Safe Injection Sites: Yea or Nay?

[mystoo]

I was thinking about this the other day after reading about Thistle Harlequins co-worker who contracted Hepatitis from a dirty needle.
Safe injections sites provide: a safe environment for inteavenous drug users, needle exchange program ensuring clean needles and proper disposal of used needles, medical aid, access to councelling (addiction related or otherwise), etc, etc.
Many people are of course opposed to these sites mainly because they are government funded they see it as a waste of tax dollars to help addicts.
Think about it though, addicts are peope too and why shouldn't they get the help that they need if the resources are available?
Having lived in an area heavily saturated with drug use (I'm talking East Hastings downtown Vancouver here...it's bad) I have seen the impact this particular site http://www.vch.ca/sis/
hs had on the community. Albeit the problem of addiction still exists and I don't think it will ever disappear but this is definitley a step in the right direction.

[Bikerpunk]

Safe injection sites +++

I don't care that people don't like them, they save lives.

[Mr Karl]

I'm all for safe injection sites, as well as safe being high sites, as well as as much of that shit as you need to do yourself in

[Velvet-Tongue]

Was thinking about this yesterday weirdly enough and my thoughts are conflicted on it. I don't like how it promotes heroin and other illegal injections. However it does save lives and help cut down on infections (It'd be interesting to see a study of how much it really does help anyone). Over all I'm highly conflicted about this whole dark gray area of supporting illegal activities. "Well we can't stop you so might as well make it so my kids don't step on your needles".

I'd really rather the money be used for education purposes, cheap/free half way houses and more.

Makes me wonder if the police will use it to make a lot of arrests though. Since they know people are going in there loaded up/carrying etc and dealers are more then likely nearby selling to people who just got a brand new needle.

[Morning Glory]

yeah, I don't know about this one.

"safe injection sites"?

I am 100% in support of needle exchange and drug education and medical/sanitation services. Both in operation and legislation for where they are illegal. Just like a week or two I was trying to get support for the program in Berkley, because they are struggling since the city reduced funding of it's AID's programs.

BUT, and here's the big thing, usually these programs are geared toward trying to get people to stop using drugs and they offer recovery counseling services, in addition to their primary goal of health and safety.

They, nor I, encourage people to do drugs, and since it is illegal everywhere to shoot up, people doing drugs on the premise invites police to shut down the program and think negatively of it, and that would be a really bad thing for them. Especially in the cases where they are already doing so illegally, in many states where exchange is a crime in itself.

[Morning Glory]

Actually, now that I think about it, I also posted a thread on here some time ago trying to get people to vote on it when it was up for legislation for legalization of exchange in Texas.

[OrganizedKhaos]

I think its a good thing if safe environments are provided.

Around here, heroin and crack are unheard of...
The big needle craze is all about oxycontin/roxycontin....and to some ppl, methadone (including methadose wafers as well as the Roxane 54 142's and the 'coffins'........most would argue that its impossible to run a wafer because they're formulated to target addicts, but they're not effective if HEATED.... BUT ARE thru a process known as cold water extractions, all a person needs is cold water, a rig, and a cigarette filter)

Around here clean 'rig's or needles, are in super scarce supply.
People share more than they dont.

When a person goes to say, Rite Aid, or such drugstore....
They have to sign a paper, and provide ID (AND a prescription) before they can buy them.

(something like that... I've never done it, but I'd never look down on those who do)

I'm with y'all... I think that safety is more important.

Anytime I walk down the road to take pics of neighbor's flowers, I often see a dirty rig, thats been thrown out the window of a vehicle... or one discarded by the neighborhood 'youth' to keep the parents from finding them.

A few weeks ago, I found a dirty rig 'planted' outside my bathroom window... as if someone in my house had used it.

Its not uncommon for someone to do that...
I hate this area.

[DoctorZ]

Yea. That is mah answah!

I just think that if you're not gonna legalize the damn thing, make it safe for the people who DO follow the freaking law.

