“Swiss vote on radical heroin rules”

The article, “Swiss vote on radical heroin rules” is about Switzerland having one of the highest addiction rates of heroin in Europe, and finding a way to get it off the streets. Open drug scenes were pretty common on the streets in Switzerland with addicts injecting and dealers selling publicly. HIV and the spread of Hepatitis infection rates were on the rise due to addicts sharing needles. To keep the streets free of illegal drug use, the Swiss health department introduced clean injection rooms where the addicts can inject with the supervision of a nurse in a safe environment.
Switzerland introduced a 10-year heroin prescription program which basically prescribed heroin to addicts because many of them did not seem to be able to get off the drugs. Prescribing illegal drugs to addicts sounds like a foolish idea, I believe it is telling everyone that “it is ok” to do these illegal drugs. This is not a good influence to the younger generation. Their reason for prescribing heroin to these addicts was because “everything else has failed”, or “it would be more shocking if we just let them die”. Doctors believe that since heroin was a fashionable thing to do in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it has lost its trend and now heroin users have the image of losers. They are hoping other non addicts view heroin usage as an image of an “ugly illness”, and they are predicting numbers of new addicts falling.
The theory of addiction I believe that is going to help with this program is the social learning theory. In the social learning theory Bandura declared that people learn by observing and imitating others. He said people are likely to model the behavior of others that they see continuously. This theory works well with the article because its purpose is to decline the number of addicts. Heroin addiction became a trend back in the 1980’s and 90’s but is no longer a trend now. It was much publicized with addicts selling and injecting on the streets. People would see addicts doing this and they would think “well that must be the cool thing to do, I want to try it”. That is how the number of addicts rose in the 80’s and 90’s through the social learning theory. Now people see heroin addicts as trash, or losers. People learn to not get addicted by seeing that heroin is now a “sad, banal, old people’s habit.” Heroin now has the image of an “ugly illness”, and that is why the numbers of new addicts is falling. I believe keeping addicts off the streets is a good idea, but I do not believe in prescribing heroin to addicts just so they can live their normal lives.