Republicans rebel against a powerful anti-opioid tool - POLITICO

Fatigue over America's long-running drug crisis and anti-science sentiment are fueling backlash against needle exchanges.

The pushback against needle exchanges, which allow people using drugs to receive clean syringes without fear of arrest, is happening at a perilous moment for the nation’s long-running drug epidemic.

Trump surgeon general Jerome Adams, who as Indiana health commissioner pushed for the creation of Scott County’s needle exchange and unsuccessfully lobbied local officials to save it, said there’s also an element of fatigue among Republicans, who are more likely to believe addiction is a moral failing than a treatable disease.

After seeing the drug crisis persist despite Congress and states committing billions of dollars for treatment and prevention, there’s a feeling that people need to take responsibility for their actions, Adams said.

People who use their services are five times more likely to begin drug treatment and three times more likely to stop using drugs than others who don’t use the program, according to data compiled by the CDC.

“I know people who want to kill themselves, I don’t buy them a bullet for the gun,” said Scott County commissioner Mike Jones before voting to end the county’s program.

It was Scott County’s 2015 HIV outbreak — when over 150 people were infected primarily by using tainted needles to inject the powerful synthetic opioid Opana — that led many Republicans to rethink their opposition to needle exchange.

Some drug treatment advocates said the pandemic changed attitudes about these programs.

Commissioners of Grays Harbor and Scott counties said local officials and community groups should continue to make available other services that had been offered through needle exchange programs, such as links to addiction treatment programs, counseling and STD testing

When California’s Orange County closed its only needle exchange program in 2018, those wraparound services also fell off, said Philip Yaeger, CEO of Radiant Health Centers, which is focused on ending the HIV epidemic

His organization had worked with the needle exchange to provide hepatitis C testing to people who came for clean syringes, but that effort stopped when the exchange shut down

He also said that the needle exchange was useful in connecting people to drug treatment programs who otherwise likely wouldn’t come forward for help

The closure of a needle exchange program that same year in West Virginia’s Kanawha County is also likely responsible for HIV cases more than doubling per year around Charleston, the state’s largest city, some experts believe