Encouraging Sin In Vancouver

Sometimes there are no words.

Free Crack Pipes To Be Handed Out In Vancouver

Health officials in Vancouver say they will launch a pilot project later this year to distribute clean, unused crack pipes to drug users.

While heroin users can pick up clean needles from needle-exchange programs or the city's controversial safe-injection site, crack pipes are more difficult to come by.

Some crack smokers can afford to buy small glass or Pyrex stems to use as pipes. Others fashion makeshift pipes from bottles, cans or even hollow car antennas. And in many cases, they just simply share, potentially putting themselves at risk of contracting disease.

It's part of the city's harm-reduction strategy that seeks to reduce the transmission of disease while ensuring health-care and social workers are able to interact with hard-to-reach drug addicts.

Currently, the city distributes clean mouth pieces for crack pipes, but not the pipes themselves.

"We want to do it in a way that we can evaluate this, because there's a couple of questions I hope we can answer by doing this," says Dr. Patricia Daly, the medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health.

"And not just about demand and numbers, but can we use this as an engagement strategy like we do with our other harm-reduction initiatives. If you can deliver [harm-reduction programs] in a way where you can get people into other services, that's very beneficial."

Unlike needle-exchange programs for injection drugs, programs to ensure users who smoke crack are using the drug safely are uneven across the country and, in some cases, non-existent. That's despite a growing body of evidence that smoking crack cocaine increases the risk of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

In a small handful of cities, including Calgary and Winnipeg, local health authorities pass out crack pipes. Others prefer to only hand out mouth pieces, which users can place on their own pipes to avoid exposing themselves to others' saliva and blood.

And in others still, the job of distributing either mouth pieces or pipes is left to local community groups.

Unbelievable, isn't it?

There's actually so much more from that article, but I couldn't stomach it. For instance, this little gem, which would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic...

"There is a huge stigma against people who use crack, more intense than the stigma for those who use heroin."

Uh, yeah, ya think? This is news? Furthermore, this is a 'bad' thing!?! Therein lies the problem with the world today. There is no longer a healthy sense of guilt or shame about...anything. This is the result of a culture that for decades has preached the Gospel of Moral Relativism. Clear evidence that sin blinds people to the truth.

As always, God has the final say on such matters...

Isaiah 5:20 (KJV) Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Proverbs 16:25 (KJV) There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Luke 9:1-2 (KJV) Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.

Matthew 14:14 (KJV) And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

Mark 3:10 (KJV) For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues.

2 Timothy 3:1-9 (KJV) This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.

Like I said, this sort of thing is sad and unreal.

Look, people should desire Jesus Christ for who He is and for what He represents. You shouldn't desire and seek Christ because He can help you with X,Y,Z in your life. Yet, the reality is that He can and will help you with X, Y, Z in your life, but only as a byproduct of repentance and a saving faith. Jesus represents hope to the hopeless, but drug addicts in Vancouver will never hear that message.

But let's take Christ out of it for a moment. Even then, a policy like this looks absurd and unloving. Rather than doing all that they can to help people get and stay clean, these communities around the world have resigned themselves to the notion that a majority of drug addicts are hopeless lost causes, and so if there's no way to really help a person get the treatment they need, then you're better off just throwing up your arms and letting them wallow in their struggles (wallow in their sins) as comfortably as you can because that's real compassion.

Gimme a break! Lord, come quickly!

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