More San Francisco nonsense: “Needle-exchange” program not working out as planned
Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog.
Last night, I blogged about San Francisco’s “black flight” problem, and how “city leaders” were trying to come up with ways to bring back the “character” black people bring to San Francisco, you know, the black people they pushed out with their high-cost liberalism in the first place.
Inspired by that story, a tipster emailed today to alert me as to recent developments going on with San Francisco’s “needle-exchange” program, one that city planners put into place about 15 years ago in an effort to combat the spread of AIDS and other diseases that can be caught as a result of the reusing/sharing of old needles by junkies. Back in late July, Brit Hume noted via a San Francisco Chronicle report where Parks Department workers said they were finding around 200 used needles per day discarded in Golden Gate Park. Here’s more backstory, via an August 3rd SF Chronicle piece:
City officials and nonprofit agency leaders, responding to an outcry over used syringes littering parks, say they are looking at ways to reform San Francisco’s needle-exchange program – including locked, 24-hour syringe drop boxes and technologically advanced syringes.
The city’s needle-exchange program gives out 2.4 million needles a year and receives 65 to 70 percent of them back after they’re used. Other cities – including Portland, Seattle and jurisdictions throughout New Mexico – have return rates of well over 90 percent.
In San Francisco, The Chronicle reported recently, many unreturned needles wind up in parks, playgrounds and other outdoor expanses.
“We can recover a lot more needles,” said Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which runs most of the city’s needle-exchange sites. “We understand it’s a public health problem, and we’re excited about the attention that’s happening.”
Cloutier said a locked, 24-hour biohazard drop box will be installed on Sixth Street within the next six weeks. It will be available for anonymous needle drop-off any time, sort of like drop boxes for library books or rented movies. The AIDS Foundation likely will test it for six months but expects to open others around the city.
“We’re not going to put it in the middle of Union Square,” he said. “It’s where people can experience some anonymity.”
Yes, I mean, we wouldn’t want the public to go through the awful experience of actually having to see a user injecting him or herself with a publicly funded needle, would we?
More:
Public health officials also will meet soon with manufacturers of retractable syringes – in which the needle fully retracts into the syringe’s barrel after one injection. These are considered much safer than the syringes commonly used and would prevent children or others who pick up dropped syringes from infecting themselves.
Oh gosh! Thank goodness! The translation for that is: “Though we’ve given up on the city’s drug users, we want to make sure our parks stay safe for the cheeeeldren.” Of course that doesn’t take into account the fact that a child touching the syringe barrel in and of itself can be a health hazard, considering that drug users who commence in their habits in public parks aren’t likely to have much concern as to whether or not a little blood drips onto the hand they’ve used to hold the needle in the first place, or anything.
Continuing:
Other options are on the table, too.
Tracey Packer, interim director of the health department’s HIV Prevention Program, said officials are looking at providing homeless outreach workers with biohazard boxes to carry with them, giving users of the needle-exchange programs small biohazard packs that can carry 10 used needles at a time and better educating users about needle safety.
Great point. Because usually a drug user’s number one priority is safety when shooting up. They just need a little ‘reminding’ every once in a while.
Still more:
The San Francisco needle-exchange program was begun in 1992 under Mayor Frank Jordan. The Public Health Department contracts with the AIDS Foundation, the Homeless Youth Alliance and Tenderloin Health to run the exchanges at a total of $850,000 a year.
But, as reported recently by The Chronicle, not everyone is returning the needles, and parents are sharing horror stories about their children finding needles in parks and playgrounds.
Supervisor Bevan Dufty said Thursday he successfully advocated for the closure of a play area at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center because children were finding needles in the sand.
“I have a child, and I want my child to be able to play in the sand, but I no longer felt comfortable having a playground feature be dangerous like that,” he said. “I’m open to ideas.”
How about that? A play area for children had to be closed because drug users weren’t responsible enough to properly dispose of their needles. Got that? The children have suffered. Where’s the outrage?!
