Featured Dead actor Philip Seymour Hoffman: Heroin purchase just before overdose

So sad. Every time I hear these stories I just hold onto the hope that maybe the person had come into a right relationship with Christ at some point.

 

The market adjusts itself...

 

My mother was a heroin addict too, now deceased.

Unfortunately, your callous attitude is pretty common among believers. I'd ask you to reconsider it.

I highly doubt his "constitutional freedoms" had anything to do with his addiction. It is an illegal drug.

Did you notice that it being illegal didn't stop it from coming into this country? It didn't stop it from being sold either. Neither did it stop him from obtaining and using it.

Laws don't appear to do much to stop people from doing stupid things. They just provide an opportunity to provide punishment to those who get caught. Do addicts need punishment or help?

 

I am sorry for your loss.
Please dont consider this post only, consider the body of bantering posts over this issue, between myself and TNID.
I was being purposefully shocking, to make a point.

I believe that you and i see eye2eye on libertarian issues.

I don't wish for anyone to die like that, but you pay when you play.

Now, about the seeming impotence of the US gov.in stopping drugs from coming in ....anyone notice how prevalent heroin has gotten, since we took over the giany poppy plantation called "Afganistan"?
It's even worse than the invasion of the smaller poppy plantation of Vietnam.

 

It's a shame Gina. But that is the attitude of a lot of Christians in the church. It's another of the pet sins. Hopefully we will start to recognize that these are people too.

I would think our hearts would be breaking at the number of lives that have been lost at the hands of these drugs. If our compassion for the BORN dealing with things like this was comparable to our supposed compassion for abortion and the UNBORN, souls might actually get saved.

 

For me, occurences like this answer the question about drinking and why I think it's not beneficial for Christians to drink at all.

The world is constantly looking to drugs as an answer for so much that I just don't think it's a good idea for the Body of Christ to give them the impression that it's okay to look to these chemistry of the mind-altering drugs.

Jesus CHrist must be the answer that we put forth.

 

FTR, I started in the ministry, in a Christian Rehab, and have been actively involved in helping junkies for over 20 years.
A few weeks ago, i met some addicts and got them placed, while i was at a conference 300 miles from home.
I spent a week doing repairs on the buildings of a rehab in May last year.
A fellow missionary is leaving as we speak, to pick up her convert, who we sent to rehab 3 months ago. The program director says that she is doing great, and has been the program cook.
I have preached in innercity rescue missions, picked up the homeless on LWD in Chicago, at 3a.m. and brought them to church/hot meal/ clothing room, and placement interview, and been actively involved with helping addicts of every sort.
I plant churches at Indian Reservations, and deal with the rampant drug abuse there.

I have many stories of heroin addicts, to relate. Success stories. Former addicts, addicted to the ministry.

Dont confuse emotions with truth.
Sometimes people reap what they sow. God's rule.
Will you now accuse Him of being unloving?

 

I wasn't saying it's your attitude Prophet. Just that what was perceived as your attitude IS the attitude with which a lot of folks in the church treat those in bondage to addiction.

And the crazy thing about addiction in the church is that prescription drug addicts think they are better than your crack and meth addicts simply because a doctor prescribes theirs.

 

I would agree, and say that this is a battleground.
Prescription addiction goes un addressed, because it is acquired legally.
I'm dealing with a couple now, who lost their kids over this. Dad started off with an injured back, and ended up buying extra meds illegally.
Now they have to counsel with me as a stipulation of their CPS appeal.

This will be a big battle, and it will be fought against the symptoms, rather than the disease, as usual.
The disease is our mis-placed faith in the AMA.

 

It's a shame that even in a lot of churches, we are pointing people to drugs as the answer and not Christ.

Prescription drug abuse in the church goes largely unaddressed and it is at epidemic levels. Add in the growing number of pain clinics and these functioning addicts will soon be filling a lot of pulpits while preaching hellfire and brimstone to the crack and meth addicts.

 

Scary! Alice in Church.

 

prophet, you're fine. The coverage on what happened has me in hypersensitive mode the last 24 hours. I'm usually the one getting in trouble for the zingers that seem to come flying out when I don't pay attention!

TND, you'd think, huh? I come at these things the way you see me do for a reason. There would be no point in giving personal anecdotes if the logical reasoning and bigger reasons mean nothing, which is why I don't.
My reasoning comes from having witnessing things from the bottom and moving up, trying to make sense of it. Who, what, and why. Questioning it all, starting at a young age and moving up as I got older. Questioning people, then friends, then getting into news, which led to me writing a story on drug court, which led to me sitting in a meeting with heroin addicts, which gave me the chance to start meeting and greeting and talking and getting their side, then the counselors, and the judges, and the courts, etc..

More questions.

About everything. Always. Not just drugs.

Why is this person like this?

Who is helping?

Why is this person going to jail and the person who is causing more harm is getting away with it?

Why is the addict being punished and maker of the drug profiting?

Why is the person at the bottom of the chain of command, trying to clean up the street, seeing the bad guys get back on the street and the guys with more power letting them out?

Why did the officers sit and watch that woman get kidnapped and thrown in that van and know she was getting raped, but wait until they were done to go arrest them? Why is the system set up that they had to do that in order for the charges to stick? Why couldn't they stop them?

Why are they taking the children of that Christian homeschooling family, who isn't doing drugs, and lying about them, while they let that drug addict keep the kids and spend tons of money on rehabilitation for her and therapy for the kids?

Why is it that they will stop the drug dealer who just made $500 tonight in sales and is driving a beat up old junker, but it's much less likely that they'll stop the drug dealer who just made 10k and is driving the luxury car?

Why is it so easy to stop someone who comes here with little money who wants to make a living to help pay for a sick mother back home but they can't seem to stop someone who comes here with lots of money and sets up training camps for terrorists?

