A Discussion: Needle Exchanges

[DBTrek]

I haven't seen anything demonstrating the ROI is astronomical, because I haven't seen anything showing the accumulated costs of related programs, loss of tourism dollars, costs of hepatitis A outbreaks, etc, etc. However, I suspect the ROI is *not* astronomical, but in fact negative.

Nor am I familiar with these functioning exchanges where one produces a dirty needle to receive a clean one. What happens if the junkie shows up with no needle? They get turned away until they find one? Somehow I doubt that.

I am familiar with living 30 miles outside of Seattle in a small town that has occasional homeless drifting through it, and seeing discarded needles thrown down by the train tracks or discovered by kids at the largest park in town.

[Kath]

Okay Kathy Newman.

Now as to what I actually posted: let's rebuild mental health hospitals and start institutionalizing people again instead of leaving them on the streets to die.

It's literally setting money on fire when you put someone in rehab who isn't ready to rehab. It's not a small amount, either.

Genius idea - let's spend thousands on a solution that won't possibly work instead of pennies on a solution that does. Brilliant. Remind us all to never put you in charge of finances for anything, ever.

[Kath]

I haven't seen anything demonstrating the ROI is astronomical, because I haven't seen anything showing the accumulated costs of related programs, loss of tourism dollars, costs of hepatitis A outbreaks, etc, etc. However, I suspect the ROI is *not* astronomical, but in fact negative.

Nor am I familiar with these functioning exchanges where one produces a dirty needle to receive a clean one. What happens if the junkie shows up with no needle? They get turned away until they find one? Somehow I doubt that.

I am familiar with living 30 miles outside of Seattle in a small town that has occasional homeless drifting through it, and seeing discarded needles thrown down by the train tracks or discovered by kids at the largest park in town.

Well, as I've said, this clearly isn't working in Seattle, because they don't appear to have a needle exchange program as much as a needle distribution program, which is not at all the same.

The program has had huge success in other areas, though.

[DBTrek]

If needle exchanges work why is SF suffering a multi-year deadly hepatitis-A outbreak and getting ready to hire a double-digit government-employee crew (with all the wages, benefits, and retirement options government workers receive) of full time needle cleanup workers?

How exactly do you measure "works"?

6% less HIV among junkies, but scores of others dying from Hep A in feces-ridden streets all at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer?

Explain your calculus.

*WHERE* is it working, exactly?

[PartyOf5]

It's literally setting money on fire when you put someone in rehab who isn't ready to rehab. It's not a small amount, either.

Genius idea - let's spend thousands on a solution that won't possibly work instead of pennies on a solution that does. Brilliant. Remind us all to never put you in charge of finances for anything, ever.

You keep going back to the "it only costs pennies", but you haven't addressed my question about where the addicts get the money for the drugs.

If these are addicts with a family and a home, they already have easy access to safe means of disposing of needles and can afford to buy new ones. That leaves the poor and homeless as the clients of these needle exchanges. If they are poor and/or homeless, how are paying for their drugs? Isn't that an added cost to having them out on the streets doing drugs?

[DBTrek]

Since our primary "pro" arguer has apparently left the thread (maybe it's his scheduled shoot-up time, who knows? ) let me lay out the "benefits" that the left is constantly citing in a non-stop push to normalize public heroin consumption. These are the actual "benefits" of safe injection sites:

Best evidence from cohort and modeling studies suggests that SISs are associated with lower overdose mortality (88 fewer overdose deaths per 100 000 person-years [PYs]), 67% fewer ambulance calls for treating overdoses, and a decrease in HIV infections. Effects on hospitalizations are unknown.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5685449/

Now for progressives - that's the whole story. Their thinking is very limited, their reasoning beyond simple, so you hand them these paltry factoids and that's it, game over, safe injection sites are good and only bigoted conservatives disagree.

Here's the costs that are NEVER studied, that are NEVER included in the narrative, and are therefore NEVER considered by progressives when they come to virtue-preach at the rest of us:

• Deadly disease outbreaks caused directly by addicted homeless congregating en masse (like say, near a SIS), and living in squalor

• Loss of quality of life for an entire city as mothers regularly step over unconscious addicts and children become accustomed to walking around junkie vomit every couple of blocks.

• Safe injection sites will encourage hard drug users to migrate towards that location (eg. "You get more of what you subsidize")

• Loss of tourism dollars, because no one wants to go to your city of wasted homeless littering the streets.

• Loss of public safety as every side alley, green space, and dark corner becomes a place for used drug needles to pile up.

• Introducing mass inequality into law - is shooting heroin a felony? That depends on whether or not you live in a tent. Wow.

• The cost of normalizing hard drug addiction by placing it on open display

• The liability costs at play - if/when someone dies at a safe injection site, the city can be sued

• The costs of creating additional government programs to deal with the side-effects of SIS (needle collection teams, for example)

None of this ever enter the progressive narrative. To them it's always "6% HIV reduction among addicts, therefore the ROI is phenomenal!!!!" - which clearly is not the case.

There's also the small matter of the entire pro-Safe Injection Site narrative being crafted upon several studies written by one man, who was paid well for his services:

33 studies that support Safe Injection Sites (that are rolled out repeatedly by proponents) were done by one person. Thomas Kerr, who received $2.61 million to conduct the studies AND was the original lobbyist who helped get InSite in Vancouver B.C. started.

http://takebacksantacruz.org/safe-injec ... ot-answer/

So again I ask, *WHERE* are they working, and how have we determined "success" and ROI?

[Kath]

Sorry, I thought we were talking about needle exchange programs, not safe injection sites. It's entirely possible that needle exchange type programs will never work in areas where homeless are allowed to take shits on the streets with careless abandon. They are, however, working in areas where those types of behaviors are not encouraged.

I'm not in favor of safe injection sites nor am I a fan of allowing people to take a dump on the street. Carry on.

Please rename the thread to A discussion of how shitty it is to live in places that allow people to shit on the streets.

[Speaker to Animals]

What the hell is a needle exchange if not a safe injection site??

[Kath]

What the hell is a needle exchange if not a safe injection site??

Why am I not surprised that you have a negative opinion about a topic you literally know nothing about?

[Speaker to Animals]

What the hell is a needle exchange if not a safe injection site??

Why am I not surprised that you have a negative opinion about a topic you literally know nothing about?

You are going full-Kathy Newman again.

I have a pretty good concept of dependence on opiates, princess. It's people like you, with addictive personalities that are about one car wreck and and an unscrupulous doctor away from becoming addicts. The heroin epidemic is largely fueled by doctors prescribing opiates and opioids to people, who become addicted, get cut off, and they lack the will power and strength to get clean. So they turn in desperation to heroin because the withdrawal is fucking awful.

Those people should be institutionalized and rehabilitated. The risks are too high to just leave them to it, and the costs of not paying upfront for the health care are fucking abysmal when you tally it all up.