Unfortunately, PZ, this kind of thing—from this administration—is all to believable.
Every year, overdoses of heroin and opiates, such as Oxycontin, kill more drug users than AIDS, hepatitis or homicide.
And the number of overdoses has gone up dramatically over the past decade.
But now, public health workers from New York to Los Angeles, North Carolina to New Mexico, are preventing thousands of deaths by giving $9.50 rescue kits to drug users. The kits turn drug users into first responders by giving them the tools to save a life.
Sounds good so far, right? After all, before you can get someone into recovery or treatment, you’ve got to keep them alive. I’ve never yet heard of a dead junkie graduating from rehab. So fewer overdoses is a good thing, even if it’s only the first step towards maybe getting some people the help they need.
You’d think so. Right? Well, if you do, you’re likely not a part of the Bush administration. Keep reading.
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Tags:
bush,
current events,
drugs,
politics,
recovery
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Evidently, there’s a new trend underway in some churches. But it’s one that seems, at best, to be a strange way to make church more appealing: to fill the pews by emptying them.
First, you have to imagine being arrested because you went to church. Then you have to imagine a 71-year-old woman showing up for church, one she attended for 50 years, and being arrested because she refused to leave.
On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. “And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P.”
Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.
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Tags:
bush,
current events,
politics,
religion
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