NILE LOSING THE PLOT

Goodness me, Fred. You seem to be losing the plot a bit on your
prohibition argument. Without doubt it is a tragedy that the young
ironman has stepped on a needle. But you need to ask yourself why was
the needle there? It was there because there was no injecting room, no
responsible use of the drug and finally no responsible disposal of the
needle.

The connection between "harm minimisation" and the "spread of AIDS" is
ignorant at best, but I would label it scaremongering. We know for
fact that where needles have been available, the spread of AIDS has
been controlled. Where needle exchange has been prohibited, HIV is at
epidemic levels.

Fred then goes on to blame needle exchanges as the reason for
increased heroin use. He ignores issues such as the incentive of
enormous profits to push heroin; he ignores the fact that prices for
heroin have dropped through the floor while purity has
skyrocketed.

Fred Nile shows an amazing lack of charity in his letter in regard to
Mr Crowe. Using someone's misfortune to grab a political point is very
shabby. Yet this is understandable. The prohibitionists' approach to
this issue has always been based on shaming the user, attacking
reasoned approaches to the issue, snatching at dangerous quick-fix
solutions like Naltrexone, and with an end goal of capturing more votes.

Shame, Fred, shame!