN, Norway (AP) — The pale, zombie-like addicts staggering through concrete underpasses make an unlikely scene in wealthy Norway's picturesque second city. As a gateway to the fjords which zigzag the oil-rich nation's long coastline, Bergen is the last stop on a global drug route that gives it one of the worst heroin problems in Europe.


Now with a change in local government here and in the capital, Oslo, there is an appetite to use radical policies to curb the alarming number of Norwegians who die from heroin overdoses each year. Alongside traditional replacement therapies, such as methadone, the new left-wing local leaders want to use a medical form of injectable heroin to treat the most at-risk users.

The official goal is to wean them off the drug entirely, but even the most ardent supporters admit the most achievable target is to bring them within a safer environment, while helping to tackle the crime associated with heavy drug use.

"We can't go on criminalizing our drug users. We need the trust between us and the health professionals," said Kim Arnetvedt, an addict and member of the Association for a Humane Drug Policy, a campaign group.

Norway has the worst heroin mortality rate in Western Europe with 70 drug deaths per million inhabitants in 2013, according to the EU's drugs watchdog, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drugs Addiction. In the continent as a whole, Norway trails only Estonia, with 127 deaths per million. The average is 16.

Like most of Bergen's estimated 1,100 regular users, Arnetvedt spends much of his time near the city-run Straxhuset needle exchange center between the housing projects and the industrialized western edge of the city where addicts can get clean needles, medical help and a hot meal. He reluctantly dips in and out of medical rehabilitation programs run out of centers like this, but is highly suspicious of a health system that he says is too close to the police and makes "every day of addiction miserable." He is treated with methadone and anti-depressants, but says he can't imagine ever shaking his addiction to heroin.


Norway mulls using heroin to prevent deadly overdoses

So, if something works, we shouldn't use it because........
 
Better yet, how about the CIA get out of Afghanistan and quit making a profit by flooding the world market with the shit.

Opium-Afghanistan-chart.jpg
 
US to Blame for Spike in Opium Production in Afghanistan
US to Blame for Spike in Opium Production in Afghanistan
CIA Involvement

“Of course, the CIA’s connections to the drug trade in Afghanistan go back a long way, so it’s no surprise that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has facilitated and expanded opium-poppy production,” wrote author and reporter Jon Rappoport on Global Research April 7.

“The CIA was arming and advising heroin-trafficking guerrillas in Afghanistan. Its preferred leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, became for a period one of the leading heroin suppliers in the world,” Rappoport added. His article also cites the essay, “Drugs, Contras, and the CIA,” by Peter Dale Scott:

“In 1979, when the U.S. first established contact with heroin-trafficking guerrillas in Afghanistan, no heroin from the so-called Golden Crescent on the Afghan-Pakistan border was known to reach the United States. By 1984, according to the Reagan Administration, 54 percent of the heroin reaching this country came from the Afghan-Pakistan border.”

Peter Dale Scott’s essay mentions the fact the a former CIA officer, John Millis, was in charge of supplying cover CIA aid to the heroin-trafficking guerrillas in Afghanistan.

“At least one of the airlines involved in the Afghan support operation, Global International Airways, was also named in connection with the (U.S.) Iran-Contra scandal.” Rappoport concludes: “The war against drugs? A towering joke.”

A UN Report

According to United Nations report, 2014 was a banner year for Afghanistan’s booming opium industry, as production increased 7 percent. Production was up 50 percent from 2012.

Author Mike Whitney wrote an article for Counterpunch in November 2014, stating that Taliban had virtually eradicated poppy production before the United States launched the intervention in 2001.

“The Pentagon reversed that achievement by installing the same bloodthirsty warlords who had been in power before the Taliban. Naturally, this collection of psychopaths–who the western media lauded as the 'Northern Alliance' –picked up where they left off and resumed their drug operations boosting their own wealth and power by many orders of magnitude while meeting the near-insatiable demand for heroin in capitals across Europe and America,” he wrote.
 
From your postings here, I imagine the list of people who want to associate with you is rather short.

It's not incredibly large, but it's bigger than you might think. Personally I like having a smaller group of associates. It reduces the number of background checks I have to do.
 

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