Monday, January 4, 2010

DOH pamphlet explains how to shoot heroin


From the NY Post:

The city spent $32,000 on 70,000 fliers that tell you how to shoot heroin, complete with detailed tips on prepping the dope and injecting it into your arm.

The Health Department handout has outraged New York's top drug prosecutors and abuse experts.

"It's basically step-by- step instruction on how to inject a poison," said John Gilbride, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.

The 16-page pamphlet features seven comics-like illustrations and offers dope fiends such useful advice as "Warm your body (jump up and down) to show your veins," and "Find the vein before you try to inject."

It even encourages addicts to keep jabbing if their needles miss the mark.

"If you don't 'register,' pull out and try again," it says.

The brochure sends the wrong message about the dangers of the drug, experts said.

"It concerns me that the city would produce a how-to on using drugs," Gilbride said. "Heroin is extremely potent. You may only get the chance to use it once. To suggest there is a method of using that alleviates the dangers, that's very disturbing."

Gilbride and city drug czar Bridget Brennan noted that the manual does have some sound advice. It stresses the importance of kicking the habit, seeking professional help and not sharing needles.

But it also spells out how junkies should ready their fix and the best ways to shoot it -- a bad idea when more New York teens than ever are trying heroin, they said.

The Health Department defended its brochure, saying it was helpful and necessary, and has been distributed only to addicts or those at risk of becoming abusers.

28 comments:

Babs said...

This is a prime example of people in somewhat high places who are highly educated - most likely are products of our best colleges - who have NO STREET SMARTS and therefore have to be considered STUPID.

Anonymous said...

Aren't addicts blind - don't read anyway - they are not stupid remember, they are addicts, they probably wrote the instructions. Maybe they should run the asylum.

Anonymous said...

The army is in Afghanistan, and heroin use is on the rise. Coincidence? Nah... Same situation as Viet Nam.

Anonymous said...

Even better would be if they distributed lists of rehab places with directions how to get there.

Obviously this is an attempt to stem the transmission of Aids and Hepatitis and is aimed at hardcore addicts, not recruiting them, so I see it as a "surrender flag" rather than an inducement.

The Health Department is being cynical and practical here and are not necessarily wrong, repugnant though this may be.

Babs said...

To a partying high school student in New York - it is a How-to MANUAL.

It is THEM that the Colombians crime families (as well of course as other crime groups) are targeting, therefore it should have been THEM that these pamphlets speak to.

What many high school students do NOT understand - and that can be said about all the generations - is that it ENSLAVES them and that there is NO such thing as occasional use.

Anonymous said...

First, the front of the pamphlet gives a complete rundown of the evils of heroin.

Second, they are not distributing it at high schools.

Third, high schoolers as well as every addict of every stripe easily learns how to inject, snort, skin-pop, eat, smoke or free-base every drug of choice.

In fact it was experimenting amateurs such as these who invented crack, so they won't have to freebase with ether and various novel drug combinations like "beat" drugs that are sometimes actually poisonous or upper-downer combos.

Anonymous said...

Why create this pamphlet when you could just go to wikipedia and it informs you that you could inject it directly into your vaginal wall?!

Women have the added option of shelving, where drugs can be inserted in the vagina. This is similar to the rectum, in that there are many blood vessels behind a very thin wall of cells, so the drug passes into the bloodstream very quickly. Care should be taken with drugs such as amphetamine that may irritate the sensitive lining of the rectum and vagina"

Anonymous said...

It's cheaper to teach than treat. It doesn't matter how much you try and get rid of any drug people are still going to use. So you might as well try and teach people the proper way to do it.

Anonymous said...

Yep...we sure have a dope problem in NYC...some of our elected officials and staffers of City Hall!

Anonymous said...

"Poppies....poppies....that will make them sleep".
actress
The wicked witch..."Margaret Hamilton"...from the "Wizzard Of Oz".

Anonymous said...

It's ok for elected politicians to use, just not the people they represent. They are better than the rest of us

Anonymous said...

The problem with "treating" them is that there has to be some cooperation with the process. If they don't buy in, they will be back on the needle at the earliest opportunity.

Babs said...

Anonymous said: "It's cheaper to teach than treat. It doesn't matter how much you try and get rid of any drug people are still going to use. So you might as well try and teach people the proper way to do it."

college course perhaps?

Curiouser Curiouser said...

Is it not funny that there are how to booklets in NY for every tweeding group you can imagine.

Yet no one seems to understand how to organize a civic for preservation that is not a pawn of a politican.

Anonymous said...

Well, sickening as this is, it's not about "tweeding." It's about public health. These people can become reseviors of disease and spread hepatitis and aids to their lovers and children.

If it were up to me, I would burn every last stock of this hateful drug, but in the absence of nirvana we have to assume that medical professionals have some reason for doing this and the protection of the public at large is a good reason.

Yes, they are the tweeded said...

How about the 'disease' of overdevelopment where one house makes a whole block sick by selling out to a developer, paving over their front yard, putting garish stucco on their house, or parking their car in a common garage area blocking access.