[mystoo]

It freaks me out when I hear of needles being found in parks and even school yards. And it does happen, way to often. But obviously, the safety of the community is not usually the first thing on an addicts mind.

[OrganizedKhaos]

And really thats sad.... because with the collective opinion society has on drug users is that they aren't up to par with the non users... they may feel subhuman, and can lose some value for themselves, and possibly others as well.

(I do recognize the vagueness of that statement, and how it doesnt apply with everyone... but I hope you can see what I mean)

I heard of this one dude, that got aids via his wife sleeping around, so he took it out on the world by cutting his finger, and bleeding on the produce at the local grocery store.

[Bikerpunk]

That's a really poor way to transmit it.

[OrganizedKhaos]

True, but its still freaky and nasty

[Bikerpunk]

True, but its still freaky and nasty

Absolutely. But it's really not that dangerous.
HIV is quite hard to transmit. The worst case (aside from injecting fresh blood, with a 90% transmission rate) is receptive buggery, unprotected. That has an infection rate of about one in fifty, per occurrence.

[OrganizedKhaos]

Wow.
Thats interesting.

It scares the shit out of me at any rate.

Thanks for sharing.

[Bikerpunk]

Repeated exposure, however, is a different matter. Bathhouses and repeated exposures from an infected regular partner causes 87% of the people who do it to catch AIDS within one year.

Though there ARE people who've contracted HIV from one instance of having vaginal sex with a woman, unprotected. It's not common but can occur. WRAP THAT RASCAL.

[OrganizedKhaos]

I remember being with my mom one day at work, when I was young. And on the radio, it said that there was this scientist, who was taking different samples of plants found in the rain forest to test on AIDS patients, and one woman was cured of AIDS, he went back to the rain forest, and that plant was gone... they'd tore down acres, and wasnt able to find the plant again.

I dont know how true that is, and I dont have any sources to back that up. I'll just never forget that.
It devastated me.

[Bikerpunk]

That was a movie, it was actually cancer they cured him of, etc.

[OrganizedKhaos]

What year? This was when I was about 10 when I heard that... at the oldest 12. So that would be thru the yrs 1986-1988.

[Bikerpunk]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/

1992...

[OrganizedKhaos]

Thank you BP.

[Morning Glory]

I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I think it's really adorable that when you were a kid you thought Sean Connery cured AIDS.

[OrganizedKhaos]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! I'm glad it makes you smile, but I heard the thing on the radio way before the movie came out.

[TheQuietPlace]

I'm not really sure where I stand on this. I'm mainly against it because I've seen meth, and cocaine addiction first hand through a family member. It really eats me alive do have seen her to the things she did in order to get her "fix". She's been clean and sober for 8 months now I believe.

I just think if its illegal, then ITS FUCKING ILLEGAL. End of discussion. If the gov't wants to support users, and give them a place to shoot up, then they should legalize it. There is no middle ground in my mind.

[Kidthorazine]

I say just legalize all drugs, then take some of the money that would've been used for the war on drugs to start harm reduction programs, which would include safe injection sites.

[Velvet-Tongue]

The real answer to the drug issue is harsher penalties. Saudi-Arabia has one of the lowest drug usage levels in the world as did Afghanistan pre-invasion. If found with drugs the dealer would be sent to jail on the first offense. On his second major offense he'd be executed.

Do I want a draconian, secret police force running around shooting drug dealers in the forehead and upping the punishment to such an extreme level that the reward comes no where near the risk? No, but you bet it'd solve the issues incredibly quick. We either continue stagnating/wasting money arresting the same people over and over, watching lives destroyed, neighborhoods ruined and gangs prosper. Or we go bananas and lose a good deal of personal freedom and send a huge amount of people to the death chamber. Either way sucks pretty hard.

I say legalize weed at the very least. That'd make a good taxable source of money and lower prison levels. Just include conditions that its legal for jobs to oppose hiring weed users (Since there is a strong connection between on the job accidents and potheads).

[mystoo]

Seems like a no win situation eh?