Attempts to position the Legislative Yuan Committee as an extended battleground in the northern mayoral election
With 47 days left to vote in the nine-in-one election, the Kuomintang has recently launched a series of "drug smear" attacks against Taipei mayoral candidate Shen Boyang of the Democratic Progressive Party. Chen Jinghuijin, the convener of the National Health and Environmental Commission of the Kuomintang, has arranged for eight agencies including the Ministry of Health and Welfare to conduct a special report on drug harm reduction, which has been questioned as a "private torture chamber." Democratic Progressive Party legislator Guo Yuqing yesterday criticized the big move of arranging special reports from eight ministries and committees. The purpose was not to care about public health policies at all, but to be a completely useless political operation in an attempt to position the Legislative Yuan committee as an extended battlefield in the Taipei City election campaign.
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Regarding the criticism from DPP legislators, Chen Jinghui’s office stated that it had no response.
Chen Jinghui today arranged for the Minister of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Justice, the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the Ocean Commission, the Ocean Patrol Office, and the Ministry of the Interior Police Office to make a special report and prepare for questions on "the effectiveness of the implementation of harm reduction plans and the amount of drug addiction treatment and the improvement of drug borders, schools and related prevention and control measures."
Guo Yuqing pointed out that for the sake of the election, Lanying recently deliberately used Shen Boyang's past academic discussions on international prevention trends from a criminological perspective and maliciously smeared them out of context. She would like to remind the Kuomintang not to elect such a show-off in the election. Drug harm reduction programs, such as methadone replacement therapy, are the public health achievements of Taiwan's long-standing cross-party political seniors and the medical community. They are even implemented in blue-leaning counties and cities.
Green criticizes the whole Kuomintang party to protect Chiang Kai-shek and does not hesitate to stigmatize professionals
Guo Yuqing criticized that in order to protect Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan, who has plummeted in the polls, the entire party has not hesitated to stigmatize the profession and even made ridiculous remarks such as "social workers distribute drugs", which has seriously harmed frontline medical and social workers. Faced with the malicious smear campaign by the Blue Camp, the Green Camp will never follow suit. The DPP's response strategy will fully return to professionalism and scientific data. DPP legislators will also demand that the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Justice and other ministries speak with concrete results to completely expose the Blue Camp's double standards and political rumors.
Guo Yuqing called on the Kuomintang to stop. If they continue to use the power of the convening committee to turn the committee into a torture chamber, continue to spread rumors and smear, and distort the harm reduction plan that even the Beijing Municipal Government is implementing, it will only make Jiang Wanan's support worse.
The Taiwan Clinical Psychology Society and the Clinical Psychologist of the Republic of China issued a joint statement yesterday on the issue of addiction prevention and harm reduction, stating that harm reduction is to reduce the harm to personal health and society before users stop using, and to ensure that addicts remain in the care system and connect with addiction treatment. Addicts receiving treatment in accordance with the law are not the same as illegal drug administration.
The National Federation of Nurses Association of the Republic of China also issued a statement emphasizing that drug prevention and treatment should respect the medical profession and not allow political attacks and defenses to harm public health and front-line caregivers.
