I stumbled upon this tidbit by accident...
In January of this year the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published a how to manual for heroin addicts. It's titled " Take Charge Take Care." Above is a pic of the innocent looking little book.
A NewYork NBC news link says the 16 page pamphlet gives step by step instructions on how to properly inject heroin and care for the veins to avoid infection. Maybe the DOH will follow up with a book on how to mug people for drug money. (Always wear sneakers or other quiet footwear, cover your head with a hoody, wait for your victim in a dark doorway, and don't forget to bring your illegally obtained unlicensed gun!) The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene printed about 700,000 copies of the junkie's cookbook at an estimated cost of $32,000. The publication made its debut in January 2010.
That was the same month I ordered a copy of my son's birth certificate for him from the NYC Dept of Health & Mental Hygiene. (NYCDOH) DOH!!! The Dept cashed my checks in March and we're still waiting for his birth certificate. And waiting...
Proving once again that career bureaucrats are made of mostly hot air and little substance.
The How to Shoot Dope Safely (an oxymoron, if ever I heard one) book was published with the blessing of Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has not blessed my two pleas to hizzoner's office for my son's birth certificate with a reply.
I have a couple of problems with the "Take Care and Take Charge" manual published by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in January 2010, as you may have guessed.
1. NYCDOH used (in part) my money to pay for this. $55 ain't chump change to me. You owe my son a birth certificate. Give it up, NYC!
2. Instead of telling addicts how to shoot dope, bring back drug treatment on demand. Long waiting lists don't help addicts get clean. No funding you say? Ask the feds for some stimulus money. Addicts quit drugs+stop crime+ start jobs = good for economy and addicts' health.
3. Addiction to street drugs carries with it a whole bag of health threats such as: tainted drugs, widely varying drug purity that can lead to accidental overdose and/or death, financial and sexual exploitation of the addict, neglect of family and children, family breakups, inability to support a drug habit with most legitimate jobs, turning to crime to support the drug habit, a drug conviction, inability to find work after a conviction, inability to find housing/loss of housing, and on and on...
A bonafide addict is already well schooled in how to shoot dope. And what bleach does. And how hard it is to hit a blown vein. Chances are, when a drug habit eats up all your money, there's not much left over to keep rubbing alcohol and bleach on hand. Or food or rent money. An addict's every waking hour is consumed by getting high, and getting money to pay for the high. A dope fiend determined to get high will shoot dope into his or her jugular if no other vein can be pumped up. IMHO the people who will be most interested in the take charge take care manual will be curious kids who don't yet know the reality of iv drug use.
4. Hizzoner gave a news conference maybe five years ago telling us how he was gonna reduce and eventually eliminate homelessness in the Big Apple. Today in NYC there is more homelessness. Homelessness breeds the kind of despair that encourages homeless humans to pick up the bottle and the pipe and the needle. The high takes the edge off of sleeping on the street.
Mayor Bloomberg and all American mayors: forget the pamphlets --you need to eliminate homelessness and create decent paying jobs. Slumlords should be shot.
5. If NYCDOH &MH can't provide its citizens with a birth certificate after all relevant documentation has been provided and fees paid, then hand New York City's department of vital records over to the state, and if that fails too, then outsource it to India. New York is a great big beautiful city but even the Big Apple screws up. Big Time.
One more thing: not all of us have a limo service to cart us around. We need birth certificates to renew our driver's licenses now. Send it!
No comments:
Post a Comment