The New York Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene, has a new brochure out for heroin addicts. It’s goal: help them break the law, become addicted, abandon their responsibilities and eventually kill themselves as safely as possible.
I’m not kidding.
Advice in the booklet “Take Charge, Take Care” includes: “Drop the cotton directly into the cooker. Don’t touch it!” and “Warm your body (jump up and down) to show your veins.” This misbegotten effort carries the dubious ethics of needle exchanges—perhaps justifiable under utilitarian principles—to the point where it is ethically indefensible. The government is aiding and abetting conduct it has declared illegal. It undermines a prime rationale for laws against destructive conduct: sending a clear societal message that the conduct is wrong and dangerous. Brochures explaining how to engage in that same conduct muddles that message absurdly. If it’s so wrong, why is the government explaining how to do it right?
Mayor Bloomberg disagrees with me. “I would certainly not recommend to anyone that they use hard drugs or soft drugs,” Bloomberg said. “But our health department does have an interest in if you’re going to do certain things to get you to do it as healthily as you possibly can.”
Really? Then why stop with heroin use? Why not print booklets explaining the best way to drive drunk, for example? Or the safest way to perform an armed robbery? (” If you must fire a gun, make sure it is directly at the officer who is firing at you. Don’t hit innocent bystanders!”)
Here is why, I fear: too many children of the drug culture are now in positions of responsibility in the New York City government. Deep down, they don’t think drug use is wrong; deep down, they don’t think it should be illegal at all. Thus it is easy to justify a measure that encourages illegal conduct in the name of “health.” These individuals, and apparently the Mayor is one of them, don’t see the foolish inconsistency of a government publishing primers on illegal conduct.
The responsible way for government to prevent unhealthy criminal conduct is to enforce the laws against it, not to teach criminals to break the laws more safely.
Ethics Alarms 
Isn’t keeping addicts — who will use drugs anyway, whether safely or not — from killing themselves or ending up in emergency rooms a social good? Do you really think that someone will START using heroin because they saw a brochure?
And even if you disagree with people, why pretend you know their personal stories and you can read their minds with statements like, “too many children of the drug culture are now in positions of responsibility in the New York City government. Deep down, they don’t think drug use is wrong”. Deep down, maybe they think what they’re doing is best. And hardly comparable to your ridiculous comparison to teaching drunk driving or armed robbery.
Deep down, maybe some ethicists think it’s OK to use their blogs to push personal political and social views rather than sticking to ethical issues. And to assert motives in others for which there’s no factual basis. And to pretend to read minds.
There is nothing ridiculous about either analogy. What is your distinction? Stopping drunk drivers from killing themselves and others is also a social good. It is not the government’s proper role to undermine law enforcement by facilitating illegal activity. People don’t engage in illegal activity, in many cases, because the risks, including health risks, seem too great. The government setting out to minimize those risks is per se contradictory.And irresponsible.
My suggestion, and it was obviously that, about the “thinking” of policy-makers who support things like this is an opinion and speculation. We can infer from what we know. I was one of those childen of the drug culture. I have lived with them and argued with them. It is reasonable to conclude that similar people made this decision. I could be wrong. Maybe they are just fools. I an giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What is the political agenda behind objecting to the government distributing a “How to shoot up” booklet? My viewpoint is partially shaped by a background as a prosecutor. There’s nothing political about it.
Personally, I think it’s a cheap shot.
I also think this issue is an ethical slam dunk. The publication is indefensible, unless one believes, as you seem to, that it is ethical for the government to destroy its own function as a moral arbiter on matters affecting society.
Further to Gabe: I find the suggestion that social policy issues are not ethics issues bizarre. They are obviously ethics issues.
I shouldn’t even weigh in. I see both sides of the argument and after doing the homework of actually reading through the brochure, I’m more inclined to approve of the brochure. Doctors have a tough enough time detoxing an addict without having to amputate their arm because they infected it by improper drug use (was it “Requiem for a Dream”?) Anyways, I think the fewer physical scars an individual has when they finally do go through a detox program, the more likely their recovery will be a success.
The brochure doesn’t touch on how to actually obtain drugs and it’s valuable enough to apply to legitimate drug injections such as insulin. Do I think they should dedicate more time to this than they have? No. Am I be upset with this level of effort so far? No. Drug addicts are people too, and this brochure tells them to use less, stay healthy, and seek help.
The brochure may be targeted more for the family or friends of a user than for the users themselves, and I figure they must be worth the time if the user isn’t.
Can’t see it, Tim. It’s a matter of integrity. If the government forbids it and wants that message sent, then it cannot symbolically approve it by helping the conduct be less damaging. How about giving prisoners extra-strength condoms to use in pison rapes, so the spread of AIDS can be curtailed? How about a brochure explaining the safest ways to rape fellow prisoners?
