By Refraction

What’s needling me (hypodermically speaking)

Jun 10, 2018 | 5:00 AM

ALONG WITH MANY OTHER concerned citizens of Kamloops, I’ve been reading, following, witnessing and becoming educated about the serious problem of discarded needles in our city.

I’ve participated in round table discussions, heard from those who have been directly affected, and talked about it at length with people much smarter than I am, including agencies that deal with this issue every day.

From my perspective, the reasonable sides of this conversation come down to:

1. It is unsafe and unethical for us to allow people to continue to share needles. Every person is valuable and we have a moral obligation to take care of each other, even if we don’t like a person’s choices or particular issues. But even if you lack compassion for the user on a humanitarian level, there’s still this: it is very expensive to allow people to continue to share contaminated needles. If we don’t want to pay exorbitant tax dollars to treat diseases contracted through shared needles (each case of a bloodborne disease like HIV or hepatitis costs an estimated $300,000 to $500,000 — now imagine those numbers multiplying with every contaminated needle shared), then we need to continue providing free needles.
2. The number of needles lying around this city is frightening. Recently, there was a child punctured by one. More than once, I found used needles on the field before coaching my son’s soccer team. Kids are no longer safe playing in the sand in some public parks. Needles were even found on a rural elementary school property this week. Homeowners are finding needles abandoned on their property and business owners are sick of them being left on their doorsteps. Volunteers are struggling not to be poked while cleaning our riverbanks of “needle nests” because they are so hard to see. It goes on.

It’s a major public health and safety problem; it can’t go on like this.

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But here’s what I’m struggling to understand: why can’t we start making simple changes that will guarantee small outcomes, inevitably leading to harm reduction?

Entrenching ourselves in the camps of “the cheapest needle possible for everyone, forever” or “no needles for anyone, ever” will not solve the problem.

Let’s employ some common sense and objectivity, cut through the red tape and start to fix it, one change at a time.

For instance:

• Demand that the manufacturer add a reflective strip on the needle casings or make the plungers orange like the cap so needles are more visible.
• Only supply retractable needles.
• Award a grant for a more practical retractable needle design.
• Educate people about where to find sharps bins. There are 83 in the city now!
• Add identification markers to needles distributed so they are attached to a specific user (ie. build accountability into the program).
• Allow service providers to use professional judgment when deciding how many needles to provide per visit.*

This is not a “needle in a haystack” situation; simply listening to and then implementing the creative and thoughtful ideas already proposed could quickly mitigate the impact of this problem.

And then maybe we use the same common sense process to address the root of why so many people are shooting up in the first place and get them the help they so desperately need.

*Of very important note: few of those harm reduction ideas were mine. People in discussions at Social Planning Council, Kamloops Chamber of Commerce, in FB forums, in-person conversations, at agencies like Ask Wellness and many more came up with those suggested strategies and many more.