U.S.-Taiwan Observatory》Taipei drug war, election goes crazy

Drug war in Taipei, election went crazy. (Taken from the post) Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan’s spokesperson and legislator Luo Zhiqiang held a press conference and said: "Shen Boyang wants to let community centers distribute drugs, let drugs enter our families, and let our children go to community centers to get drugs, no matter you are a teenager You can easily go to the community center to get drugs, whether it’s heroin, fentanyl, or amphetamines, whatever you want. The community center is like a convenience store, where you can poison yourself with whatever drugs you like.”

He really said that, let’s help spread it.

Why is this outrageous and anti-intellectual statement effective? Why are there so many high-level intellectuals who join in spreading rumors and echoing them? In fact, this is a kind of emotional politics and identity politics. From a political point of view, what they are calling on is the most conservative base. At the same time, they are also trying to throw out all the mud. They hope that the so-called middle voters and swing voters will not come out to vote if they find it too controversial.

However, we would like to make some additions and clarifications here. This statement really has too much influence.

Spokesperson Chiang Wanan, Taipei City's 5 Blue Committee issued a joint "anti-drug statement." (Taken from the Facebook pages of Wang Hongwei, Li Yanxiu, Luo Zhiqiang, Xu Qiaoxin, and Lai Shibao) First, we must regard drug addicts as criminals or patients. This is a core issue debated between the left and the right (liberals and conservatives) in many places in the United States and Europe today. In the past, we have gradually formed a consensus in Taiwan. Since more than 20 years ago, many people have been working hard to stop treating drug addicts as criminals, but as patients. We must proactively provide them with clean needles and "drugs", but slowly help them reduce their dosage and reduce dependence. This is the long-standing "harm reduction policy."

In Taiwan, starting around 2006, in order to reduce the large number of cases of HIV infection from shared needles, we began to implement a plan to distribute needles widely, which was first implemented in Taipei, Tainan and other places. Ma Ying-jeou, Mayor Hao Longbin, etc. all strongly supported it. Ko Wenzhe also strongly called for drug addicts not to be treated as criminals. #Obviously this is a consensus approach among all parties in Taiwan, blue, green and white.

Moreover, #Taiwan's implementation was very successful, with the number of HIV infections from shared needles significantly reduced, and it later became a reference case for many countries.

It must be emphasized again: providing injections and drugs such as methadol (methadol itself is a drug) is not to encourage drug abuse, but to help addicts detoxify. This is basic common sense.

Today, for the sake of the election, Chiang Wanan's camp described such a policy as "distributing drugs in the community" that would cause great harm. The Taipei City Government Health Bureau even issued a statement saying that anyone who uses needles may be using drugs, and it was particularly strict and said that they must be investigated and dealt with according to the law. In this way, how many people would dare to use this treatment? Are the social workers and medical staff who have been working on the front line for more than two decades all plastic? This kind of campaign style is directly destroying the people's long-term trust in the public health system.

For the sake of the election, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan (left) described an article written by his opponent DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Shen Boyang (right) as "distributing drugs in the community." (File photo, combined by this newspaper) This is why several doctors' associations, nursing associations, and social work groups have come out to condemn this stigmatizing behavior. But the damage has been done, and now it seems that the Chinese Kuomintang has no intention of shrinking its hand. All we can say is that it takes the wisdom of the entire population to counter such rumors.

Second, in addition to suddenly starting to crack down on drugs, at the same time the Taipei City Government also raided gay bars, and the police station used many illegal methods to raid homes. This is a standard "identity and identity" battle. Now the Taipei City Government is completely targeting conservative groups to stimulate their turnout.

Putting aside the fact that this is completely inconsistent with the persona created by Mayor Chiang Wanan in the past few years, many human rights groups have pointed out that this method of law enforcement has set back the human rights standards of #Taipei City by at least 20 years. International media such as Reuters were also the first to report outrageous law enforcement in Taipei City, and police officers humiliating people with disabilities. We can assure you that if this kind of illegal duty situation occurs in the United States, police officers, police stations, and the government will be sued to take off their pants. In addition to huge compensation, they will all lose their jobs. We really don’t want to see Taiwan being seen by the whole world in this way.

The Taipei City Government raided gay bars, and a vigilante group recently protested in front of the Taipei City Government, demanding that Chiang Wanan release the investigation results. (File photo) Third, of course, Taiwan and many countries are facing the problem of drug proliferation and need to face it seriously. In particular, etomidate, an emerging drug that has appeared recently, is rampant in the United States, and fentanyl is the most common drug. From the perspective of "addicts", we must admit that "addiction" is a disease, #and prison cannot treat the disease. Of course, to combat the drug problem, we need to #strengthen the prevention of smuggling (including raw materials) and identify manufacturers and traffickers. If you catch drug users and addicts and crack down hard, you will not be able to eradicate the problem at all.

What is more confusing is that in this Taipei mayoral election, what are the approaches of each camp to drug prevention and control policies? Especially if the Taipei City Government opposes the current harm reduction policy, how will it deal with the drug addiction problem? Is it time to get rid of the clean needle and methadone treatments that have been in place for years now?

It's a pity that we only see some people grabbing an article from 2014 and reading it.

The last thing I want to say is that we hope that every county and mayor combination can have an open debate. In the United States, politicians engage in direct face-to-face debates with voters every day, but in Taiwan we rarely see cross-examination debates. This is really strange.

At the end of the election campaign, many wonderful things and discussions began to occur. In the end, it is still up to mature civil society to make judgments, especially to ask politicians to make arguments and stop spreading rumors.

Beijing City has promoted methadone replacement therapy for many years and has continued to maintain a stable and accessible treatment service capacity; the picture shows the situation. (Taken from freepik) Note: The name of the "Food and Drug Administration" of the US federal government is "Food & Drug Administration", FDA, and the official English name of the "Drug Enforcement Administration" of the US federal government is "Drug Enforcement Administration", DEA. We really didn’t expect that the word “drug” means “poison and medicine” at the same time, that this matter could be argued about for so long, and that some people could talk about treatment as spreading poison everywhere. In fact, these rumors themselves may be more vicious than drugs.

This article is reprinted with permission from US Taiwan Watch: US Taiwan Observatory Facebook