How Can Giving Free Needles to Drug Users Be Helpful?
Harm reduction centers reduce negative community effects
“How can giving free needles to drug addicts help them? Aren’t you just being an enabler? That’s basically like giving a drug addict more drugs.”
Friends, families, and strangers bombarded me with these questions when I began volunteering with a needle and syringe service harm reduction center in San Francisco in order to help people who use drugs.
Harm reduction aims to reduce the negative consequences associated with drug use and protect public health. Drug use is a complex and multifaceted issue that entails the realities of other social issues like poverty, racism, and social isolation.
Instead of insisting that people stop using drugs, harm reduction acknowledges that many are not able to instantly stop using drugs. In this way, harm reduction centers are able to focus on protecting public health and making sure drug users are being safe.
Applications of harm reduction go beyond substance abuse. Another example of harm reduction many are familiar with is Safe Sex. Safe sex programs aim to educate teens and provide resources like condoms in an attempt to reduce both teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
Similarly, syringe and needle exchange services aim to promote health, prevent overdoses, and reduce the transmission of illnesses like HIV and Hepatitis C. By providing an access point for drug users to get clean needles and return used needles, harm reduction centers are able to reduce the transmission of diseases in the community.
By providing training to treat overdoses using Narcan, harm reduction centers are able to save lives. By having programs that incentivize people to get treatment for hepatitis C, harm reduction centers can reduce the transmission.
San Francisco is notorious for being the hub of technology and innovation but somethings that are often neglected are issues like chronic homelessness and drug use. Therefore, harm reduction centers are vital in our community. It acknowledges how we cannot simply stop people from using drugs. Instead, what we can do is make a safe environment for those who use drugs as well as those who do not.
Since our government is not focused on fixing the root causes of drug use such (poverty, racism, homelessness, past trauma, and social isolation…) and would rather focus on a War on Drugs, harm reduction centers are one of the few ways these issues are actually being addressed. Drug use is a part of our world and you can easily condemn it but nothing will change. What we can do is minimize the harmful effects it can have on people.
