Dignity for All –
January 11, 2020 – “Other diseases are a result of our behavior. Some sorts of diabetes, for instance, depend on what we eat. But nobody even thinks about putting a diabetic in prison because he eats too much sugar. We may consider this is a self-inflicted disease, [as in] ‘You are addicted because you wished [to be].’ No, I’m not diabetic because I wished to be diabetic. I am probably weak. There are some things in my genes, some things that drive me to abuse sugar or sweets or whatever.
“If I smoke cigarettes and I get lung cancer, no one puts me in jail. I’ll be offered treatment. I’ll be treated with dignity even if it comes from my wrong behavior. Why put people who use drugs in jail? In my country, we were facing an epidemic with the same dimensions that you are facing now with opioids. “
