We Should Give Addicts Drugs Like its Medicine

It seems counterintuitive that a nurse giving heroin addicts heroin for free, multiple times a day could be an effective way to combat a drug epidemic, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Vancouver. Those with little desire to get off of heroin are given a different type of treatment for their addiction, where their addictions are being fulfilled on a daily basis.

As it turns out, the problem with heroin users in a society isn’t the high that they are receiving from it. When heroin addicts don’t know when or where the are going to get their next high, they experience changes in their behavior that makes them more likely to commit crimes and eventually drop dead on the street. The security from the police and the consistent ability to get heroin at these safe zones improve the behaviors of the addicts, and give them more of a chance of living normally. One man who utilized these sites explains how he was even able to keep a job as a result of this consistent and safe heroin.

Some argue that these sites are just delaying the inevitable death of those who utilize them. While these programs may not be effective at getting people off of heroin, they at the very least give addicts a shot at as normal a life as they can get. If the people in these sites are going to die anyway, then it seems logical for these addicts to die in a way that is least intrusive to the rest of society, and in the most ethical way possible.

If Your Country Finds Oil, Run

It seems counterintuitive that finding oil, one of the world’s most valuable resources, is one of the worst things that can happen to a country. Despite the fact that oil brings a lot of wealth to a nation, citizens in countries where oil is struck often become poorer as a result of how that wealth is managed. Oil takes jobs away in the country and negatively impacts the exchange rates of all other goods that aren’t oil. Leaders of these countries are often bribed for the oil and corruption ensues. Oil dependent nations are also able to finance themselves without taxes which means they feel as if they have no responsibility to look out for the people.

Luckily, solutions for finding oil do exist. Alaska is bound by law to invest 25% of oil revenues, and for the payoff to be given to Alaskan citizens as taxable revenue. This helps stimulate the economy, so much so that poverty in the poorest Native populations of Alaska have gone down. Unfortunately similar programs in other countries have had their money raided by their leaders, so this solution is not full-proof. However, nations who have used an oil-to-cash program to put money in the pockets of their citizens are often more well off than those who don’t. If your nation has the displeasure of striking oil, it seems that giving some of that oil money to the citizens is more effective than using it for more traditional government projects.

What We Don’t See Matters

It seems counterintuitive that the most effective way to reinforce a fighter plane would be to further protect the areas that don’t have bullet holes. Why would you want to reinforce an area that isn’t getting shot at? Wouldn’t it make sense to reinforce the areas with the most bullet holes. Well let’s think about it from the perspective of Abraham Wald, the man who was tasked with reinforcing the planes. Wald was examing planes that had made it back safety from war. He cleverly realized that if these were the planes that made it back from war safely, then the areas with tons of holes in them were the areas that were already properly reinforced. He suggested that reinforcing the areas with no seen bullet holes would be more effective because the planes that were hit in those areas were the ones that crashed, not the ones safely parked in the hangar.