Needle exchange? Yeah right...
 

Here in Portland as in many other cities around the country we have what are known as “needle exchanges“. By my understanding of the word exchange an old needle must be given in order to get a new one. It turns out this has nothing to do with exchanging so much as it does furnishing I.V. drug users nearly everything they need to use their drug of choice. Within these kits is a needle, alcohol wipe, turnaquet, sterile water and cooker. As best I can see the only thing missing is the drug itself.

If you ask those who operate these programs they will tell you it is for risk reduction. Give me a break! Why not actually provide the drug also so people will know exactly what they are getting to further avoid the risk of an over-dose? While they are at it they could also provide a place for these people to shoot up also? Here is the answer plain and simple, they would rather the public at large deal with those issues.

They might be able sell this idea if it truely was a matter of exchanging. Since these needles are generally dropped at the point of use I see it as nothing more than increasing the risk to those who are not even involved in the drug use. I have seen these needles discarded all over the downtown area with no regard to the safety of others who may use the same areas for legal activities. Am I wrong for finding this to be a problem?

I honestly have no use for those who decide to use these drugs and make it a problem for others who have nothing to do with it. It’s unfortunate but the only solution I see is kinda, well, illegal…

beware of what you pooh-pooh.

Someday you might find yourself at the receiving end of a needle.

Life is funny like that.

It has really gotten out of hand here in Portland.
Sure the junkies and tweakers piss me off, but not as much as those who enable this kind of adherent behavior.

You can go down to Water Front Park and see people cooking up heroin on the park benches while parents walk by with their children and nobody bats an eye. All the parents will do is turn their heads.

What do you suggest? The "war on drugs" is a failure. What should be done?

First and foremost stop handing out the needles altogether.

As far as "The War on Drugs", that's nothing but a joke. As far as I'm concerned make them all legal. If people want to destroy their mind and body with some of the poisons available, let them. Their are countries that have the death penalty for drug possession and that does not stop it.

From the time we are children we look for ways to change our perspective. Remember when you were a child on the playground, arms out stretched spinning like a top until you fell onto your back because you were dizzy? Laying there staring upwards watching the sky spin. That was our first drug so to say.

People have been using substances since the beginning of time and will continue to do so. To think it can be stopped through legislation is just plain stupid,

then there will be an increase in ED visits for abcessess, etc.

Prohibition never works. I wish they would just make it easier for people to go on methadone.

Erm... because it's like, illegal?

Sorry, I added to my post while you were writing.

I have an idea to deal with the ER visits which may sound cold hearted.
When they show up give them a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, some swabs, gauze, medical tape and send them on their merry way. How would you feel about being stuck in the waiting room because some junkie is getting an abscess dug out because he/she has been muscling instead of using the needle as it was intended.

I have no pity at all for those who choose to do this to themselves.

I don't speak from ignorance. I have had my own habits in the past to deal with. But my thoughts on needles is that they are to be operated by qualified personnel, these folks are not.

Of course. Because it's far cheaper for a trained nurse in ER to hand out items after the medical problems start, than for a volunteer to hand them out to prevent them from happening in the first place.

I'm not saying I am pro the situation in your city. But I think it makes more sense at present than your proposal.

There's more than just a bit of tunnel vision and short sighted-ness here.

The "they" and "those" are the same people that brought Outside-In to downtown Portland,
and who helped the community close bathhouses and change behaviors in the gay community
by distributing free condoms to the young people of Portland.

It's naive to believe the intent of these programs is to "enable" drug use.
The intent is to reduce infectious disease that comes with such behaviors...
just as are the programs run by the same "they" and "those" to reduce
infectious disease in the gay/lesbian community.

Perhaps some volunteering at one of Portland's community health centers
would give some much needed perspective.

The alcohol wipe and clean needle does not prevent an abscess.

What is causing the abscess is these folks giving themselves inter-muscular instead of inter-venous shots. This is known as "muscling".

The reason I know is because I work at a homeless/low-income day access center here in Portland. I have become acquainted with a number of the users out here and their behaviors.

I can tell if somebody is just tired from lack of sleep or they are in the throes of a heroin nod. Put a cocaine user in front of me and I will be able to tell you if they snort inject, or smoke just by observing behaviors. Don't get me started on meth users. Those people are rotting themselves from the ground up.

Shit's been like that in Portland for more than 30 years. I was travelling through Portland in the early 80s and it was exactly the same.

You need to get to the bottom of why are people using in the first place and address that. Symptomatic approaches are just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Have you read William Burroughs' Naked Lunch? In the Grove Press edition, there is an appendix with an essay by Burroughs in which he explains the nature of addiction in general and the problem with trying to control drug use by enacting laws and going after dealers.

It does not matter what the intent is, what matters is the result. As stated previously, all they do is take the risk from a very small segment of the downtown population and spread out to the rest of this population. Even when this is brought to the attention of the organizations there is no change.

I spend 3 days a week going out to clean up these shooting galleries on my own time. Collecting dirty needles, placing them into sharps containers and delivering them to Good Samaritan Hospital for disposal.

I started doing this after dealing with a needle-stick at work. Do you have any idea what 6 months of HIV testing is like. The testing itself is no big deal but 6 months of not knowing tears you apart.

Do not for one minute tell me how previous deeds has any bearing what is being done now. Until you have lived and worked with this going on around you.

Damn Liberals.

Good grief! Now liberals are responsible for AIDs? Are you sure you're not Merc's sock puppet? While there are instances where it can take as long as 6 months to find out if you have AIDS, tests are available which will give a result within 15 - 20 minutes.

If needles and people shooting up in Water Front Park are as much a problem as you claim, parents should do more than cover up their kid's eyes. They should find some place else to take their kids.

When I visited Zurich years ago, there was a place called "needle park." At that time the Swiss were fairly tolerant about drugs (don't know if they still are). But then, you could go to Needle Park and procure pretty much any drug you wanted. Junkies went on the nod on park benches. I visited there out of curiosity, and while I saw many druggies, I saw no parents with children wandering around. Maybe the parents of Portland should get a clue.

It seems to me that your argument is that there should be no more needle exchange programs, so addicts will no longer throw their needles on the street. Huh? Why not just tightened up the procedures at the needle exchange places and help stop the spread of AIDS?

I agree with Bri that prohibition has never worked. It would seem that we as a society would have figured that out by mow, but the "war" on drugs seems to to have taken on its own momentum and become a multi-million dollar a year industry. And I don't mean the profits made by the Columbian drug cartel. I mean the huge sums of tax payer dollars which are poured into the DEA, as well as state and local drug enforcement. An astonishing percentage of those incarcerated are there because of drug related crimes. The tax payer has to cover the expenses of these prisoners, too.

The problem will never be cured just by complaining about the symptoms, as you are. Legalize drugs. Put excise and other taxes on them, so that the Government can make some tax money off them just the way it does on tobacco and alcohol right now. Government dispensaries would at least sell a product with a consistent strength, uncut by lethal chemicals like draino.

The drug violence on our borders and in our streets would be greatly reduced. A portion of the taxes collected from the legal sale of drugs could go to the establishment of drug treatment programs. Our prison population would drop.

Complaining about a program put in place to reduce the number of AIDS victims is like moving the deck chairs around on the Titantic.

You know for several posts I kept getting a vague, ever so slight whiff of our own darling starling Emma. I doubt it is, but there is something oddly familiar about this poster.