Mayor Gavin Newsom last week asked Katz to come up with ways to make needle disposal easier and safer. The issue is politically tricky because disease prevention and social services are important to San Franciscans, but so are public safety and clean parks and playgrounds.
“This is a difficult situation, but we can’t end our needle-exchange program,” said Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard. “It saves lives.”
That’s a ‘progressive’ approach, eh? Giving needles to junkies ’saves lives.’ Maybe not theirs, anyway, but somebody’s, anyway (I guess).
In an update to this developing problem in San Francisco (yet another one they created, by the way), there are growing calls for an “injection center” in hopes that the same drug users who aren’t responsible enough to properly dispose of their needle after use will use to both inject and dispose:
A month after we chronicled “the march of the junkies” at the needle exchange center near Golden Gate Park, longtime neighbors say things have improved. Residents who live near the center on Haight said it was the source of used syringes being discarded in the park and in their yards by drug users.
“It has lightened up, I have to admit,” says Les Silverman, who has lived a block from the Panhandle on Cole Street since 1975 and told us he’d found needles in his front yard garden. “It’s a little better.”
Park gardeners (who have been told not to talk to the media) say they are coming across fewer needles, and our recent morning trip to the park did not find nearly as many syringes as a month earlier.
That’s great. But insiders say it doesn’t have anything to do with serious reform in the way needles are distributed to intravenous drug users, something the city has been facilitating since 1992 to curb the spread of disease.
“As much as I’d like to claim credit,” says Peter Davidson, chairman of the board of the Homeless Youth Alliance, which runs the Haight needle exchange, “I think it is because of the police doing these sweeps and moving people out.”
Again, that’s terrific, but how long will the sweeps last? (A police source tells us that four officers and a sergeant are being pulled off the street for two hours every morning.)
Awesome, eh? In addition to all their other responsiblities, the five officers from the SF police force have to spend two hours every day telling drug users to shove off of public park property, which sounds suspiciously like a violation of a 2006 9th Circus Court ruling, which stated, in essence, that homeless people had a ‘constitutional right’ to loiter and sleep on public property. Where’s the love?
If we’re really serious about a long-term solution for discarded needles littering our parks, it may be time for a bold, new initiative – a city-sponsored injection center where drug users could go, receive a clean needle, and inject themselves in a sanitary environment.
Sounds shocking, doesn’t it?
Dr. Thomas Kerr, an HIV/AIDS researcher at the University of British Columbia, who has studied an injection facility in Vancouver – the only one in North America – understands the reaction.
“When the average person first hears about it,” says Kerr, who has studied the Vancouver facility for four years, “They say, ‘Oh my God, this is going to make drug use go crazy.’ People think it enables drug use.”
But the concept of a needle exchange faced the same kind of opposition 20 years ago. Other countries, including Switzerland, Germany and Canada, have used the injection facility concept successfully, but it has not been tried in the United States.
Davidson says he was at a conference recently when a Swiss researcher was asked about the program.
“It is not because the Swiss are nice to junkies,” the researcher said, according to Davidson. “It is because injecting is a public nuisance, and we wanted to get them off the street.”
Kerr puts it this way: “If you don’t like seeing addicts injecting in public places, if you are concerned about finding discarded needles, if you have a problem with public order, the injection facility does make sense.”
Right. Again, because we don’t want the public to actually see what they’re paying $850,000 a year for. For that matter, the public themselves probably don’t want to see it either, and take the attitude of “go ahead and do it, I just don’t wanna see it.” For “safety” reasons, they’re ok with it happening, but it’s not exactly the kind of local “character” they want in their public parks, it would appear.
There’s certainly a need for something. Davidson says it is no wonder we found discarded needles when we toured Golden Gate Park in July. He says there are an estimated 15,000 “injecting users” in San Francisco, many of whom inject drugs as many as 10 times a day.
“You’re talking about millions of ‘injectable events,’ ” Davidson says.
Wow.
“Users are very concerned and fear arrest by SFPD, and this may be motivation for discarding syringes in haste,” said a recent report on the topic by San Francisco’s Department of Public Health.
