ET:
President Donald Trump highlighted faith-based initiatives as a major part in the administration’s efforts to resolve the epidemic of opioid abuse in the country, which Trump declared a national emergency in 2017.
“My administration is committed to ensuring that every citizen can live with dignity and purpose and proudly pursue the American dream,” Trump saidat the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta on April 24. “Critical to this effort is my administration’s strong support for faith-based initiatives.
“America is a nation that believes in the power of prayer and the strength of fellowship. We believe in the grace of God and we’re proud of it.”
Trump introduced on stage Monty Berks, director of faith-based initiatives at the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, who himself recovered from addiction after getting help from his hometown church 19 years ago.
He said the department’s leaders gave him a chance because they knew he “had a purpose.”
“My purpose was to use the pain that I went through to help other people not have to go through the same thing that I went through,” he said.
Paying it Forward
Addicts in recovery have proven effective in helping other addicts to quit and stay clean. Groups such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA), many of which encourage spirituality in recovery while not necessarily being religious, have utilized this resource for decades. Research indicates that approach works just as well as professional psychological interventions, if not better.
The Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018, which authorizes some $5 billion over five years to fight the addiction crisis, includes $25 million in grants for “building communities of recovery,” which includes peer-support networks such as NA.
Trump also emphasized prevention, saying “one of the most important steps to ending the opioid crisis is to prevent young people from ever using drugs in the first place.” read more
Seein as it’s a moral problem, not a legal one, that makes sense.
izlamo delenda est …
…When I ran squad, I saw some folks who had issues with this. I narced several of them back to the land of the living.
…I never saw ANY of them get out of it on their own, but I know a ministry that HAS succeeded with the love of Christ, where all else has failed…
“THE following account appeared some time ago in Ann Landers column. It is a heartbreaker, entitled, “King Heroin Is My Shepherd, I Shall Always Want.” These tragic words were part of a twisted rewording of the beloved 23rd Psalm, found in a car with the body of a 23-year old young woman, near Reidsville, N.C. Her death was ruled a suicide from a hookup with the car’s exhaust pipe. The note read:
“King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want. He maketh me to lie down in the gutters.”
“He leadeth me beside the troubled waters. He destroyeth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness.”
“Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear no evil for thou, Heroin, art with me.”
“Thy needle and thy capsule comfort me.”
“Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family.”
“Thou robbest my head of reason. My cup of sorrow runneth over.”
“Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the damned forever.”
Also found in the car with the dead woman was this message:
“Jail didn’t cure me. Nor did hospitalization help me for long. The doctor told my family it would have been better, and indeed kinder, if the person who got me hooked on dope had taken a gun and blown my brains out. And I wish to God he had.””
https://www.1timothy4-13.com/files/chr_vik/king.html
…This crap is NASTY. Only God can free you from it. Faith based is THE only answer.
Supernightshade, Thank you for your posting. Your information is useful, even if no one else may agree with it. I do.In my own community in the 70s there was a Christian outreach by my own church to help the street youth. Moral and spiritual guidance, plus personal self discipline was taught in supervised housing that
these youth could VOLUNTARILY live in. The drugster hippies had moved into our area, so these youth had
followed them. Drugs were a huge problem and lives were at stake. Human compassion alone is not enough for most, so the Spiritual strength of God makes a difference. Sadly, the problem has not gone away through the years.
Runaways
How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped Today’s Practices and Policies
Karen M. Staller
“During the 1960s and 1970s, runaways became a source of national concern in America. Countercultural activists provided support to runaway youth, and private agencies began developing innovative, sometimes controversial programs to serve them. ”
“Staller begins with the 1960s, when the mainstream media began to characterize the act of running away less as an opportunity for exciting adventure (as experienced by Huckleberry Finn) and more as a temptation with dangerous consequences. She then turns to the books, poems, broadsides, and songs produced by Beat writers and
countercultural meccas like Haight Ashbury and New York City’s East Village, which embraced runaways as kindred social revolutionaries. ”
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/runaways/9780231124102
Homeless and Runaway Youth
4/14/2016
http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/homeless-and-runaway-youth.aspx