Just Let Them Die On the Street –
July 28, 2019 – But needles don’t frustrate Pastore as much as this: If she were a user, she could dispose of the needles for free at the local syringe exchange. Pastore thinks there’s something fundamentally wrong with the exchange. “Why don’t they just hand the addicts a gun and let them shoot themselves? Because that’s what they’re doing,” Pastore said. “No citizens in this town were ever given a right to vote on something, yet our taxpayer dollars were used for the syringe exchange.”
Syringe exchanges, once seen as an answer to the public health crisis of AIDS, are coming under criticism from elected officials in parts of Washington who believe they are making a new public health crisis — opioids — worse.
Syringe exchanges were born in Washington in the ’80s. Today, 39 states have them, and the practice has been endorsed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response to the opioid epidemic, hundreds of syringe exchanges have opened across the country in the past two years, according to Dr. Paul LaKosky, who helps run the North American Syringe Exchange Network.
