SAN FRANCISCO – Providing drug users with syringes and pipes for public health purposes keeps addicts “in a state of bondage,” a dealer-turned-activist told Fox News.
The city has established more than 20 harm reduction centers — sites that provide a variety of services including overdose prevention education, distribution of the overdose reversal drug naloxone and safe-use drug supplies such as syringes, tinfoil, and pipes. The goal is to reduce overdoses and the spread of disease, like hepatitis.
“They should restart rethinking their policies here because this harm reduction site, it just doesn’t work,” Ricci Wynne, a drug abstinence advocate and former drug dealer, told Fox News. The homeless in San Francisco “don’t need more syringes, they don’t need crack pipes, they don’t need tinfoil.”
The San Francisco Health Commission passed a resolution in September 2000 adopting a harm reduction policy for substance abuse in the city intending to reduce the physical, social, emotional and economic harms associated with drug use, according to the city’s health department.
“Harm reduction methods are free of judgment and directly involve clients in setting their own health goals,” according to the department.
Wynne called the approach a “failed model” and compared harm reduction to putting a bucket under a leaky roof. He said it’s a temporary solution that does not fix the root cause of addiction.
“It basically allows these addicts to keep living in a state of bondage,” he said. “It’s a lawlessness type of situation where there’s no consequences for their actions, and they just continue to be able to live in this way.”
