I wasn't crying because I thought it was real but because I knew it could be real. There must be plenty of loved children living with drug users who lose control occasionally. I have worked in prison with drug users and I know that the majority are 'nice' people. They don't mean any harm but they are addicts. Their addiction drives them and nothing will get in the way of that. Hopefully, one day they reach a point where they realise they need help, the help is available and they don't come off the rails along the way. The vast majority though, will continue using drugs, throughout prison spells or until they take too much accidentally, or their body can't handle what it once could and they overdose. Admittedly, I haven't worked with female drug users so I have no idea of their perspective.
According to research in 2009, more and more babies are being born dependent on drugs. Indeed, in 2008, five babies were born each day to drug addict mothers and three of those five would themselves suffer withdrawal symptoms on being born. What kind of a life are these children born into and what prospects of a loving, warm family and a decent education do they really have? Will they just end up being the new drug users we see day after day being brought into prison for petty crimes?I remember reading an article in The Guardian last year about an American woman paying for a UK drug user to be sterilised. Barbara Harris, from the US charity Project Prevention suggests that female drug users should be sterilised, or put on long term contraceptives. At the time that this was in the news there was an uproar about Harris' ideals suggesting even that she was akin to Hitler. However, does she have a point? If female drug users were offered long term contraceptives, it would massively reduce the amount of babies born 'addicted' to drugs and the cost of foster care for those children, not to mention the cost of all the babies not born, those who are aborted. Project Prevention pays drug users to be sterilised or be put on long term contraceptives and I think this is the problem that most people have.
Ultimately though, it is one thing to make choices about drug use which effect your own life, but an entirely different thing to be so destructive with your child's life and their future. So, I end with this article from The Telegraph. Food for thought I think.
