The CBC article “More than 7,000 lives lost to toxic drugs in 5 years — and this B.C. health crisis is only getting worse”  reminds us it has been more than five years since the toxicity level of illicit drugs reach poisonous levels.

Since the toxicity of illicit drugs reached poisonous levels that caused a significant increase in deaths from the use of illicit drugs, no effective action has been taken to reduce the death toll. Even though it has been clear from the beginning that the only effective way to reduce the death toll is to reduce the toxicity of the drugs being used.

Five years during which politicians, bureaucrats, the public and Media have ignored the pervasive evidence that treatment in BC overwhelmingly fails to enable those who complete programs to achieve stable sobriety, simply recycling clients through programs, sobriety and relapse back into addiction – time after time after time.

Five years of ignoring research that that shows the same results you get with standalone treatment programs can be obtained by doing nothing.

Recently the BC government announced it is approaching the federal government to ensure that access to the Russian roulette of toxic drugs will not be impeded by the legal system.

The BC government also recently announced increased funding for supervised consumption sites, naloxone supply and integrated response team programs. Notwithstanding the fact a cursory analysis of the outcomes makes it clear that while pushing deaths into the future and thereby spreading the deaths over a longer period of time may create an illusionary decrease in deaths, spreading the deaths over a longer timeframe does not decrease the total number of deaths from drug toxicity.

In leadership, life and all things it’s far wiser to judge people by their deeds than their speech – their track record rather than their talk.    Rasheed Ogunlaru

We write our lives with our actions and inactions, not our words. What we do or do not do tells others who we truly are.

As John Stuart Mill noted in an 1867 address at the University of St. Andrew “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.

Words are easily said and incur no cost while actions require commitment to sustained effort….  and can cost everything

One reason, perhaps the major reason, that thinking is more potential than fact for human beings is the discomfort  that true – critical – thinking causes when it reveals the discrepancy between our words [how we want to see ourselves] and our actions [reflecting who we truly are].

It is far easier to lie to ourselves, to see ourselves as we want to see ourselves, when we avoid seeing the gulf between our words and reality as determined by our actions.

Over these five plus years there has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the words of politicians, bureaucrats, the public and Media expressing grief over these deaths.

Five plus years of empty talk, meaningless words and fruitless behaviour that have created a well established track record of who politicians, bureaucrats, the public and Media truly are, with respect to the death toll from drug toxicity and addiction.

The principle of looking beyond the rhetoric and fallacies, acknowledging the actual outcomes of actions taken or not taken and accepting responsibility for the consequences of your choices and actions may in disrepute.

And there is no way to compel politicians, bureaucrats, the public and Media to acknowledge the variance between their words and their actions or to act effectively to reduce the death toll of toxic drugs.

Reality does not care what your ideology says is true, what you believe is true or that you want to be true. Reality does not care what we think; it exists separately from us and simply is what it is.                   Tao of James  

If your actions do not prove the truth of your words, your words are lies.

Lie to yourselves, embrace the comfort of self-delusion – just don’t assault me with crocodile tears of spurious grief