San Francisco spends $ 850,000 to give 2.4 million syringes free per year to drug users in the City's needle exchange program. The program was launched years ago to cut down on the infections from unsafe drug use. Sixty to seventy percent of the needles are returned. The remainder end up in the public common areas of the City where innocents get stuck or infected or both. There are app. 750,000 needles per year discarded in an unsafe manner. One suggestion to mitigate the unsafe disposal problem is to provide convenient collection locations throughout the city so concientious and civic-minded drug users can return their needles 24/7.
Relying on drug users to be responsible is the definition of moronic optmism. Isn't providing free syringes for illicit drug use a de facto partial legaliztion of drug use? How can you have a legal way of breaking the law? Ethically and practically speaking you shouldn't . Ergo either legalize drug use or stop the needle exchange. With legal drug use would come the free market to provide solutions and the philosophy of more personal resposibility and freeing up prisons for more dangerous demographics. The trade off between healthier drug users at the cost of unhealthy public environments is a bad trade.
When it comes to drugs you can find plenty of health information on the Internet about them. Even if you don't need to know more about drugs then you can still find plenty of useful health info online and maybe even find people to answer your health questions like nurses or doctors.
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