August 31, 2018
World Overdose Awareness Day highlights reform needed
It’s International Overdose Awareness Day, and addiction specialists say it's time to deal with addiction as a health rather than a criminal issue.
Sue Paton, the executive director of the Addiction Practitioners Association, says when the Netherlands adopted that approach it ended up closing many of is prisons.
The approach also creates a better environment to deal with overdoses, whether through initiatives like injection rooms or better community support programmes.
She says everyone who dies of an overdose leaves behind family and friends.
"They leave behind people that love them, that hoped they will make changes and flourish in their lives, so if we can implement some things to keep people alive until they can either make a choice to change, but whether or not they make a choice to change, everyone is entitled to respect and dignity and good healthcare," Ms Paton says.
She says recovery happens in the community, and a programme in Auckland that uses kapa haka as a path out of addition, He Waka Eke Noa, shows the importance of peer support to the process.
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