A government-funded agency in Australia was allowing children to sniff paint and glue fumes under supervision by welfare workers. Workers at Berry Street Victoria — an Australian welfare organization that was started in the late 19th century — watched children as young as 12 years old sniff fumes in order to get high.
The organization receives about $15 million in funding from Victoria’s Department of Human Services, and even the organization was threatened with a withdrawal of that funding, Berry Street Victoria chief Sandie de Wolf had said that “a small number of kids will still be able to use them [paint/glue] in our back yards,” though she has since backed off and banned supervised inhalant session at all of the organization’s children’s homes in Victoria.
De Wolf had argued that the purpose of the supervised sniffing was to keep young people safe while they sought to find a way out of their drug addiction. The Australian Herald Sun quoted Les Twentyman of Open Family, an Australian organization that seeks to help children, as being outraged at the revelations. Twentyman told the Herald Sun,
I’ve done some pretty controversial things in my time, but even I would go so far as to say that we should not be watching kids sniff this stuff. Harm minimization is something I’ve always been an advocate for, but in this case we’re talking about young kids.
Twentyman predicted that eventually the kids involved would probably sue the government over the supervised sniffing. “I think I can predict with some confidence that we’ll be seeing a class action from these damaged children in a few years,” Twentyman said.
You have to wonder what the welfare agency was sniffing when they adopted such an absurd policy.
Source:
Backdown on sniffing rooms. Nikki Protyniak, Herald Sun (Australia), January 23, 2002.