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.