So I was sitting at a coffee shop this morning downtown. Grabbed a coffee and read some Vancouver paper. Not sure which one, but their was an article I found interesting.
It was all about East Hastings, and what is dubbed as "Mardi Gras" each month. The last Wednesday of the month to be exact. On this day, all the people on social assistance get there money for the month deposited into their bank accounts. All the addicts apparently line up behind the ATM's at midnight to withdraw their cash. Along with this, all the dealers loiter outside of the businesses to provide all these people with what they are going to want. It's a night full of violence, and overdoses and who knows what else.
Now this fucking infuriated me, reading about this. Those are my fucking tax dollars. Being spit out to a bunch of god damn junkies once a month, so they can get fucking high and fight each other. Now I have a very small amount of sympathy for a select amount of homeless people, situations as they are for some of them.
But not a fucking drug addict. The only thing keeping anyone from getting addicted to ANYTHING, is a bit of self control. Now I have my addictions. Warcraft, smoking. But those things, for the most part, are not a detriment to society. Me personally, possibly. I've done my fair share of addictive substances, and it's not hard to just shrug of the desire to do it again. Weak fucking people. Fucking waste of flesh, in my opinion. Mind you, their are worse people in the world. Politicians, President's of large corporations. A lot of them are just plain evil. Plus when one of these damn junkies overdoses and gets an ambulance to the nearest hospital, well shit, I pay that too.
Here I am, struggling to make an honest amount of cash working at a job I hate, and these bastards are living off what comes off my cheque each month. AND they are spending that money on drugs. Which EVENTUALLY gets back into the system from the head guys buying toys, but it also fuels drug wars, gang crime, and a whole other lot of violence.
Like I said, no fucking sympathy. Let these people die. Fuck giving them clean needles, in less that's for the safety of the rest of us, I haven't really looked into how that works.
Anyways, it made me fucking livid reading that article.
And I've yet to go see Hastings. I plan to soon though.
Interesting that it's called Mardi Gras.
ReplyDeleteMardi is Tuesday...
you should hate the system. not the people. the whole point of the article was that the system doesn't work. and the "select" few that you feel sympathy for are more than a few. Most, if not all of the addicts down there suffer from serious mental illnesses. I agree that feeding them drug money isn't helping, but they aren't the ones doling out the money. If it was being handed to you, you'd take it (and spend it on any one of your addictions too). anyways...we should probably have a real conversation about this at some point. and you should go down there. it's pretty awful.
ReplyDeleteI know, I was thinking about a lot of those things shortly after I wrote it, but I was kinda in a rant mood.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm sorry, but mental illness is still no excuse for buying heroin. But then again I don't know about it.
I was thinking of taking this post down for that reason, but hey, it's how I was feeling.
I live just off of Hastings, so I see it every day. I have friends who are drug addicts too.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that separates me from the junkies on Hastings are a few bad decisions. Sometimes even one poor choice is enough, and once you're addicted there's no going back. Some people can use drugs on a recreational basis and be fine, but some people can't. Maybe it is weakness that makes them go back to the substance after that first time, but it's difficult for me to judge them so harshly when it seems that everyone will go through periods in their life when they aren't that strong.
We have yet to find a system that keeps junkies alive without supporting their addiction. The will spend their social assistance money on drugs because without their fix they get sick. There are a variety of programs down on the East side aimed at keeping street people healthy and safe, and Hastings isn't a very gang-populated area, but there is no real solution to this problem.