That’s two good reasons why users are more likely to toss a needle in the bushes, rather than dispose of it safely
Great. Then that injection center will ’solve’ three problems for drug users: 1) being caught by the cops, 2) having a place to dispose of their drug needles, and 3) it’ll give ‘em a place to hang out and mingle with other users. Sort of like a ‘networking’ type atmosphere for druggies. And the city gets to hide its drug-using contingent from public view. Out of sight, out of mind. Sweet.
An understatement, to be sure. Residents and neighbors to Golden Gate Park are understandably shocked to find used needles during their daily walks. The public health department has gotten that message.
Why would they be “shocked”? Are they actually that clueless to believe that a program that essentially encourages street drug users to keep on doing it is going to inspire those same users to dispose properly of the needles they’re getting ‘free’ of charge? Yeah, I already know the answer to that one.
It also is safe to say that the city is keeping closer tabs on local needle exchange facilities and how they’re working. Although all 17 of the facilities are technically independent, a large part of their funding ($275,000 in the case of the Haight exchange) comes from the city.
“The great thing about this,” Davidson says, “is that we have really had it shoved in our faces how we affect the community. We all have a real interest in getting along with the neighbors. If there are needles in the park, it is bad for everyone.”
Awww. Translation: “We created the problem in the first place, and it’s really cool that we’re all coming together to try and clean up our own mess. Group hug, everyone!”
I’d say rather than funding the habits of repeat offender drug users by offering them “free” needles to inject themselves with, what SF needs is a heavy duty injection of common sense. Unfortunately, I’m afraid there’s not a syringe big enough in the world to inject the amount needed to bring back any significant measure of logic and reason to this bastion of liberal incompetency and ineffectualness.
This story is a stark example of why liberalism breeds failure (in spite of what the lefty elites on college campuses try to tell you). It doesn’t encourage the best in anyone; instead, it encourages people to believe that certain types of problematic behavior shouldn’t be changed, and that we should just “accept” it. It should be “tolerated” because “they’re going to do it anyway.” In instances like this one, we see where instead of trying to win the battle against drugs in SF, liberals in SF encourage it by offering “free” needles – and perhaps in the future, a city-funded “injection center.”
We also see it in sex education programs offered to teens and pre-teens alike in our public schools. “Progressives” give up by saying that “kids are going to ‘do it’ anyway, so we might as well show ‘em how to do it ’safely.’” Same same regarding drinking. Young teens are “not” going to stop drinking, so we need to run ads telling them that if they drink during prom season, please don’t drive. In some places, there is actually a ‘debate’ going on about whether or not parents holding “teen drinking parties” is a good idea. In academia, in the workplace, and in the military, among other places, standards are lowered, not raised, so that the goal becomes less about genuine individual achievement and fulfilment and more about making those who are less inclined to go the distance when the standards are set high ‘feel good’ about themselves for ‘trying.’
Modern-day liberalism is not about bringing out the best in anyone, contrary to popular belief. At its best, it encourages mediocrity and “sameness” because it’s “unfair” that there are some who are just clearly better at certain things than others. At its worst, it inhibits and attempts to replace the instinctual human desire to ‘be all you can be’ with a perverse, fatalistic attitude of hopelessness that implies that as humans, we can’t help it that we’re fallible, there’s nothing we can do to change it, so we should just accept it without judgement and move on.
Today’s liberals like to call this type of feel-good liberalism as “progressive” in nature. Well, sure it is. Only if you enjoy seeing things get progressively worse, which is exactly the opposite of what “progress” is supposed to mean, according to dictionary.com’s top five definitions for the word:
1. a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage: the progress of a student toward a degree.
2. developmental activity in science, technology, etc., esp. with reference to the commercial opportunities created thereby or to the promotion of the material well-being of the public through the goods, techniques, or facilities created.
3. advancement in general.
4. growth or development; continuous improvement: He shows progress in his muscular coordination.
5. the development of an individual or society in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level.
