Thoughts on “Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey:
Through my 12 years of practice as a Registered Nurse I have looked after and come into contact with drug dependant people. Their addictions ranged everywhere from completely rendering them incapable of maintaining any sort of active role in society, to those still taking pain killers they were prescribed twenty years ago after minor surgery, now complimenting that with a pill to sleep and perhaps a few to wake up in the morning. The difference in these extremes is that the latter do not have the risk of being incarcerated and criminalised.
Damage Done questions how we deal with the drug problem in contemporary society and basically how the international policy on drugs is failing terribly. We are introduced to ex and current members of the police force, from both here in Canada and the US, who want to change those policies and believe drug addiction is a problem best dealt with by health care professionals and not the police. Current drug laws are compared to The Prohibition period in the 1930s, suggesting that by making a substance illegal, it will not necessarily prevent people from acquiring and using the substance. Rather, it will place the supply part of the supply and demand equation in the hands of criminals.
We hear how all these police officers have made the transition in their beliefs regarding drug laws, some of which I found extremely irritating. The straw that broke it for me was the cop who cried about arresting a man when his 8-year-old daughter was looking. This was a terrible argument in this debate. If you are in law enforcement that’s what you do with or without children involved. The showing of his gentle paternal instincts did nothing for me and I am already on their side of the argument.
The case of the narcotics police officer, whose son was arrested when a joint butt was found in his home, was potentially much more thought provoking for drug prohibitionists. This young man who had just finished his education as a pharmacy technician, comes from a respectable family and is not the typical drug convicted criminal presented through the media. If convicted this mans life will be destroyed and he will never work as a pharmacy tech. Just because he smokes marijuana does he deserve to be in prison? Does it make him a criminal who cannot participate positively in society?
We then have the group that is portrayed in the media as the typical drug addicted person. The people who live from one fix to the next, doing anything possible to get it. Are these people criminals? The offenses they are forced to commit to feed their addictions are inarguably criminal, but the drive behind the act comes from a place that renders them incapable of making a rational law abiding decision.
I feel that it is much easier for society in general to place blame on the drug addicted person rather than looking at the bigger picture. Are they to blame for where they are in life? A question that I have put to many of my health professional peers and colleagues is, do you think when this person was five they said when I grow up I want to be a heroin addict? The drug-addicted person is there because his life’s path brought him in that direction and more times than not that journey has been a very difficult one filled with atrocities that many of us cannot even imagine. Society needs to take responsibility for these people and where they are. They need to be given help in the proper environment, which certainly is not a prison cell.
This documentary presents a very important issue that needs to be addressed but I feel that it will take a lot more convincing evidence to change or even capture the attention of a person who has staunch anti drug ideals.
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: Damage-Done, Drug-war, Festival-Nouveau-Cinema, Videoblog FNC
