Safe Injection Sites

Do they increase drug use?

A Vermont bill proposes to create safe injection sites around the state for substance abusers (aka drug addicts) who inject opioids and other drugs. This has understandably proved controversial, and I feel compelled to chime in. I ask readers to hear me out — I may not be very popular for the position I am about to expound, but I prefer facts and good policy over popularity, as I have many times demonstrated.

For purposes of this discussion, I choose as foil a recent commentary by my friend Dave Soulia at his independent news site fyivt.com, in which Dave opposes these facilities, presented by progressive proponents as a “program [that] will provide supervised spaces where people can use pre-obtained drugs with access to healthcare professionals, drug-checking services, and overdose-reversal medications.”

I understand the concerns raised by Dave — that such sites will increase drug use and fentanyl trafficking. I also share compassion for those dying of fentanyl overdose in this or any other state — the chief point made by advocates of this scheme. Surely there are benefits to making Narcan and other interventions available on-site to save people’s lives (though I suggest paying healthcare professionals to sit around is a step too far). But at its deepest level, I submit both sides are missing an important factor to weigh here — the spread of diseases that impact people who don’t use illegal drugs as well as those who do.

I witnessed this battle before, when stigma over drug abuse and homosexuality during the AIDS epidemic led many to oppose free needle exchanges while AIDS hopped from the gay population, where it originally broke out, and into the heterosexual population through prostitution, IV drug use, and unprotected sex. Instead of stemming the spread of AIDS, waffling and misinformation prevented faster response, and the Band Played On. People died. And not just gay or drug-using people — but that should not matter!

Turning to Vermont’s current dispute, and focusing on free needle exchanges, permit me to observe that Burlington already has an alarming drug trafficking crisis, with all the deaths, crime, homelessness, disease, and gang trafficking that always accompany it. Far-left gaslighting and a laughable failure by Vermont’s supposed leading journalists to even acknowledge the crisis they have helped seed via defunding our police and decriminalizing many behaviors — that is the foundation of the current scourge. The question now is, in addition to reversing these utter failures of progressive policy, what can be done to minimize or prevent ongoing harm?

There is simply no evidence that providing free needles will increase drug addiction — I certainly won’t be picking up a heroin habit simply because I can get a clean needle. (I won’t even take their experimental COVID vaccines, available freely everywhere!) Legalizing marijuana has led to more pot smoking; but legal rolling papers and pipes were never the issue there either. H72 does not legalize or provide illegal drugs; it provides life-saving Narcan.

Mr. Soulia writes:

The bill may draw more drug traffickers into Vermont, exacerbating the crime and addiction problems that are already straining towns like Rutland, Bennington, and Brattleboro. Furthermore, the lack of age restrictions raises serious concerns about children’s exposure to drug use.

Underage children also need clean needles to stem diseases that always accompany illicit narcotics: HIV, Hepatitis C, and invasive Group A Strep (iGAS). Clean needles “may” draw drug traffickers, but they WILL prevent disease spread. Dave has not addressed the issue of these diseases at all in his commentary, which is why I chime in here to expand the conversation.

Analytically, I submit that there are two errors here, both echoes from the 1980s AIDS crisis: an argument that free needles and injection sites will increase drug trafficking — for which I am not aware there are any proofs or studies — coupled with avoidance of the clear, common-sense evidence that clean needles will very much reduce the spread of these and other diseases. These illnesses spread beyond the affected users, increase healthcare costs for all Vermonters, and create a parallel scourge that impacts our children and families even more widely.

Vermont has witnessed a profound explosion of many diseases, directly and incontrovertibly related to the ongoing narcotics trafficking that progressive legislators (including sponsors of H72) have ignorantly fueled with their naive anti-police, anti-accountability decriminalization policies and toxic, falsehood-based ideology. Indeed, Vermont helps inmates become addicts by providing synthetic opioids where denizens are not permitted weed, cigarettes, or Budweiser — they emerge addicts, addicted by the State in the name of helping them. This entire fentanyl scourge is directly related to unfounded claims that Vermont police are racist, that “undocumented migrant” (illegal alien) drug cartel members are marginalized and oppressed for their skin color, and that criminal laws victimize offenders. If the legislature ever comes to its senses, legalizing prostitution might also be examined for its impact on infectious diseases and protections for women that certainly does invite people to come here to ply their trade, including trafficked minors who are often connected with drug traffickers and narcotics abuse.

Please take a look at the science with me:

Hepatitis C is spread by drug users to “innocent” people. The Vermont Department of Health reports:

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is primarily transmitted through exposure to the blood of a person living with an active infection.

Sharing needles or syringes, sharing personal items such as razors, toothbrushes, etc. as well as getting tattoos or piercings outside of a professional and licensed setting are all ways that HCV can be passed from one person to another.

Most people who have HCV are unaware that they are infected because they don’t look or feel sick, but they can still transmit the virus to others. There is no vaccine to prevent hepatitis C.

Dave Soulia observes:

….it’s crucial to note the broader impact of this policy across the state, particularly in municipalities south of Burlington, such as Rutland, Bennington, and Brattleboro. These communities are not immune to the ripple effects of drug trafficking and crime, and many worry the Burlington site will exacerbate existing issues in their towns.

Dave has made the unsupported leap that “this policy” has somehow increased drug use and crime. But “this policy” is a cure for the health problems that progressives have fueled with idiotic policies. (like most of what they do — seed problems in housing, taxes, affordability, and school performance, then “rescue us” from what they have inflicted. It is getting tiresome, especially in the crime and drug scourge — on this Dave and I fully agree).

But Vermont health data show us that the communities Dave references are the ones already experiencing a shadow scourge of iGAS:

Most 2023 iGAS cases were in Rutland and Chittenden counties. While Chittenden County had the most reported iGAS cases, Rutland County had a higher incidence rate (38.1 cases per 100,000 residents) compared to Chittenden County (30.1 cases per 100,000 residents). The most common risk factors were having chronic wounds, using injectable drugs, and having hepatitis C. Of the adults diagnosed with iGAS in 2023 who reported drug use, 83% reported injecting drugs

Let’s consider HIV in the Green Mountains:

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is passed from person to person primarily through unprotected sex and sharing of injection equipment and needles. A person can spread HIV to their baby during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding. HIV transmission can be prevented, and the risk of infection greatly reduced, through changes in behaviors or taking actions that can interrupt transmission.

I humbly submit that conservatives and liberals alike can agree that all Vermonters are better off if these diseases do not spread, and that stigma toward substance abusers (addicts) should not obscure sensible public health policies. I propose a bipartisan compromise for the Vermont Legislature: do not increase our taxes by hiring health professionals to sit around knitting to help IV drug users jab themselves — just supply them with a free needle exchange site, and with Narcan. After all, the progressives have already provided them to every grade-school kid in the state as part of their indoctrination in our public schools.

Personally, I see most Vermont public schools as traitorous injection sites — of transgender ideology, fake science, racist hatred, and the celebration of sexual perversions, all at the expense of free speech, common sense, parental rights, core subject competence, and bipartisan comity. That is a disease that must yet be reckoned with — our children need a safe site away from such toxic inculcation. Who knows? Perhaps like the drug and crime scourge, Vermonters experiencing these very real impacts may one day rise up against their true oppressors — the progressive uni-party supermajority that has inflicted all of these evils on Vermont in pursuit of “enlightened” moronity.

Vermonters must rise up against the spread of all infectious diseases — HIV, Hep C, iGAS, and racist social justice toxicity.