Spring Break 2017, I went on Alternative Break to Atlanta, Georgia. I didn’t know much about what I’d be doing. I knew that I’d be doing needle exchange, which turned out to be a process where a non-profit will go out with a biohazard bucket and a case full of sterile needles for diabetes patients and sit in front of an old, worn down church with only three stone walls and no roof right across from a boarded up motel; the non-profit will then wait for drug users to come with used needles. The needles might be put in laundry detergent containers, cereal boxes, hidden in the sneakers the drug user wears to walk to the exchange, or in empty Gatorade bottles. The needles will be counted out one by one and then the user can get the same amount of clean needles. The leader of the nonprofit brings her old insulin needles in Gatorade bottles so that if a drug user needs more needles but can’t exchange any, they can use hers for the exchange. The most common question asked about needle exchange is, “How does this help? How doesn’t this enable someone to do drugs?” It’s unclear if needle exchange is legal in Tennessee.
Needle exchange is a part of the theory of harm reduction. Harm reduction is exactly what it sounds like. It’s asking the question, “How do I help people stop hurting themselves?” It’s about empowerment. Needle exchange and the people in it seek to limit the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, both of which can be contracted from sharing and reusing needles. Most drug users who inject their drugs use their needles more than once and will share needles not just once a day, but multiple times a day with various people. Taking away someone’s needles doesn’t stop the sharing problem. It increases it. Removing needles doesn’t remove addiction. With addiction, the brain cannot fully function without the drugs. Dependent on the type of drug, the brain changes differently, but it does change. There is no doubt that addiction is physical as well as mental. I’ve heard people say that it’s too bad that drug users might get diseases; they’re drug users, they deserve it. People want to clump drug users into one group. They imagine the Hollywood junkie, hollow cheeked and dirty, dropping out of school and screaming at children. They imagine drug users as “the other.” It’s important to understand that the drug community isn’t an individual community. It’s a part of the larger community, even if the larger community ostracizes them. A drug user that contracts HIV from an old needle can spread HIV through sex to a non-drug user. “Well, lock up the drug user, keep them away from the rest of us,” seems like an option, but it’s not. The majority of drug users will spend time in jail, but the American jail system is fundamentally inadequate to help drug abusers, and often it only leads to more problems. Harm reduction requires that you meet people where they are at in their lives.
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Kyla
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