The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani

Author:Elizabeth Pisani
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2008-04-29T04:30:00+00:00

7

HIV Shoots Up

I believe that treating all sex workers as though they are the helpless victims of trafficking is short-sighted and counterproductive. But it does have a potential upside. If prostitutes are trafficked, then they are ‘innocent victims’ rather than ‘wicked people’. Donna Hughes may think it unethical to provide innocent victims with information and services that could save their lives, but others would disagree. Voters don’t exactly jump at doing nice things for sex workers, but it’s certainly an easier sell than doing nice things for drug injectors.

Nobody is painting drug injectors as exploited or victimized. If you listen to the rhetoric of most Western governments, we’re at war with drugs; when drug users become cannon fodder, few tears are shed. A lot of more or less law-abiding taxpayers, even ones who regularly relax with a spliff or fuel their parties with cocaine, don’t want to pay to help junkies inject more safely. People who inject themselves with damaging, addictive and illegal substances do it willingly, even avidly, the law-abiding dope-smokers reason. Let them get what’s coming to them.

In any war there must be two sides, and the war on drugs is no exception. Each side holds to its beliefs with a fanaticism that is religious in its intensity, if not its origin. As is often the case in a war, they agree on what the problem is. But they disagree violently about the solution. On one side are the Drug Warriors. On the other are the Harm Reductionists.

Here’s what they agree on. Drugs are harmful. They can screw up your body, your life and the lives of people around you. Because they are illegal and often expensive, they can lead to an increase in crime. Injecting drugs can also infect you with unpleasant and often fatal viruses, including various strains of hepatitis, and HIV.

Then the views diverge. The Harm Reductionists recognize all of the above. They also recognize that drugs can be a lot of fun. That’s why there will always be a market for drugs, even when taking them eventually leads to lying to your boss or lover, stealing from your mother or neighbour, getting infected with a virus that will kill you. Harm reduction programmes often try to help people quit drugs, but that’s not their main focus. They believe that most people grow out of drug use eventually. So they focus on providing services that will keep people alive, socially stable and disease-free while they are still using. They give people drugs they can swallow (like methadone), in the hope that they will stop injecting. And they give people who do shoot up sterile injecting equipment, so that they don’t pass around needles and diseases. In other words, the Harm Reductionists think injecting drugs is harmful. But they believe the harm can be reduced by providing good services to injectors.

The Drug Warriors see the whole edifice of harm reduction as a sham, built to cover up the true agenda: legalization of drugs. Needle distribution is the toxic core of the edifice.

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