Coddling Addicts with ‘Safe-Injection Sites’ Is No Way to Fight Opioids

Recovery from drug dependencies requires the decision that sobriety is better than any 'high' — then living one day at a time

Certain buzzwords, phrases and terms do not just spontaneously appear in the public realm, but are rather created to advance cultural, social and political agendas. Essentially, this amounts to advertising messages intended to generate instant recall among a mass audience in the hopes a particular cause is embraced among large segments of the U.S. population.

Widely known terms such as Black Lives Matter, climate change and #MeToo illustrate the effectiveness of this technique. Here is one you may not have heard of, but you will as the opioid epidemic shows no signs of slowing down: “harm reduction.”

Just as one can separate the branding from the agenda in all of these terms, so, too, can one see what’s at play here, a national movement to coddle drug addicts. You see, harm reduction is a catch-all phrase encompassing safe-injection sites, medically assisted treatment, and needle-exchange programs — and it’s all coming to a city near you.

This boils down to "eat the food, lose the weight," just as we hear on weight-loss commercials. In this case, though, the wrong approach to recovery can lead to repeated cycles of relapse and ultimately death.

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