Reality based drug policy works - denial doesn't

I read the Fall River News every day because we've had a First Amendment case going there for the last 8 years. The city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent a dozen women from showing their bare breasts at a bar located in an industrial park far from the center of town and the taxpayers support it.

I've never been to Fall River but I could drive around without a map I've spent so many hours studying the city. It's an old mill town that's trying to find a new more gentrified identity. However, not unlike Springfield for instance, it's still caught up in a "good old boy" political system and driven by an electorate comprised of a largely Catholic population of Mediterranean immigrants with deep roots in the lifestyle of the old country. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the city went for Bush based on the gay marriage issue.

It's this kind of head in the sand thinking that informs the mayor's statement on the city's rejection of a clean needle program. "I don't support them for Fall River," Lambert said. "It's a subject that had some limited debate six or seven years ago, but my position has not changed." In other words it won't get him any votes and he's been mayor for a long time.

It's a politically effective stance but it does nothing for the public health and safety. As Nancy Paull, executive director for the Greater Fall River HIV/AIDS Consortium said,

There is no debate. This would help to stop the spread of disease," she said. "It's ridiculous. The bottom line is people are addicted and we need to have a needle exchange."

Numbers from the Consortium show that needle use is a major factor in the transmission of HIV. About 75 percent of all new HIV cases in Fall River can be traced to injection use, and 45 percent of those receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS transmitted the disease directly from needle injections, according to Consortium figures..

You pay dearly for this policy as a taxpayer. A lot of these users are indigent and end up in publicly funded treatment. Trust me on this, I didn't do heroin but I spent a period of time among addicts in my day. If you don't give them fresh needles, they will just share the one someone managed to get, until it's too blunt to pierce their skin.

It's a horrible paradox. If they don't get the drug into their system they could die from the withdrawal now or they could take a chance on dying at some undetermined time in the future from using the dirty needle. What choice can you reasonably think a person in that kind of desperation would make?

Needle exchange demonstrably works. There are four municipalities who have instituted the policy. Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown and my own Northampton. [Which reads interestingly like a tour schedule for major musical acts in the Northeast.]. I've seen it succeed.

It costs pennies to give an addict a needle. It costs hundreds of thousands to treat addicts for HIV and hepatitis. You pay either way. What makes more sense? Admit addicts exist and help them avoid the easily preventable exchange of a costly disease or throw good money after bad to ignore the problem?