Is our addiction crisis fuelling the all-time high in reported STD cases?:
The CDC, in a recent report, is now sounding the alarm over astonishingly large increases in the prevalence of STDs.
- Cases have now increased for the fifth straight year and reached another all-time high. One contributing factor is substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs), which are linked to unprotected sex, sex with multiple partners, and other behaviors increasing the risk of STDs.
- As the CDC predicted, needle use and substance-seeking sex have had major impacts on STD rates: a 2016 report spotlighted 220 counties at elevated risk of HIV from high levels of intravenous drug use. Drinking and use of other substances, which can alter judgment and risk calculations, are also associated with increased chances of contracting STDs. Is our addiction crisis fueling the all-time high in reported STD cases?
Dalgarno Institute Comment: It is really important to look closely at this phenomenon and interrogate the data/info with the logic that has been so ruthlessly excised from the drug policy arena. Instead or simply using the mis-applied interpretation of ‘Harm Reduction’ ONLY lens, look at it though the most important pillar of the National Drug Strategy, the Demand Reduction lens.
The ONLY way to STOP this growing costly (and quite frankly disturbing) problem is to STOP using the psychotropic drugs! However, that very clear solution is no longer permitted on the pro-drug activist-controlled policy space.
If you smoke (at least in the Australian context) you’re a ‘social leper’, but if you use illicit drugs at will, you are to be given a free pass on any such challenges, well so now goes the emerging narrative!
Let’s pause and consider; when was the last time a cigarette gave you herpes, syphilis or HIV/AIDS? When did tobacco facilitate a sex-slave orgy or oversee the barbaric trafficking of women and children for sex? When did nicotine create carnage on our roads or facilitate a spate of family violence events that illicit drugs do, ad nauseum, and are swept under the carpet by the pro-legalise drugs demographic?
Yet to call this out in the public space is to attract the ire of these drug-using, self and community harming individuals and collectives — The Permitters and Promotors are the now the new drug Pushers of our culture.
Sexual health and HIV consultant Dr Andrady, the clinical lead for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board’s ‘Sextember’ campaign, said people were not aware of the risks of having unprotected sex whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
“We have definitely seen a rise in people coming into the clinic after having sex whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and they regret what they have done,” he said. “… people forget about protection when they are under the influence of drugs and alcohol.” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45367610 2018)
You see… no matter how many syringes or condoms you hand out, it is NOT a sober, rational and ethical person who is engaging these resources — NO, once these psychotropic toxins are taken (by choice) then ‘agency’ is changed, but not responsibility. The now law, moral and ethics ignoring individual are in an altered psycho-social state and the choices they make in that condition, and are accountable for (or are they?) are reckless, careless and even callous and/or psychotic.
And, along with the willful drug taking individual, it is not only family or neighbor who will pay some physical, economic or emotional price, it will be paramedics, police and eventually tax-payer abuse will be rampant as demands for greater health care budgets are sought to try and treat the ever growing, and in many instances, irreparable harm! Harm that can only be avoided by not engaging in the poor conducts that commence with substance use!
But sshhhh! That last statement is now considered ‘judgmental’. And the new propaganda mantras being spewed out by the pro-drug lobby decry such slights. Ipso facto, the only ‘bad behavior’ now worthy of such a label, is those who call out bad behavior — particularly of the ‘recreational’ drug user!
‘Harm Reduction’ in the drug use space is sadly now ONLY about trying to manage the seeming unabated damage, and now no longer even pretends to address the conduct/ behavior of drug taking.
Clearly, it is the latter that must change, but it is the latter that Harm Reduction Only Strategies actively work against changing!