Human rights and people who use illegal drugs. It is uncommon for many people to link human rights and people who use drugs together in the same sentence. We live in a world that has a poor history of identifying that people who do drugs also deserve to have their basic human rights recognized, respected, and restored.
To better understand the context of human rights in the life of a person who uses drugs, consider the process of undergoing surgery at your local hospital. The surgery is an invasive and painful procedure. You are given the same amount of pain management medication as the person next to you, who has never used drugs in their life. Unfortunately, what works for a person who has never used drugs before is not the same as what works for a person who has been using drugs for 20 years. This situation is an unfortunate example of a human rights violation that happens all the time.
Do we find it acceptable to say that a person can handle the pain? Or that a person won’t mind the pain? Or even that a person might deserve the pain? Human beings generally respond negatively to pain and a person who has gone through an experience such as this one would be extremely hesitant to access necessary health care services in the future.
Most of us take advantage of our basic human right to quality health care. And that’s the way it should be. We should be able to just assume that we will always have access to essential and high quality health care. We shouldn’t be afraid to go into a doctor’s office or a clinic or a hospital. We shouldn’t worry that the standards of our health care might be different than the standards for the person in the next bed over.
Standards of health care are a complex subject under a great deal of ongoing debate in Canada. This is a specific example provided to illustrate a very simple point.
Above all else, we should be recognizing that people who use drugs are just that, people. People who deserve their basic human rights as much as you or I.
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