THE Government should explore every avenue to address the social factors that push people to use drugs before considering a “needle-syringe program”.
Head of the Catholic Church and chairman of the Pacific Council of Churches Archbishop Peter Loy Chong said this while describing the proposed program as a “Band-Aid solution”.
He argued that the focus should instead be placed on the factors that drive people to drug use.
“The needle is not the real problem,” he said. “The real problem is people taking drugs, and the whole question — why people take drugs.”
Speaking to this newspaper, Archbishop Loy Chong said there were a variety of reasons why people, particularly adolescents and young people, begin using drugs.
He also pointed to what he described as the “limitedness” and “finiteness” of human beings as another factor that could contribute to drug use.
He said people did not always have the “fullness of life” they desired and could turn to drugs as a means of escaping pain, struggles, and feelings of guilt.
“Because drugs promise them that high. That high that takes them out of the pain, the struggles, the inner struggles of the human person.”
Archbishop Loy Chong said addressing drug use, HIV and the issue of needles required looking at how the issues were connected.
He said the Catholic Church had developed a handbook on responding to drugs, while stressing the need to examine the reasons behind drug use.
“We have to go from HIV, to the needle, the needle to the drugs.
“Drugs, and you have to find out why is it people are taking drugs.”
