Sarah Childs- Mom of Child Lost to an Overdose Says that the "Drug Policy is the reason people are dying"

Summary: Earlier this year, Louise Vincent's 19 year old daughter, Selena, died after a drug overdose. Surprisingly, Vincent does not blame heroin for the incident. She blames the United States' current drug policy. Louise Vincent was once very familiar with drug addiction. She used to be addicted to heroin herself in her 20s, but she found help and has been clean for more than a decade.

Currently, she works as a specialist in "harm reduction," a fascinating technique used to help addicts and support their recovery. This approach "changed her life" and could do the same for all drug users in America. Vincent explains how for addicts, "any kind of reaching a goal is success". Addicts must work hard for any type of positive change and curing them is a lot more complicated than sending them to rehab. In fact, these overdoses are so dangerous that they have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of injury death in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Vincent believes that our drug policy should counter overdoses using a reversal drug called naloxone and remind drug users that they can change for the better.

Analysis: This Article was posted Sunday morning which is frightening for the public. Drug overdose is an extreme problem that our country has dealt with for a while now, but cases like the death of Selena are becoming more and more frequent. This also shows how the drug policy is not doing an overall satisfactory job at keeping up with the rapidly increasing overdoses. Prior to reading this article, I knew that the government does not exactly know how to keep track of the drug market. I also knew that overdoses were happening everywhere, even in Dallas! This affected the way I interpreted this article because I was not especially surprised to hear that our drug policy is not highly effective. However, I was very surprised to discover a new plan to help addicts. This article was written for the citizens of the United States who do not know a lot about our current drug affairs. I believe it left a positive effect on the audience by proving that drug addicts are not as responsible as they seem. Additionally, this article was written to inform us about a new factor in our overdosing problem, our nation's drug policy. Therefore, this article is significant to our lives today because it provides a new solution to our ongoing problem of drug abuse. This incorrect drug policy could synthesize directly to the reason why our nation in the past created the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Both in the drinking policy before the act, and our current policy against drugs provides many flaws in how to help abusers.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/27/health/mom-heroin-overdose/index.html