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From: trainor@sonia.math.ucla.edu (Douglas J. Trainor)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Re: Question: Should Syrings be given to IV drug users?
Message-ID: <2176@sunset.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 19 Jan 90 05:51:10 GMT
References: <90012.162938ASA101@PSUVM.BITNET>
Sender: news@MATH.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: trainor@math.ucla.edu (Douglas J. Trainor)
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Lines: 51

In article <90012.162938ASA101@PSUVM.BITNET> ASA101@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
>Hi Netlanders,
>    This is my first post here in a long time so be gentle ;-).
>My question to the Forum is How do you feel on the subject of given clean
>syrings to the IV drug user for the purpose of the general health.

Yes, give them out.  Buy them, give them out.  Encourage others to do so
too and to encourage appropriate government agencies to start helping.
It's a start, a band-aid on a big wound, but better than no help at all.

Drug treatment and welfare lines are so long, the process so complex,
that vast numbers of people never start or get cut-off once they do
start.  Can you expect someone that may not know a permanent home or
know how to read -- can you expect them to respond to a steady stream
of complicated government forms via mail?  How many people do their
"8th grade" tax form ?  How many get axed from government assistance
every day ?

I've often said that I'd be the perfect heroin addict, cuz you can
stick me with needles all day, and I won't mind too much.  I used to
call syringes "shooters" when I was a kid.  I used to make rocket-ships
and complex scientific instruments out of them -- some took five weeks
worth of shooters!  I never shot up more than four times a week (I did
that for 2 years); and then switched to just two a week (I guess about
10 years).

One time I accidentally father got in trouble with the D.C. police.  
He was working late at some governement building, and when he got to 
the beat-up Pinto, the police were waiting for him.  They were
interested in the "shooting gallery" in the back seat -- shooters
everywhere.  I still get a kick out of imagining him trying to explain
to the police -- that they were his son's used syringes for his allergies.

It's not much different from being a heroin addict, I suppose.  
They got high off the heroin; I'd get high off a Slurpee(tm).

I've overdosed countless times, and while under strict medical
supervision with 100% unadulterated drugs.  My "supply" was even cut
off accidentally, which left the doctors scrambling.  It's pretty neat
when you're a kid and they make a drug especially for you, that's only
for you and nobody else.  Actually, I had two different designer
drugs...  One for each arm.

    douglas

"It cannot be emphasized enough that the drug experience is not simply
 a social problem of today, or a chemically induced fantasy.  Drugs are
 much more than that.  They are a plot, a plan by Lucifer himself to
 destroy the work of Jesus Christ."          
                                               -- Gerald Neils Pearson,
             _There Is A Way Back: The Story Of Mormon Youth And Drugs_