Needle Exchange

Common sense is once again ignored by the legislature during the "war" on drugs, and 3 activists may go to jail for trying to help the public, via a needle exchange program.

From the article: "Texas is the only state that does not allow such programs, according to state Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, a doctor who tried unsuccessfully to pass a statewide program in 2007"

A needle exchange program is one in which used needles may be exchanged for clean, sterile ones. This dramatically lowers the spread of diseases such as Hep C and HIV.

Via Wikipedia:

[S]tudies have shown needle exchanges to be effective at preventing the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C.

-Bastos, FI. and Strathdee, SA. (2000) Evaluating effectiveness of syringe exchange programs: current issues and future prospects. Social Science & Medicine 51:1771-1782

Rich, Joseph D., Michelle McKenzie, Grace E. Macalino, Lynn E.Taylor, Stephanie Sanford-Colby, Francis Wolf, Susan McNamara, Meenakshi Mehrotra and Michael D. Stein (2004) A Syringe prescription program to prevent infectious disease and improve health of injection drug users. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 81:122-134
ETC

This same program ran into snags last year when a bill to begin a needle exchange program died in committee

"I'm not persuaded that the public health benefit outweighs my concerns and my constituents' concerns about illegal intravenous drug use," Delisi said.

The implication here is that the program would somehow encourage drug use.

The key word here is "exchange". We would not be providing needles to users for free, to which taxpayers may object, instead we are removing possibly infected needles from circulation. Really, the program could be called a hepatitis C removal program. Beyond that, it could be called a hazardous waste clean up program. Since used needles are collected, they won't show up in our trash bags, the street, our play grounds. I'll happily pay a great deal of my tax dollars on a program that reduces the number of hepatitis infected needles lying around where I'm walking.

Reducing the instances of various infectious diseases is always going to have an economic and social benefit to the community. I'm in favor of programs to help these addicts to get clean, to get counseling, to straighten out their lives. But in the short term we have to face the reality that these users are going to be going to be injecting drugs one way or another, and I would prefer it if the community was protected in such an effective, low impact way.

Nuance

In response to Briana Roger's post on abolishing abortion, I should really only have to say "Instances of rape, incest, and health risks to the mother".

To be more specific, if we put aside the ideas of a woman's right to her own body, the separation of church and state, the economic impact of unplanned births on women or families etc, there is still this: Abortions are a medical procedure that sometimes have absolute, objective medical benefits.

It is not the legislature's job to make medical decisions. I do not contact my state rep when I need my wisdom teeth extracted, nor would I call and ask them if I should use an air splint or an immobilizing cast on the spiral fracture of a humerus.

I'm not responding to the ideas of protecting what may or may not be a living thing, nor the idea of a back up form of birth control. I'm responding to what could be presumed to be the "arrogance" of a blanket, absolute ban on abortion.

As Briana cites "According to this article most abortions are performed on women who either don't use contraceptives or don't use them consistently."

Most. Even if inconsistent use of birth control were a disqualifying factor in abortion procedures, this is not a factor in all of the cases.



What other procedures could be banned to save lives? People die during liposuction at what may be called a surprising rate. I mean, it's just a cosmetic procedure, why don't these people just exercise more, don't they know they could DIE? But, I'm not a doctor. I can't say whether or not there are going to be medical benefits to this procedure.

Why don't we ban the private possession of all radioactive isotopes? Those things give off cancer, can be used to build weapons, present complicated disposal problems, they're just awful. Well, goodbye x-ray machines, it's not like those have any medical benefits.


Zero tolerance means zero flexibility, a complete inability to adapt to a situation which can generally be described of as a just a bit complicated. There is nuance here, there are shades of gray.