Needle in a Haystack

by Zachary Gault

The idea of a “needle exchange” program gets different reactions from people when they hear what it is all about. Some look at it as how it is intended, to help reduce and prevent the transmission of disease through injected drug use. But others see it as a way of supporting the drug abusers by giving them free needles in exchange for used ones.

The program was started as one of the first steps of combating drug abuse in the US. The government already spends billions of dollars each year on the “War on Drugs”, with little results. Based on a study done by the National institute of Health, fifteen to twenty percent of injected drug users have contracted diseases through the use of “dirty needles”. If drug addicts had access to clean needles, this should in essence lower the contraction rate within the population. One of the benefits sought through these means was the lowering of healthcare costs associated with treatment of the diseases contracted through the drug abuse.

If a government prohibits access the clean needles, this will not lower the rate of drug abuse, it was just lower the rate of clean drug abuse. Many of these programs that are offered to the public are operated by recovering addicts who understand where the people, who this program intends to target, are thinking when it comes to using these illegal drugs. In a psychological view, these people may be likely to listen to advice from someone who has been in their shoes and understand the hazards of sharing needles and the harsh realities of these addictions.

In essence, the program is quite simple. All that the operators of the exchange program ask is that the participants donate their old needles in exchange for the new ones and to have an identification card issued by the program. The identification process helps keep track of the needles and how efficient the program is in the community. It also helps keep the participants true identification anonymous.

Currently the government has a ban on the allocation of funds to these types of exchange programs. The ban limits the amount that can be given to the programs thus limiting their efficiency. The reason given by officials to not remove this ban is that it could give the wrong idea about the “Zero Tolerance” act. They feel that even though these programs have shown to actually save time and money, that this would be a step in the wrong direction on the war on drugs. Different countries have implemented these programs and the results have shown lower disease contraction in those areas from injected drug use and also safe disposable of the used needles. Through an economic point of view, it is not an efficient use of funds to restrict these kinds of programs when they could easily reduce costs in other areas. The current means of illegal drug control are proving inefficient and costly, where the implementation of these programs has proven effective in other areas. These studies have shown that the benefits of these programs outweigh the costs of the current alternatives.