Ever get the impression we’re not in Morgantown anymore?
That’s the impression we got last week when a City Council member admitted it’s hard to accept we’re at the point where public sharps containers are needed.
Sharps boxes are medical waste containers designed to hold instruments with sharp edges such as needles.
Her comment came in response to a request by Laura Jones, Milan Puskar Health Right’s executive director, to place sharps containers in public areas.
The idea is to reduce the number of used syringes that pose a threat as dangerous litter.
In 2015, Health Right launched a needle exchange program called LIGHT — Living in Good Health Together.
On a street level, LIGHT is a textbook “harm reduction” program: A practical, and effective, way to curb the spread of HIV and hepatitis C through use of shared needles.
But it also helps to get people through the door and talking about treatment for addiction, who otherwise may be ostracized by family and friends.
Once past the door addicts can get basic medical screenings and if they’re ready, recovery treatment.
However, one flaw of needle exchange programs is what becomes of the used syringes and needles.
About a third of those provided by Health Right are returned to the clinic for proper disposal, but the rest are basically unaccounted for.
Though the percentage recklessly discarded in trash cans, on the street and along well traveled areas is small compared to the amount distributed, one is too many.
Health Right wants to install either one central drop-off sharps kiosk or several smaller sharps boxes in areas where addicts congregate, often in areas inhabited by the homeless.
The reaction of some on council and certainly among the public is that we’re only enabling addiction and attracting more addicts to certain areas.
The problem with that thinking is that they are already here and if enabling them translates into preventing addicts from harming themselves or others, so be it.
Our newspaper endorses the idea of installing public sharps boxes in specific areas for safely disposing of needles. We realize responding to this kind of drug abuse is outside the comfort zone or scope of understanding of many in our community. It’s not easy for us to accept, either. However, this is the reality and fallout from the ongoing drug crisis.
Criminalizing drug addicts no more works than arresting alcoholics does.
Allowing for needle exchanges and public sharps boxes is a strange place to be for most of us.
“But that’s where we are,” Jones said. “… That’s exactly where we are, and it’s a long road out of there.”