Why is it so important to criminalize marijuana when alcohol is the driving factor in DUI car crashes, alcoholism abounds, and it ruins and takes so many lives?

Why hasn't banning drugs stopped drug use?

Why are drug companies, doctors, and pharmacies not held more accountable for the manufacture, prescribing, and sale of addictive, harmful, chemical drugs? Just because they are legal does not make them less harmful than illegal drugs.

And all these issues began tying themselves together for me in a neat little package tied with a green bow made out of dollars. Inside that package was power. Influence. Friendship. Appointments. Elections.

The greater good of American citizens is not exactly what I see as a goal of most modern politicians and of most laws that have been passed in recent times.

It seems that good things that happen are becoming a side effect of things rather than the main thrust of them. For a great example, look at the ACA. Once in a while, you'll see someone post about "a" person who was positively affected, and they use it to tout the law as wonderful. It's psychological warfare. You're meant to hang your head in shame if you don't agree that the story about the guy in the wheelchair who was helped by the ACA, the little baby with the black eye who was taken from her parents by the government, the petty drug dealer who hit the old lady who is in jail because, they say, drug laws work...it's all meant to show you how great the system works.

And I don't believe it does work. I haven't seen any evidence that it works. What I've seen is a government that profits off the crimes and addictions of its people, and innocent citizens that pay for it.

No, I don't want laws that help that along.

 

Too many people in the US, and especially churches, don't understand the true issues of addiction. It isn't about "smart vs dumb" or "rich vs poor" or even "moral vs immoral."

Addiction is a deep seated affliction that can beset anyone regardless of social demographic or background.

Recently, we had a member of our church die from a similar overdose after struggling with their addiction for 15 years. They couldn't get over it. They had good weeks, even months, and even a year...but they got caught in a cycle of loss and depression that threw them back into their disease.

We think you can just stop or go to a clinic and get talked out of it. For long term sufferers it is is never that easy.

Did you know Mensa has plenty of members in chemical abuse cycles (about 30%.) Republicans go to rehab all the time.

Addiction is a disease that needs to be treated the same way.

 

Opium derivatives and crude oil control the world. Legal drugs and alcohol are in there too. Substance abuse is not a new dilemma. Noah had problems when he planted a vineyard.

The rich and famous have the same kinds of problems as the commoners--but they can afford more expensive diversions. There is only one answer to the problems of life: Jesus. He is not found in a bottle or a needle.

This is a sad example for the children. Pray for them.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Bro. James

 

(NaturalNews) Street heroin is devastating America today. The heroin overdose death of creative genius Philip Seymour Hoffman -- found dead today with a needle in his arm and "Ace of Spaces" heroin in his hotel room -- underscores the urgent need for radical reforms that would decriminalize, regulate and assert strict quality control requirements over recreational street drugs.

It wasn't the heroin itself that killed Philip Seymour Hoffman, you see: it was the unpredictability of the potency of heroin that's manufactured, distributed and retailed in an unregulated underground economy which has no quality standards and no accountability to its customers and users.

The War on Drugs is an absolute failure

At first glance to the simple minded, the heroin-induced death of a beloved actor might seem justification for an urgent call to escalate the War on Drugs with an even greater degree of police intervention, state surveillance and expansion of the world's largest prison system. Yet such decades-long efforts did nothing to prevent the death of Hoffman, and in many ways they undoubtedly contributed to it. When an in-demand chemical product cannot be legally regulated, controlled and distributed alongside medical treatment protocols for addiction, it inevitably falls into the hands of underground operators who, almost by definition, exhibit zero quality control standards and are steeped in a culture of violence and criminality.

And that means the heroin which people like Hoffman are able to acquire is unpredictable: it may be contaminated with toxic substances, combined with physiological multipliers that enhance toxicity, cut with deadly fillers, or dosed with dangerously wide variability to the point where users have no idea how much of the drug they're really getting with each injection. Every dose is a roll of the dice, and far too frequently that gamble ends in tragedy.

How the war on drugs makes drugs even more deadly

The drug war has failed to keep recreational drugs out of the hands of substance abusers all across America, and in its failure it has vastly increased the toxicity of those drugs to the point where the drugs are increasingly deadly. Remember: Hoffman's overdose was not a suicide. This was an addict who believed he was simply getting another day's fix. He had no intention of killing himself.

If street drugs like heroin could be decriminalized, regulated, controlled and distributed in a medical context along with serious addiction treatment protocols, those who choose to abuse the drug would, at the very least, be able to count on consistent dosing and drug composition. Shifting the massive demand for recreational drugs out of the hands of shady criminal operations and into the hands of pharmacies, clinics and addiction treatment centers is not only medically justified but morally and ethically demanded. It also has the revolutionary side effect of causing the economic collapse of drug gangs (and all their violence).

Substance addiction is not a criminal mindset; it is a medical addiction. But by forcing substance addicts to deal with the criminal underground, we condemn them to precisely the kind of toxicity and unpredictability that killed Hoffman.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043744_P...se_drug_decriminalization.html##ixzz2sIwwpY2s

In other words the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman and countless others like him is on the hands of people like you.

 

You are saying that the reason to not ban alcohol, which is a drug, though you admit the harm it does, is because of money. It profits people and too many people would be harmed, financially, without it.

Which is exactly what I've been saying.

People aren't honestly concerned with the ailments these things cause people.

It's all about the money.

You admit the harm, want one drug illegal because it is harmful, yet want another harmful drug legal because it puts money in pockets, and you don't see a moral dilemma with your position, and further, admonish me to repent of my contrasting views? That's not right. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I based my views on what provided the best economic security, though I admit, it wouldn't be the first time I've been faced with that dilemma and actually considered it. But no.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWdUJIlSYxU