Needle-exchange backers criticize new ban
NEWARK — Protesters questioned the Licking County Board of Health on Tuesday night about why the board suddenly voted last month to ban all needleexchange programs in the county.
On Feb. 19, the board voted 8-0, with two members absent, to ban programs countywide after holding an executive session. The needle-exchange program was not on the meeting’s agenda, and there was no public discussion on the issue at the meeting.
Dennis Cauchon, president of Harm Reduction Ohio, a Granville-based nonprofit that advocates for compassionate drug policies aimed at “reducing negative consequences associated with drug use,” called the vote illegal and a clear violation of Ohio’s open-meeting laws. He said the vote promotes a false stigma about drug users and exchange programs.
“It’s a moral belief they voted for, that it’s enabling people to use,” Cauchon told The Dispatch. “It’s got nothing to do with public health.”
Needle-exchange initiatives equip drug users with free, sterile syringes to inject drugs, often with the stipulation that clients will trade in used syringes for new ones. The goals of such programs are to prevent the spread of blood-borne illnesses such as hepatitis C and HIV, and to link users to needed health-care and addiction-recovery services.
Twenty-two of Ohio’s 88 counties sponsor needle-exchange programs, Cauchon said. Licking County is the first to ban all such programs, he said.
Community organizers and former addicts called on the board Tuesday to explain and reconsider its decision.
Billy Mccall, Harm Reduction Ohio’s syringeprogram advocacy director, asked the board members why they voted against a program that has a lot of community support. United Way of Licking County and Licking Memorial Health Systems have expressed support for needle-exchange programs in the county.
“The stigma of (needleexchange programs) is giving people permission to use,” Mccall said Tuesday.
Mccall, a former Iv-drug user for more than a decade, spoke at the board’s February meeting and then left, unaware that a vote would be taken. Cauchon said the board did not tell Mccall about the vote.
“What upset me most was they treated him like a worthless junkie,” Cauchon said.
Patricia Perry, Mccall’s mother and a co-founder of the Newark Homeless Outreach, said she remembers packing gauze into her son’s open wounds caused by his use of dirty needles. She estimates her son has almost a million dollars in medical bills from using dirty needles.
“You have the power to change this,” Perry said. “This is inhumane.”
Cauchon told the board that Harm Reduction Ohio plans to challenge the decision to ban such programs, but he did not say how at the meeting.
Board members politely acknowledged the speakers but did not comment and moved on with the meeting.