Innocent people with their greatest asset destroyed because a poltican looks the other way and needs to pay back a campaign debt.

Yes, all these loser druggies are citizens in the relm of tweeded - self inflicted jerks pissing away taxpayer's money.

If they carry disease, they should be locked up and detoxed, and if the fall off the wagon, put on an island making big rocks small rocks for the rest of their pointless lives.

That will be an exmaple that will put a big dent in this problem.

Babs said...

Anonymous said: "If they carry disease, they should be locked up and detoxed, and if the fall off the wagon, put on an island making big rocks small rocks for the rest of their pointless lives."

heh - you don't wanna put the Mafia out of business now do ya'?
Think of all the unemployed organized crime figures from New York's Asian mob, Russian mob, Nigerian mob, Mexican cartel, Columbian cartel, Greek mob, Irish mob, etc. that will be unemployed. Not to mention all the politicos and gun manufacturers and lobbyists that keep them in business.

Although they make the money through other illegal activities - the BULK of their income is through illegal drugs.

Anonymous said...

anyone else find the selective application of bloomerd's nanny-state odd?
trans-fats=bad, cigarettes=bad, yet we *must* assist the skag monkeys to find a vein?

Anonymous said...

anyone else find the selective application of bloomterd's nanny-state odd?
trans-fats=bad, cigarettes=bad, yet we *must* assist the skag monkeys to find a vein?

Anonymous said...

Interesting point about the drugs, and may also explain the support in certain neighborhoods where the construction trades are (ahem) strong and the machine and Blumberg support are strong also.

Actually think "tha bhoys" (as they were called 150 years ago) make more money in construction and real estate and restaurants (the latter two filled with cheap immigrant labor and pliant immigrant tennants).

Anonymous said...

Interesting point about the drugs, and may also explain the support in certain neighborhoods where the construction trades are (ahem) strong and the machine and Blumberg support are strong also.

Actually think "tha bhoys" (as they were called 150 years ago) make more money in construction and real estate and restaurants (the latter two filled with cheap immigrant labor and pliant immigrant tennants).

Anonymous said...

Saw Vallone knock the program on TV news.

Good for him.

Give credit where credit is due.

Anonymous said...

The Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center has been getting bags of money from the NY State Dept of Health to give needles to junkies & condoms to prostitutes for about fifteen years. They do not try to get any street junkie into rehab or into the hospital, only say here's a new needle, go get some heroin. Half the people who work there are active heroin users. One of the women workers died of an overdose in 1999. She was not from the neighborhood, ie. was not Puerto Rican. Was she given bad dope on purpose? maybe

Now they are in the business of giving out psycho pharmaceuticals and have gotten lots of money from drug companies. Someone might want to look into the drug companies that are doing experiments on the street junkies. And exactly what do the employees do to get their paycheck, besides not much?

someone should look into this bag of crap if they can stand the stench.. the woman who is the director uses the address/phone number of the agency as a Reiki practitioner while getting money from NY State Dept of Health.

Anonymous said...

This city is fucked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Babs said...

Anonymous: "Interesting point about the drugs, and may also explain the support in certain neighborhoods where the construction trades are (ahem) strong and the machine and Blumberg support are strong also."

The mob needs legitmate businesses to launder the money from their illegal business.

Good point about the cheap labor they use - which is why I believe OUR BORDERS CANNOT BE CLOSED!

Babs said...

Anonymous said: "Now they are in the business of giving out psycho pharmaceuticals and have gotten lots of money from drug companies. Someone might want to look into the drug companies that are doing experiments on the street junkies. And exactly what do the employees do to get their paycheck, besides not much?"

verrrry interesting - I read that the mobs are all into legal drugs sales now as well. These drugs, however, pose similar threats to public health and welfare, but they do have recognized legitimate uses. These drugs include morphine, methadone, barbiturates, amphetamines, and tranquilizers. With respect to these drugs the aim of the legal regime and associated enforcement strategies is more complex. It is not simply to eliminate the drugs but to preserve a legitimate sector in which the benefits of these drugs may be enjoyed, while minimizing illicit use. . . . . .

Anonymous said...

It's called the Harm Reduction Movement. was started by former and recovering drug addicts, needle users who really wanted to save people's lives.They were the ones to first distribute bleach kits out of a shopping cart in Tompkins Square Park.
One woman who was there at the beginning who started the ear acupuncture program, says that being forced out of the agency was the most painful experience of her life.


The greedy, wheeler dealer trio of Mark Gerse , Raquel Algarin and Rosa Colon hijacked the work of many dedicated people, pushed them out of the way and are now in command at the organization. They are the ones who control all the government money that comes into the organization.

from what I can see, the main purpose of harm reduction is to provide jobs and benefits to people who can not work anywhere else and who do the minimum of work. they are also very racist, wanting only Spanish speaking people to work there.

Babs said...

Anonymous said: "from what I can see, the main purpose of harm reduction is to provide jobs and benefits to people who can not work anywhere else and who do the minimum of work."

They could also be a "front for the back" as the saving goes.