JUST SAY NO

City Council Should Reject Needle Exchange

"The number of syringes exchanged per visit should be sufficient to provide
the typical client with a clean syringe for each injection for one week.
Based upon the types of drugs commonly used in San Diego (methamphetamine,
heroin, heroin/cocaine combinations), no more than 50 syringes will be
exchanged per visit."

- -- Clean Syringe Exchange Program Task Force

This is the key recommendation, cloaked in bureaucratic euphemisms, of San
Diego's needle-exchange task force. The panel is urging the City Council to
approve the free distribution of clean needles (not just syringes) to drug
addicts (clients) from a motor home that would make its rounds through
selected inner-city neighborhoods, from El Cajon Boulevard to Barrio Logan.

The recommendation details, in graphic terms, what the task force has in
mind. Junkies would be able to get up to 50 needles and syringes per visit
to the mobile distribution center -- a week's supply for an addict.

There is no mention in the report of what kind of message this would send
to inner-city youths who witness the needle-exchange motor home traveling
through their neighborhoods like an ice-cream truck. It certainly does not
send the urgently needed message that intravenous drug use is a deadly
habit that destroys the lives of not only substance abusers but also of
their spouses and children and other family members.

On the contrary, the needle-exchange proposal is part of a controversial
movement known as "harm reduction." The concept is based on the tragically
flawed premise that the use of illegal intravenous drugs should be
decriminalized and that government simply should work to make the practice
less harmful to addicts.

Consequently, government-sponsored needle exchanges deliberately abet the
illegal use of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other lethal
substances. That's why the San Diego task force recommends giving addicts
"laminated identification cards" to show to police officers in order to
avoid arrest. And, even though proponents deny that needle exchanges
increase crime in neighborhoods where they operate, the panel urges that
there be monitoring of "trends in criminal activity at the sites."

The fundamental drawback of needle exchanges is that they ignore the cruel
reality there simply is no way to make intravenous drug abuse safe. By
helping addicts continue their deadly habit, exchanges promote the even
larger dangers that drug abuse inflicts on addicts, such as fatal
overdoses, suicides, homicides, liver ailments and heart damage.

In order to distribute needles on San Diego's streets, the task force is
asking the City Council to declare a local emergency -- a step required by
state law. But the San Diego County Health Department, which has
responsibility for drug addiction and other health pathologies here, has
declined to issue such a declaration.

County supervisors, who at least provide a limited number of treatment beds
for substance abusers, have repeatedly turned down calls for a needle
exchange. How can the City Council in good conscience approve handing out
needles to addicts at the same time it refuses to provide funding for a
single treatment bed to help them overcome their addictions?

A needle exchange in San Diego is opposed by not only the Board of
Supervisors but also by Police Chief David Bejarano and District Attorney
Paul Pfingst. The City Council should heed their warnings that passing out
needles to addicts is no way to counter drug abuse.