Well, here's a gut punch to start your day, courtesy of our neighbors to the north:
Yes, next spring Canada will begin allowing drug addicts to sign up for their Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program.
When Canada first introduced MAID it was supposed to be for the terminally ill and those with other horrific ailments. It was supposed to offer a "dignified" death. But it required consent. It required understanding.
Then, as a bunch of people warned, it started expanding. The guardrails were lowered.
Society began to accept assisted suicide for all sorts of reasons.
And here we are.
Who in the world could look at a drug addict and say that someone at the deepest depths of hopelessness and despair is of sound mind to decide to end their lives?
How did we let society come to this?
...some drug users and harm reduction advocates told VICE News they're upset the idea of drug users being given access to MAID is even being discussed, as they feel other public health measures, including better access to overdose prevention sites, opioid agonist medications like methadone, a regulated drug supply, housing, and employment are lacking.
"I just think that MAID when it has entered the area around mental health and substance use is really rooted in eugenics. And there are people who are really struggling around substance use and people do not actually get the kind of support and help they need," said Zoë Dodd, a Toronto-based harm reduction advocate.
Calling it eugenics isn't a stretch. It wasn't just the Nazis who pushed that ideology. Think of all the people sterilized by government authorities in the US last century. Think of abortion. Getting rid of "undesirables" is evil and never on the side of the good guys, but it's almost always presented as "compassionate" to make it tolerable.
Here's one of the "doctors" who helped push this decision in Canada:
"I don't think it's fair, and the government doesn't think it's fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness," said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health, who is presenting a framework for assessing people with substance use disorders for MAID at the conference. "As a subset of that, it's not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally."
The twisted pretzel logic to make this an issue of treating people "equally" is totally disgusting. Drug addicts and the mentally ill are, by definition, NOT in their right mind. These are people who are especially inclined to suicide already.
But remember! Death panels aren't a real thing that comes with socialized medicine. That's a conspiracy theory.
The culture of death marches on.
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