Needle-exchange programs, explicit sex ed curriculums in some elementary, and many junior and senior high schools, drunk driving ads around prom time, are all indications of “progressive” thinking? I don’t think so.
Topics: moronocy
Posted by Sister Toldjah at 10:05 pm Comments (21) on Tuesday, August 28, 2007
21 Responses to “More San Francisco nonsense: “Needle-exchange” program not working out as planned”
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August 29th, 2007 at 12:22 am
hmm, so you can’t smoke in San Francisco parks but shooting heroin is OK ?
August 29th, 2007 at 12:38 am
I’m surprised that the SanFran loonies haven’t re-opened Alcatraz as an “injection center”. That would really be “out of sight”!
No wonder people are leaving ‘Frisco. I don’t think I’d care to visit (again), let alone live there.
August 29th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Well, hell, why not just provide them with a public opium den, supply them with drugs, needles, and whatever else will help them be the best damned junkies they can be. Don’t they have a right to live however they want to just like everybody else? Just because someone else must pay for it, well, that never stopped a progressive from putting his hand into the wallets of those who earn their keep. Mustn’t be selfish!
The daughter of a good friend of mine invited me to visit her in her shabby little hole of an apartment. She is living below her means in order to save money for something she wants. While there, a neighbor came by on her daily rounds to borrow something or other. She went into a diatribe about how her welfare check was late, a rant laced with words that made this saltydog blush. I told her that she ought to cut out the government middleman, stand in the hallway and demand her share of her neighbor’s earnings. She didn’t appreciate my advice, for some reason.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:04 am
I favor that irritating music, coming from a truck with fresh cold needles. Yep, the Good Humor Man. He could have a dump bin in the back for those, fresh hot needles.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:38 am
yeah.
Drop off boxes. That’s the ticket. Because, everyone knows that spikers are so totally civic minded and responsible like that.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:55 am
“The city’s needle-exchange program gives out 2.4 million needles a year and receives 65 to 70 percent of them back after they’re used. Other cities – including Portland, Seattle and jurisdictions throughout New Mexico – have return rates of well over 90 percent.”
Before the program began, the addicts got their needles illegally and littered nearly all of them. That’s the issue. The program gets 65 to 70 percent of the needles off the street. If you like that, then the program is good. If you don’t like it, then you want the needles back on the street.
Addicts are going to use the needles regardless.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Addicts are going to use the needles regardless.
That wheee-ee-ee-t!! sound was Sister Toldjah’s point going right by your ear, corndog.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am
“Addicts are going to use the needles regardless.”
So we might as well subsidize it!
I know you all work hard all day to make that money and you don’t piss it away, but give a little thought to the poor addicts and work a few hours for them!
Well, unless one of those addicts is a Republican. Then he is a hypocritical bastard who deserves neither our pity nor our subsidy.
Heh!
August 29th, 2007 at 11:55 am
VC says, “So we might as well subsidize it!”
Since giving the addicts clean needles lowers HIV infection, that means we taxpayers don’t have to pay their medical costs. Unlike you, I’d rather have my taxes pay for a 65 cent needle than for HIV treatment. Especially if it means there are millions fewer needles lying around.
VC says, “Well, unless one of those addicts is a Republican. Then he is a hypocritical bastard who deserves neither our pity nor our subsidy.”
Boo-hoo-hoo, no one like Republicans. Wah-wah-wah.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I’m just repeating your previous points re Sen Craig as gospel ‘dog. I thought you would be proud of me. Gay conservatives are apparently objects of derision on the “caring” Left, so one would have to assume the conservatives addicts are as well, since they would probably vote against working people doling out millions to support someone injecting themselves and getting deathly ill for kicks. Or did I miss some other “nuance” here?
The depth of socialist rot is evident in your argument that by subsidizing needles, I am avoiding subsidizing their medical care. The point is its not my lookout to subsidize either one. Its incumbent on them to get off their asses and work to pay for their own lifestyle choices, just like I do.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
VC says: “The point is its not my lookout to subsidize either one.”
