Jiang Wanan criticized Shen Boyang’s drug treatment theory and emphasized not to use the Mesa Winter Plan to cover up

◎ Wu Yirui

Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan posted a message on social media on the evening of October 3, criticizing Shen Boyang's past articles on drug control, and also emphasized not to use the Mesa Winter Plan to cover up. (Extracted from Jiang Wanan’s Facebook)

Addiction medical treatment and harm reduction policies in Taiwan have never been an easy path.

For a long time, Taiwan has mainly dealt with the drug problem through judicial, police and prohibition methods. Drug users are seen first as offenders and only secondarily as persons in need of medical and public health assistance.

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In comparison, some countries in Europe and the United States began to develop methadone maintenance therapy in the 1960s. During this period, they also experienced the HIV/AIDS epidemic outbreak in the 1980s, which posed resistance to the development of alternative therapies. Taiwan became familiar with this concept of first reducing infections, deaths or other injuries almost half a century later than the Netherlands and the UK.

This is a topic that Taiwan’s STS academic community has also been concerned about. In the early stages of promoting alternative therapies, the health department must continuously coordinate with the judiciary, police, local government, hospitals, pharmacies and communities. Today's long-established (but actually quite young) addiction medicine is the result of a system established bit by bit after long-term negotiations among many front-line doctors, public health personnel, researchers, judicial and police workers, and civil society groups. More importantly, the results of these efforts are testable public health results.

Unfortunately, when addiction treatment or harm reduction policies enter the electoral defense, political discourse trumps scientific evidence. Harm reduction measures accumulated through research and practice are simplified into "condoning drug use", "encouraging drug use" or other labels that easily arouse emotions. Medical and public health achievements that have been achieved after crossing extremely high thresholds are deliberately obliterated overnight.

If stigma prevents drug users from approaching the health care system, if frontline health workers are deterred from providing treatment, and if established services are scaled back due to political pressure, the consequences will ultimately be felt by patients, their families, the public health system as a whole, and society as a whole. This is an outright hazard.

Jiang Wanan’s team, please stop harming Taiwan immediately.

Jiang Wanan's bid said: "Commissioner Shen could not face his past opinions, so the message area became busy late at night. Funds were burning, it was really hard work." (Provided by Jiang Wanan Bidding)

(The author is a joint professor of humanities and social sciences in the Department of Medicine, regardless of department, at National Cheng Kung University)

This article is reprinted from Harry Wu’s Facebook with permission