Tag: syringe exchange program

A House Committee has endorsed continued operation of programs that offer clean needles to drug abusers.

Those programs aim to get drug users into treatment by introducing them to medical professionals who can consult with them while providing them clean needles.  They also fight the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, which are often transmitted through the use of dirty needles.

Representative Holly Rehder (R-Sikeston) is carrying the legislation for a third straight year.  She said such programs operate in Missouri now, including one in St. Louis County and one that has been operating for decades in Kansas City, but they are technically in violation of state laws against distributing drug paraphernalia.

“The cities look the other way.  It’s kind of a gray area because the cities want them there because they are helping so much with harm reduction,” said Rehder.

“We do not want to create a scenario of increasing drug use.  In fact, syringe access programs have been found to cause a 13-percent reduction in use.  They play a very large role in the referral for treatment.  They’ve also been found to decrease needle sharing by 20-percent,” Rehder told the House Committee on Health and Mental Health Policy.

“[Drug abusers] are already using needles for their addiction.  No one starts using the needle because they can get a free one,” said Rehder.

The top Democrat on the committee, Representative Doug Clemens (D-St. Ann), said he is enthusiastic about House Bill 1486, and the finding that users who take advantage of needle exchanges are five times more likely to enter a drug treatment program.

“I appreciate legislation like this which actually works to solve a problem instead of punishing people arbitrarily for a disease.  Addiction is a disease and it’s something that we in Missouri are struggling with every day,” said Clemens.

Chad Sabora has testified to House committees on this proposal for several years.  He runs a needle exchange program in Missouri.  He is also a former Chicago prosecuting attorney who has been clean from a heroin addiction since 2011.  He said the way society treats drug abusers now could be described as, “negligence and malpractice.”

“The message has been call me when you’re ready for help.  The message has been when they get arrested they’ll get help, when they show up at a church basement for an AA meeting they’ll get help, when they make that phone call to treatment they’ll get help.  One hundred thousand people died last year because that’s our philosophy.  Our philosophy needs to change,” said Soborra.

Bill Kraemer of St. Genevieve testified in favor of the bill.  He told of finding his daughter dead on a basement floor of an overdose.  He managed to revive her and she recovered, and today is 2.5 years clean and just had a baby girl.

He said he learned through his experience with her that drug users will resort to dirty needles if they must.

“A person who needs to inject, sometimes they are so in need that they let their inhibitions down.  They need to shoot up so they will use a dirty needle.  My daughter was always meticulous in not using a dirty needle, always, but she found herself a couple times in need to inject and she used somebody else’s needle, and out of the three times that she used a dirty needle she got Hep C,” said Kraemer.

Kraemer and representatives on the Committee said they hope needle exchanges will spread to rural parts of the state, because it is needed there at least as much as in Missouri’s urban centers.

Rehder and other proponents of the programs say their ability to combat the spread of diseases is particularly important now.  Missouri is on the verge of a crisis in the spread of HIV and Hepatitis-C, mostly among drug users who are sharing needles.

“Right now in Missouri we have 13 counties on the CDC’s top five percent watch list … across the U.S. of counties that are on the verge or at risk of Hep C and/or HIV outbreaks,” said Rehder.

The proposed change would cost Missouri nothing as these programs are privately funded.  Rehder said the legislation could actually save the state some of the cost it has expended to treat drug abusers.

In each of the last two sessions the House has passed needle exchange legislation by sizable, bipartisan votes, but it has stalled in the Senate.  HB 1486 has been approved by one House committee and is awaiting a hearing by a second.