Hello? VC? The government provides some health care to the very poor. If you don’t like that, then, please, please use all of your influence to get your far right-wing representatives to try to stop that. May as well make the next election a clean sweep.
In the real world, my tax bill is benefited by Medicaid if it means that the poor can get the healthcare they need in order to “get off their asses and work to pay for their own lifestyle choices”.
It’s bizarre, though, that you’re so bugged about the millions of dollars wasted on people who choose not to work, but you could care less about the billions and billions of tax dollars that go toward corporations on the public teat.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Sorry ‘dog, guess I’m just too far gone for the likes of you. I even attended a Berkeley wannabee and they couldn’t do much with me. So they passed me out. Call it a “social promotion”.
Do you keep any of your own money, or is there always a higher calling for it somewhere? If so, how do you live? I want to know because I would sure like to get on that gravy train and out of this rat race.
Corporations on the public teat. Now we are getting somewhere! You mean the folks who provide all the jobs and affordable goods for the aforementioned “poor”?
August 29th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
VC says: “Corporations on the public teat. Now we are getting somewhere! You mean the folks who provide all the jobs and affordable goods for the aforementioned “poor”?”
No, VC, I’m talking about the government allowing corporations to grab billions of dollars in oil off my land for free (partly my land, at least, since it’s public land.) I’m talking about the government paying billions for advertising for corporations in other countries. Or the government doing the research for pharmaceutical companies, who then patent the research for themselves and make billions by charging people like you or me $100 a pill. I have a problem with companies that sell the government bulletproof vests for thousands of dollars, even though they aren’t actually bulletproof.
I have a problem with that, while you whine about poor people getting free food.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Heh, sounds like we are on two different planets ‘dog,
I will stipulate, even agree with you on corporate greed and malfeasance in many instances, as well as misguided government subsidization in some cases. Do you think people are going to research and produce the amazing drugs we have for free? Do you think people are going to risk their lives to go into some hell hole and drill an oil well which may or may not produce, and then try to get that product to market, for free? That is at the heart of my problem with liberalism, the idea that if it is needed, it ought to be free, or at least free to their special interests. So government subsidizes some of the stuff we both agree are necessary for our way of life, and some stuff we disagree on as well. But as you point out yourself, “the government does this (bad thing)and the government does that (bad thing)”. Given that ackowleged failure, do you really want more government (of either left or right stripe) to be the answer? Government does not produce anything. It can only take from the rest of us and, at best, produce stability and security to enable us to be productive ourselves.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Huh? They’re not doing it for free, VC. Oil and pharmaceutical companies are the most profitable companies in the world. They don’t need my tax dollars also. The natural gas companies owe the government $30 billion from the free gas they’ve been pumping out of my land (well, yours too, since it’s public.) That’s about as much as the federal government paid for food stamps last year. And believe me, the gas companies don’t need freebies. A lot of people on food stamps do.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
That’s right, they are not doing it for free. Because it won’t get done for free.
The evil GOP led government paid out $30 billion in food stamps last year. Who knew? And you are kvetching about poor people not getting “free” food? How much “free” food should we be paying out for if $30 billion isn’t enough? And if its “free” why does it have to be “paid” out?
Oh, and let’s shut down that sweetheart natural gas gig too, for exactly the reasons you say. Uh oh, gee, there’s no heat in this hospital/school/homeless shelter. I wonder what lefty share and share alike pol we see for a solution for that about mid January? Unbelievable.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I’m with corndog. No business should have to shell out millions to pay for people to grease the palms of our representatives so they will allow them to stay in business. Then there are those businesses who depend on the government gun because they either can’t, or won’t compete in the marketplace. When the government bails out a business (or a whole sector), they are taking the money from those who chose not to be customers, and forces them to pay anyway–without getting anything in return–and any competitors who aren’t in trouble, has to pay what amounts to a fine for being competent. In other words, they distort the market and eventually everybody pays instead of just that one business.
