Summary 1: Free Heroin to Battle Addiction

It seems counterintuitive to give heroin addicts the best heroin of their life to battle their addiction. However, that’s what’s happening in Vancouver’s port towns. The city has tried to help addicts with heroin alternatives. Still, those who don’t take to those can go to a center where a nurse will provide the user with clean syringes and other utilities necessary to make their experience as safe as possible. By giving these users a safe environment to use and get heroin, they’re preventing them from committing a crime or selling themselves to get money for the heroin.

The plan by Vancouver acknowledges that these people are addicts of heroin. However, the goal isn’t for people to stop using; it is to make them the least threatening heroin users they can be. The program has even helped some users hold a steady job since they don’t have to worry about where their next high will come from. It’s no longer get clean or end up on the streets for many of these people.

It’s truly a fine line to walk, and there’s no telling that it will have a long-term systemic change in heroin addiction in Vancouver. However, there’s no denying that it is helping to create a safer environment for the areas of Vancouver that are infested by heroin problems. Vancouver has bitten the bullet and decided that a much cleaner way for heroin addicts to use and ultimately die using will be the best way to combat the addiction problems in their cities for the foreseeable future.

Summary 2: Prozac: What’s Race Got to Do with It?

It seems counterintuitive that reform programs such as Medicaid make it even harder for minorities to access drugs such as Prozac. Medical reform programs such as Medicaid were brought about to help minorities receive “free” healthcare options that are easily accessible. However, getting certain drugs, such as the anti-depressant Prozac, is even more complicated. A drug administered to over 33 million people a year in the United States, and Medicare users were 60% less likely to be prescribed Prozac if they were even prescribed an anti-depressant in the first place.

Antidepressant use has risen dramatically recently, but minority groups such as blacks and Hispanics were prescribed 50% less than white patients with depression. In 2008, in the same group of minorities being treated for depression, around 4 in every 100 people were prescribed medication. Mental health is why Prozac is recommended, but a large population can’t even get it because of more significant systemic issues.

Health reforms were put into place to make health care accessible and equitable. However, systemic issues such as racism or financial disparities dig a grave for these reforms. It’s hard to quantify, which is why Prozac isn’t being prescribed at the same rate between whites and minorities. One thing can be said, though, it’s a complex relationship between all of the systemic issues of the United States that make a specific change like accessible health care a living nightmare for people.

Summary 3: Men Defining Rape: A History

It seems counterintuitive that men are making laws about the female body. For centuries men have been defining what raping a woman means. Whether it’s 1780 BC and rape is defined as property damage against the father, or the Latin root raptus means the abduction of a woman against the will of whatever male controlled her, men have been handling an issue that affects women.

These laws didn’t stop in Roman times, as a male physician from Britain in 1920 said that if you weren’t pregnant, you weren’t raped. That idea spurred other definitions, such as absolute rape, where it was explained that the female couldn’t conceive a baby because there was no excitement or orgasm during the rape. The worst stemmed from a law in 1670 England that stated a man couldn’t be guilty of raping his wife who gave herself to the husband in their matrimony. This same law allowed men in the state of North Carolina to rape their wives with no punishment until 1990.

In 2022, you would hope we’d surpass the ideals of 1670 England, but we’re not. We have taken severe steps backward on women’s rights in the United States. The GOP has made concerted efforts to limit funding for abortions on “non-forceable” rapes. Acts like these may have gotten denied, but with Roe v. Wade being overturned, there’s no telling when this long-standing war of men deciding rules about the female anatomy will be over and when women will be able to take charge and freely determine what’s in their best interest instead of a man.