KINGWOOD — In a 2-1 vote at its regular meeting on Tuesday, the Preston County Commission decided to allow Mylan Puskar Health Right to operate a harm reduction program in the county.
Health Right operated the needle exchange program in Preston County, even through the pandemic, Executive Director Laura Jones said. However, the law changed this year and all harm reduction programs need approval by the county commission and any municipality in which they are run.
Commission President Samantha Stone and Commissioner Dave Price voted in favor of sending a letter of approval and support for the program while working with towns to try and establish sites across the county.
Stone said she was torn. It’s easy to say ‘just arrest people,’ but in the end that doesn’t solve the issue, she said. She is involved in a lot of youth organizations and sees the direct product of kids coming from homes with opioid abuse, and she wants to help those kids.
She also asked for quarterly updates on how the program was going, at least at first.
“If this isn’t something that’s positive — that’s helping to turn around some lives and helping — then I’m certainly not an advocate of just giving people clean needles. So, I want to see statistics and things like that, because I do find great comfort in the fact that we can revoke this as quick as we approved it,” Stone said.
V.J. Davis, Preston County Health Department administrator, was also on hand to voice his support for the program. He offered to act as a liaison between the commission and Health Right.
Price said, “In my mind, we could get it started, let them proceed, send them a letter and, and hope that we could maybe speak with a couple of town councils and see who would be interested.”
Smith said his no vote should not be taken as a vote against Health Right itself.
“I spent most of Saturday reading stuff,” Smith said. “I mean, I went through an enormous amount of pros and cons and read some very abstract stuff and doctors and treatment specialists and stuff. So it wasn’t like I’m just sitting here going, ‘I’m digging my heels in being stubborn.’ But after weighing out the two things …”
“There’s about as many negatives in a certain sense as there is positives,” Price said.
“Exactly, I see the positives. I also see the negatives,” Smith said.
Stone said what tempted her was the chance to shed some light at the end of a dark tunnel faced by so many and the statistics would prove it.
“The idea behind getting people into the program is that people who come to a harm reduction program are three to five times more likely to get into treatment,” Jones said.
There are a lot of people who need the service – which allows Health Right to establish contact and build trust with individuals using it.
Health Right wants to identify those people and prevent an outbreak from shared needle use. It also provides medical care, helps with Medicaid applications, SNAP benefits, HUD paperwork and more — with the ultimate goal of stabilizing their lives, so they can think about treatment.
“It’s controversial. There’s no doubt about that. It doesn’t make sense to some people, because why would you give syringes to someone who is actively using drugs. But the reality is that if they don’t have a clean syringe, they will use any syringe they find.”
Part of the new law also requires programs to operate as a needle exchange, rather than a needs-based program, Jones explained. In the past, if someone wanted 100 needles or to pick up for their family – there is intergenerational opioid use – they could. Now, they need to present an ID and exchange needles one for one.
Those changes may sound positive, but don’t follow best practices, Jones said.
Smith said one thing he was worried about was syringes being left around, noting that some groups, such as 4-H, won’t even pick up trash anymore because of the risk.
Jones said they knew the change was coming, and have been telling people for six months that it’s coming and to not throw away their needles. In a typical month, Health Right would dispose of 150-180 pounds of syringes from Morgantown. In January, there were 240 pounds of syringes turned in.
“Will that mean there will never be a syringe in the community? Absolutely not,” Jones said. “Not everyone comes to our exchange. So we are not always able to impress upon people how important it is.”
Health Right does teach how to properly dispose of syringes at home, placing them in a bottle with some bleach, taping over the lid, writing sharps on the bottle, then throwing it in the garbage.
Another option is the placement of tamper-proof syringe disposal boxes, Jones said. Price liked that idea and asked for those to be included in Health Right’s plan.
There was also discussion of site development for the program or even having the program be mobile.
While the commission has given its support, under the new law Health Right will need to also obtain permission from Kingwood or any other municipality in which it wishes to operate the program.
Jones said they have approached Kingwood but have not been given an answer yet.