I won’t go into the morality of taking money by force to satisfy your own altruistic addiction. I’ll just say that I resent having my choice of who and what and why and how much I give to help others taken away under threat, only to then be used to support things I detest. No one has the right to make me use the precious hours of my life to support their cause, any more than a business has doing it by eating at the government trough.
If you are really against business sucking at the government teat, then you must be against individuals sucking at the government teat. All a business is is a group of individuals. The premise is the same–every individual is responsible for their own life. No one has a right to demand the efforts of others to support them–i.e., make a slave of another–whether they do it as an individual, a business, or any other special interest group.
And please don’t come back with the idea that because I rale against government largess that I’m just a heartless so and so. You seem to think that we ought to give some individuals power over the lives of everybody so that the few who need help get help. I don’t think that society needs to pay a government middleman and we certainly don’t need middlemen with guns. (If you think that government power is something other than a gun, try not paying your taxes.)
August 29th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Salty, I see where you are going, and I generally agree with you on this issue, and I think with corndog, at some level about government intervention in business. I just don’t know how else, specifically in the case of natural gas, you are going to get it out other than with a government/private sector partnership, stipulating that given our currently affordable technology and infrastructure, it is a necessity to keep people alive. Yeah, I know there is some private sector “rich guy” making out like a bandit at the top of that effort, and it sort of doesn’t bug me. Because if it is a solely government effort getting it out, then it is a nationalized industry and we all know how well that responds to need (think empty shelves and long lines), the difference being there will a rich (government) guy making out like a bandit at the top of that effort. In this case, it is being extracted by subsidized means (the subsidy taking the form of permitting for extraction on public land), then launched into a global market. (Corndog ought to be able to get around that since it is at least partially socialist, the needy benefitting from the efforts of the many and all!)
We need natural gas. There is no substitute, save for fossile fuels and nuclear (oh my goodness, the Left, oh just never mind). So we can obtain it either through purely government means (way expensive and not responsive), subsidized private means (still expensive with hidden costs but more responsive to market demand) or purely private means. And if most of the natural gas reserves are under public land, as corndog alludes to, refer to options one or two.
And if the resource becomes not available and people start to suffer and die, then watch how many guns come out, directed at the first target they can find, government or private.
Meanwhile, somebody, somewhere is working on the alternative to natural gas so that we don’t have to have this conversation. (And then I woke up!)
By the way corndog, I have encounted many “trolls”, and I have to say you stand out as one of the best. Wrong, but the best!
August 29th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
No, VC, I’m talking about the government allowing corporations to grab billions of dollars in oil off my land for free (partly my land, at least, since it’s public land.)
Where’s all this free oil at, corndog? It’s not that I know you’re wrong, but whenever you sound this positive, I know it’s time to ask you for a citation. Just in case.
August 29th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Cousin Salty says: “If you are really against business sucking at the government teat, then you must be against individuals sucking at the government teat.”
I’m not saying I’m fine with individuals sucking at the gov’t teat, either. I’m just saying I’ve got my priorities.
And thanks, VC. It’s fun to have it out with you, too.
August 30th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Corny, I’ve thought of a dozen different ways to answer your “my land” rant. One road leads from the point of view of the land-grubbing viros within the Parks Department, who regularly throw people off of their land because they want it. They think they own the land.
You think you own the land, since the land is public. In reality, it belongs to everyone, and no one–except the guys with the guns. You seem to think that the individuals who work for, or own stock in an oil company are somehow less of the public than you are, and therefore, ought not be allowed to lease public land. Why? Because they work for a profit? Considering the time, money, knowledge, and effort it takes to get what is no more than primeval ooze out of the ground and turn it into something valuable, I’d say they earn it.
Or are you one of those people who thinks that nature will somehow magically supply you with the electricity that lights your house, that runs the air conditioner that saves lives when it is over a 100 degrees outside, that runs the heater that saves lives when it is freezing, and keeps your food edible; or the gasoline and oil required to operate your car (or the electricity required to run your environmentally PC car); or the plastics used by the medical profession to save your life; or any of the other thousand petroleum products that make your life livable without your even knowing about it?