This letter is in response to "Buy needles for drugs" Tuesday by Patty Dunkleberger.
Clearly, Ms. Dunkleberger misses the point of this legislation, and is ill-informed in both drug addiction and ways of the world outside of the little bubble of NEPA.
First, of what concern is it of yours what these people are doing after they get the needles? If the person who sold it to them calls the cops for them shooting up in the parking lot its just one more junkie off the streets.....right?
Second, the idea of making needles legal to purchase without a prescription is neither new or radical. As they are commonly known in urban settings needle "Exchanges" have been around since 1983. These programs have been found to be highly effective in achieving their aim; which is not to "...rid the city of drugs and (their) abusers." Which brings me to my third point.
The purpose of allowing people (yes, drug addicts are people, too!) to buy sterile syringes is to curb the spread of infectious diseases, such as Hepatitis B &C and HIV transmission.
It is not encouraging drug use. I doubt someone who is on the fence about using drugs is going to use legal purchase of needles as their reason for starting to shoot up heroin!
There is a plethora of information supporting the fact that making clean needles available to addicts greatly reduces the number of IV transmission cases of the disease being spread.
It is your type of secular thinking and narrow-mindedness that keeps people in the dark ages and blocks the good reasoning that helps solve problems. Yes, it is a big, bad scary world out there.
But if we remove our heads from the sand for long enough, we might say something intelligent!
Michael S. Conway
Dushore
Submitted by Virtual Newsroom
