Republicans oppose powerful anti-opioid tools

Many Republicans have long accused such programs of promoting addiction, despite years of research showing that they reduce the incidence of infections without promoting substance use. Their opposition has eased in the last decade as the opioid epidemic has devastated the community and Trump has promised to break the crisis. I’m afraid I’m witnessing the beginning of a rebellion.

“A very regressive mood is underway,” said Judith Feinberg, a professor of infectious diseases at West Virginia University. “The mood that experts don’t know is deepening.”

Jerome Adams, a Trump surgeon, as director of health in Indiana, promoted the creation of the Scott County Needle and Needle Exchange Program and urged local authorities to preserve it, but failed. People need to take responsibility for their actions after seeing the drug crisis continue, even though parliaments and states are spending billions of dollars on treatment and prevention. I feel, Adams said.

“Many conservative Americans feel like they have given the opioid crisis to court coverage,” Adams wrote in an email. “We have started the controversial harm reduction measures and have given people a chance. Now it’s their fault that they don’t improve.”

Many needle-and-needle exchange programs are still bipartisan, and some Republican governors are backing legislation to expand their use this year. Arizona Governor Doug Duchy said last month in Arizona. Signed a bill to make the 38th state that allows needle exchange, North Dakota Governor Doug Bergham said Signed law Also, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb’s administration was critical of Scott County’s plans to close the plan, but earlier this year he reaffirmed that only local governments have the power to make such decisions. Signed the law.

Public health experts say that what is particularly worrisome about the recent wave of closures is that they are occurring in areas that are particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks. In West Virginia, the number of people living with HIV has more than doubled between 2018 and 2020. State Health DepartmentAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Scott County is one of the 10 most vulnerable counties to the HIV epidemic in Indiana.

“Throwing gasoline into a vacant lot is one thing,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an HIV researcher at Yale University. “Except for throwing into a smoldering fire.”

Needle and needle replacement programs have been around for decades, providing not only public health measures to reduce the spread of the disease, but also links to other services such as drug counseling. People who use the service are five times more likely to start drug treatment and three times more likely to stop using the drug than those who do not use the program. Data compiled by CDC..

Despite the reported benefits of needle replacement, critics across the country agree with the belief that providing needles allows the use of drugs and increases deaths from overdose. I have. This is the same type of sentiment that the federal government banned the exchange of funding until the mid-2010s.

“I know who wants to commit suicide. I don’t buy bullets instead of guns,” said Mike Jones of the County Commission before voting to end the County Commission’s program. Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

HIV outbreaks in Scott County in 2015 caused many Republicans to inject more than 150 people by injecting opioids, a powerful synthetic opioid, using predominantly contaminated needles. I began to reconsider the opposition to needle change. Over the next two years, six states, Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia, have passed legislation permitting such programs.

Proponents of some medications say the pandemic has changed their attitude towards these programs. The use of homeless people and injectables has increased, and the number of needles discarded in public places has increased. For example, a Republican lawmaker in West Virginia cited the growing littering problem as part of the grounds for cracking down on exchange programs.

A. Toni Young, executive director of the Community Education Group, a West Virginia non-profit organization working to combat the opioid epidemic, said needle dust isn’t new, but people have been quarantined for a year. She said she has patience with drug users.

“People have run out of all their sympathy for the pandemic,” Young said.

Democrats in other parts of the country are also dissatisfied with abandoned needles and question the usefulness of needle replacement. Democrats in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Asking to end their city programSaid Pennsylvania Senator Anthony Williams, who said his bill to legalize needle exchange across the state faces bipartisan opposition.

Williams, who represents the district that spans Philadelphia and Delaware counties, said, “A moderate concern about drug addiction, with the essential question of what drug addiction means, that is, increased drug use. There are Democrats. “

Grays Harbor and Scott County Commissioners will continue to enable local officials and community groups to continue to use other services provided through needle exchange programs, such as addiction treatment programs, counseling, and links to STD tests. However, advocates of drug treatment are skeptical that these services can be maintained at the same level.

When Orange County in California closed its only needle exchange program in 2018, their comprehensive services also ceased, and Philip, CEO of Radiant Health Centers, focused on ending the HIV epidemic. Yaeger says. His organization worked with the Needle and Needle Exchange Program to provide hepatitis C tests to people who came for a clean syringe, but that effort was discontinued when the exchange program was closed. .. He also said that needle replacement helped connect people who would otherwise not come for help to a drug treatment program.

“These individuals aren’t going to knock on the door for preventive services,” he said.

The number of people living with HIV in Orange County has increased each year since 2018, and the proportion of people infected with drug use by injection has also increased. County health data. In the same year, the closure of the needle and needle exchange program in Kanawha County, West Virginia, could more than double the number of people living with HIV around Charleston, the state’s largest city, some experts believe. Yes.

Feinberg of West Virginia University said it was “directly related”. He fears that the state’s new restrictions on needle replacement will exacerbate the problem.

“The seeds for that have been sown,” she said. “The situation will definitely get worse”