There are times when the Sensible Sentencing Trust appals me. My husband calls them fascists and I balk at that. But today's proclamations about drug and alcohol abusers having their children removed is just too fantastic.
Substance abusers must NOT be allowed to have unsupervised care of children until they have been PROVED to be drug/alcohol-free
1/ Who defines 'substance abuser'?
2/ Just where are the thousands of children whose parents fit the definition going?
3/ Are we going to persecute parents for hurting themselves or for hurting their children? Where will the line be drawn?
This sort of extreme authoritarianism gives the SST a bad name. This is exactly why I get very uncomfortable about ACT associating with them. Still, I no longer have any responsibility for the direction ACT goes in. Thank goodness.
A Written New Zealand Constitution?
1 hour ago
6 comments:
Well that's very interesting. By their own definition, the three parts pissed at a TV interview Number Five on the ACT List would have his kids removed. I feel a blogpost coming on!lenl
"1/ Who defines 'substance abuser'?"
What's hard about it? Any one clinically diagnosed as a drug/ alcohol (for myself I prefer not to differentiate) addict should be enough.
"2/ Just where are the thousands of children whose parents fit the definition going?"
I read the referenced release. I don't see that it suggest there might be thousands of childrens taken from their parents. It says that where any kind of substance abuse is known, care should be supervised.
3/ Are we going to persecute parents for hurting themselves or for hurting their children? Where will the line be drawn?
Idiotic question. Maybe you should ask the kids listed in the "roll call". Oh, you can't they're all dead. You keep up the pedantry with words like "persecute" tho, like a good liberal should.
As the ex wife of an alcoholic who has little intention of ever being sober I am in favour of some sort of control. Maybe times have changed but 15 years ago I spent time collecting my children from access visits from the pub, and once from the police station while their father was being processed for DIC. It didn't matter how often I asked for supervised access or reduced access, no one cared (even after the DIC - though I was told that I didn't need to hand them over if he was driving while he didn't have a licence). I didn't ever want to deny him access, I wanted them safe, but inevitably I was accused of being vindictive.
If you had seen the misery in the faces of the children I have seen, while their parents glugged down their methadone you would change your tune. These unworthy low lifes didn't even have the decency to try and hide this facet of their lives from their unfortunate children.
Murray
The pharmacists I have spoken to disagree that this in universally the case. Their methadone patients are a mixed bag. Some are better motivated than others. Why take a child away from someone trying to make good? What I would agree to however is making the use of a long-acting contraceptive a condition of being on the programme.
The majority aren't trying to make good, they are just after free drugs. I refer you to the book "Romancing Opiates" by Theodore Dalyrymple. Read it and believe it. I would be interested to know in which district the pharmacists you have spoken to practise, they must have a better class of "addict".
In 1949 China had more opium addicts than the rest of the world put together. Mao Tse-tung gave addicts a strong motive to give up and the rest of the population a strong motive not to start. He shot the dealers out of hand, and any such addicts who did not give up their habit.
Murray
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