I ran across a video linked here about the city of Vancouver and how they're having a terrible homeless/crime problem strongly linked to hard drug use. The central idea is that Vancouver's harm reduction model of dealing with hard drug use has actually backfired and has resulted in more harm, not less. Reportedly, Vancouver has even moved to a "safe supply" model where they are actually supplying addicts with drugs.
The video maker gradually moves to the question of where this idea came from, and he points out that this harm reduction model is the brainchild of a relatively small number of academic researchers who are, in the words of the video, using these addicts as "guinea pigs" in a kind of mass social experiment with little evidence showing that the approach will work. And pharmaceutical companies are profiting from supplying these drugs.
So, you have a policy that names itself "progressive," that takes a group of people with mental health problems, promotes "destigmatizing" their behavior, and enables that behavior by concentrating these people into communities where the behavior is common and normalized.
I'm not saying that it's an exact mapping, but it struck me that, once again, we have a policy that takes a mental health problem, throws up its hands at trying to treat it, and, instead, argues that we all just need to accept it. And, in the end, it's taking the people they claim to care about and ultimately making their lives worse by perpetuating their behavior. It reminded me of the gender industry and the way they've decided to treat gender dysphoria by saying, "Hey, let's just go all in on it! Let's do all we can to encourage it and create more lifetime medical customers."
I'm open to opposing views, but it just seemed like a strong parallel trend to me.
[–]Femaleisnthateful 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)