The San Diego City Council voted 6-1 to reinstate the city’s clean syringe exchange program (CSEP), which aims at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.
Mayor Jerry Sanders, the city’s former police chief, led the move to reinstate the program, which was halted last year due to lack of political support.
Supporters say the program is key to battling HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, which can be spread by sharing dirty needles. Opponents say that the program supports drug use.
Councilman Ben Hueso spoke to the council about his previous concerns about the program. He did not support the pilot program. However, after an experience with his local Boy Scout troop at a nearby park, when one young boy brought a dirty needle that he was playing with to Hueso, he changed his opinion.
“We started sweeping the park for dirty needles before they could go out and play,” Hueso said. After the CSEP started, the number of dirty needles present at the park decreased, he said.
Linda Lloyd, vice president of programs at Alliance Healthcare Foundation, has said that over a three-year period, more than 354,000 used syringes were disposed of, while only 291,000 clean syringes were given out. Alliance Healthcare Foundation has funded the program in the past and has pledged a two-year grant of $386,400 for the facilitation and operation of the program,
Councilman Brian Maienschein, who cast the lone dissenting vote, disagrees.
“I do not believe that handing out free needles to drug users will improve public safety or the public health,” Maienschein said.
San Diego’s program was discontinued last July after the resignations of Councilmen Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza, who were both in support of the program. Their votes were needed to sustain a biweekly state of emergency declaration by the City Council required to keep the program going.
This is no longer needed under a new state law, which does not require the council to repeatedly declare a state of emergency to keep the program running. It now requires only one single, simple majority vote.
“Any local jurisdiction can authorize the functioning of a Clean Syringe Exchange Program,” Lloyd said, “But they only have to authorize it once.”
The CSEP program would continue unless and until the city decides to terminate it.
While many believe that the CSEP would be beneficial, Luauna Stines, a reverend with A Touch from Above Ministry, believes that they are not the answer.
Stines told of her CSEP experience with “Needle Park” in Switzerland, a place intended to help stop the spread of HIV which backfired and instead invited thousands of drug users and dealers from all over the country.
“They don’t need another needle, they need direction,” Stines said, adding that she believes the money would be better spent on faith-based programs that include homes to get drug addicts off the streets.
Others, such as Jim Dunford, the chair of the facilitation committee for the pilot program and the city’s medical director, disagree.
“Syringe exchange programs are based on a premise of harm reduction,” Dunford said. “The reduction of sharing of contaminated syringes and needles is a good thing. The drug addiction is not a good thing, but we’re not trying to solve all drug addiction, we’re trying to educate injection drug users and provide them with referral treatment.”
Dunford says that the ultimate idea is to get the addict to recover and that syringe exchange programs must “be looked upon as an effective component of a comprehensive strategy.”
The vote brought back the program to be operated at the previously selected sites and times and in conformance with specific guidelines as well as a new Facilitation Committee. It also approved supplemental recommendations, which were to invite the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency in the CSEP as well as that the CSEP operator strengthen referral relationships with treatment providers and investigate new opportunities to place clients in treatment on a timely basis.
They also recommend that the San Diego Police Department continue to collect and analyze crime data in areas surrounding CSEP sites and to allow the CSEP operator, with prior approval from the facilitation committee, flexibility to adjust or add days and hours of service and to propose new sites to adjust for client capacity.