LET'S DO DRUGS. AFTER ALL IT IS LEGAL!!

So you’re walking home after a long day at school and decide I need a hit! So you head down to the legal injection room where nurses watch as you inject heroin, cocaine, or other drugs and then have a nice relaxing cup of coffee or go down to the “chill out” room for some medical attention. Sound crazy? Well maybe, but Sixty-five similar facilities exist in 27 cities in eight countries, and now San Francisco, California is trying to build one too. By building a facility, San Francisco is hoping to reduce the high rate of fatal drug overdoses in the city. There are many challenges that would be faced in trying to open a place like this. First of all aren’t drugs illegal? Just because some nurse is watching, that doesn’t make them anymore legal does it? This is crazy to me. I understand that the city of San Francisco wants to reduce its overdose rates and prevent needle sharing, but I hardly think this is the right way. If it’s going to be legal for a place like this to be open, then why would there be a reason to bust a crack house. It’s the same thing just without the nurses and coffee. The only facility like this in North America is located in Vancouver and so far it’s had 800 overdoses. In 2004 the number of overdose cases in San Francisco was 40, which dropped from 160 in 1995. In my opinion I say don’t do it. We want a world without drugs and if anyone can just walk off the street and legally get what they would’ve gotten anyway, what motivation is that for them to stop doing the drugs?
I found this article on the New York Times website. Here’s the link http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Supervised-Injections.html

You Do The Crime You Do The Time... Or Will You??

Friday, an all white jury found seven drill instuctors and a nurse not guilty in the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, whose death at a boot camp for young offenders was captured on videotape. That’s right on videotape! The tape shows the boy who was black, being punched, kicked, kneed, and forced to inhale ammonia while his mouth is held shut. The first autopsy that was done showed that he died of natural causes, but a second one showed that he suffocated from breathing in the ammonia with his mouth held shut for several minutes. It was said that some of the jurors knew the family’s of some of the guards that were on trial. All the talk about crime and punishment in class really made me think about this article. In class we learned that it’s usually people who have a low socioeconomic status that get sentenced and not people of higher status. Add that to the fact that the jurors knew the people who were on trial and you can throw away any chance of them being convicted. The way the system works is completely not right. I didn’t even think you were allowed to be on a jury if you knew the people on trial but I guess I was wrong. I guess that old saying if you do the crime you do the time is exactly that OLD!
Just like my last blog I got this article from USA Today. Here's the link http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-12-bootcamp-death_N.htm

Moving to Mexico

It’s no secret that nursing homes are expensive and sometimes not even worth the cost, but who knew it was so bad that people decide to go to Mexico to find a good one. That’s exactly what Jean Douglas and many other aging Americans have decided to do. For $1,300 a month Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. That’s a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in the state of Oregon where she is from. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is 79 degrees. That doesn’t sound much like a nursing home to me. Many relatives of mine have been in nursing homes, so I know from having visited them that it’s nothing like that. In the nursing homes I’ve visited the people get a room similar to a hospital just as the food is, and for the most part the workers don’t seem all that attentive. But there are also similar problems with some of the nursing homes in Mexico. There is little government regulation, and some places have suddenly gone bankrupt, forcing American residents to move. There are also cases of Americans complaining about the food and the cleanliness of the facility. I guess it’s similar to America in that you just have to find the right home. Whatever the case maybe the fact still remains that many retirees have chosen to pack up and leave the expensive country of America for Mexico. A place with a cheaper cost of living and what sounds like a pretty good life to have.
This article is from USA today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-15-mexnursinghome_N.htm . It also discusses the health care that Americans get in the homes, the loneliness some of them feel, and the plan to build more “independent living” facilities in Mexico.