So, by your logic, if you were about to be raped by Bubba (in this scenario you were wrongly convicted) you would rather him not use a condom? I wouldn’t give the prisoners condoms, but I’d feel comfortable telling them that if they don’t use condoms, they might contract AIDS or other STDs. Look what happened here. Now we have a rapist who might be 2nd guessing his decision to do so without a condom. If we give him a condom (a material good) we are enabling him. But right now, we’ve only instilled fear and a hesitation to commit the act.
The problem with our discussion is a matter of perception.
From one point of view, these words reduce consequences and risk and logic suggests that the activity would then increase if people become enabled.
From the other POV, the illegal action is an inevitability and these words reduce harm to living human beings who are already enabled.
I feel neither point of view is incorrect. I do feel that words (not material goods) is not a level of effort that should be condemned.
NYC giving out OD rescue kits? That’s absurd! That crosses the line of enabling someone to OD and come back from it! After reading this pamphlet, did you suddenly feel more prepared to try your first injectable drug?
Simply put, the only reason this pamphlet is a waste of money is because it’s full of common knowledge. But what is common to me, isn’t necessarily common to someone of lesser intelligence.
But this is also precisely why we need limited Government. When Government is all things to all people, it must contradict itself. There is no choice. If you don’t want it to contradict itself, then limit the government. The real ethics issue is not that some faction of local government issued a pamphlet that was relevant to its local population, but that the faction exists as part of government and not as an independent aid agency.
But going back to Nill:
If I’m going to play in the middle of a highway, please suggest to me to wear a helmet, but don’t give me a helmet. I’ll listen to your suggestions.
If I’m going to solicit, please suggest that I wear a condom and that I don’t go in back alleys wear I might get mugged. But don’t give me condoms and a gun for protection. Look what we just did here, we told someone to do their illegal activity where they can be observed by Law Enforcement
And one final IF.
If your Grandmother was the old woman in “To Kill a Mockingbird” who was shooting morphine for pain and was trying to ween herself off using the same needle every time, do you think it’s ethically indefensible to tell her to use new needles every time to prevent infection? I’m not saying you should give her new needles for free. But if she knows she should buy new needles, isn’t that better than reusing the old one?
“Don’t play ball in the middle of the highway, but if you do, be sure to wear a helmet,” is what comes to mind. If your drug-ed, sex-ed, or whatever-ed policies are taking that form, I think something’s gone wrong.
Now, I’m entirely in favor of making honest, reliable information available, but if I heard about a state distributing booklets to sex-addicts on how to safely solicit street-corner prostitutes, I’d be concerned. (That now sounds much too plausible, by the way.) Maybe I’m wrong. Surely, anything that minimizes harm is beneficial? Why stop at preventing self-harm? How about distributing booklets to pedophiles on how to minimize any physical and psychological damage their victims might suffer? No? I think I’d be demanding background checks on any policy maker who suggests that one.
We need better drug education, starting in public schools, that doesn’t rely on outdated studies, misinformation, or blatant lies manufactured solely to discourage drug use. Kids and young adults can see right through it, and they quickly acclimate to the idea that drugs can’t be so bad. Thus the drug culture grows, comes to power, and hands out safety guides to heroin addicts.
Well, I can’t argue with any of that.
My main issue isn’t the fact that someone is encouraging drug use (to each their own), but it’s truly incredible that it is being done by the very same powers enforcing it’s illegality. Especially considering New York was AGAINST many of the Narcan programs which began distributing overdose treatment kits to junkies just a few years back ..
Insanity.
-Neil
I don’t see the logic, Tim. Sure—maybe somebody should be letting people engaged in illegal and dangerous activity know how to minimize the danger. Maybe someone should even be giving them tools to do this, though I don’t think so, because it is perilously close to facilitating, aiding and abetting. But not the government, which has two proper functions: declaring what conduct is societally unacceptable, and enforcing the laws against the conduct sufficiently to reduce and discourage that conduct. The brochure, and the OD kits (I had forgotten about them) undermine BOTH functions.
You didn’t contradict anything I said Jack, and I’m fully on board with your comment. I don’t believe the Government should be doing this either, yet a functional organization of the government (dedicated to health and human services) exists.
As long as this quasi-government organization exists, it needs to operate effectively and not discriminate against which mental disorders it will treat and which ones it will pass on. Some have argued that drug dependence is a disability, and as we all know with law, you can’t discriminate against someone with a disability. I wouldn’t enable them to continue their disability, but I would educate them on how to make the most of their disability by inflicting the least harm.
“Doing the Most Good.” It’s not just for the Salvation Army any more.
P.S. – Why do we have education programs about the spread of the flu? Sure, all the brochures say “Stay home and don’t spread the flu – but if you do go out, here’s how to do it.”
By some of the logic I’ve read here, this type of brochure encourages people. It tells them they can go to the mall with a face mask and by washing their hands often and not touching anything, they can reduce the number of people they infect. But they’re still infecting people!
So should there be education about the flu – or not? I know going to the mall and transmitting the flu isn’t illegal – but it would still be ethically indefensible right?