‘ Harm reduction kits’ hailed
NEW HAVEN — Public health officials and legal experts said Friday that providing people battling substance use disorders with “harm reduction kits,” including clean glass pipes to use crack cocaine, is sound policy that will help save lives, despite some criticism of the idea.
The New Haven Police Department announced Thursday that officers would begin offering the kits, which include glass crack pipes, syringes, information about care options in the city, Brillo pads, sterilizing pads, cotton, condoms and a tourniquet, to those released from the department’s detention facility.
New Haven will be the first department in the state to distribute such kits, according to the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
Police Chief Otoniel Reyes noted Thursday during the announcement of the kits that, “This epidemic is complicated. This affects every facet of our community. And the New Haven Police Department cares deeply about every member of its community.”
He said the department’s “primary responsibility is the protection and the preservation of life” and while the agency does have to make arrests, “we want our people to know that want to we support every individual’s road to recovery.”
The decision sparked some incredulity and anger online, including on the New Haven Register’s Facebook page, with a particular focus on the distribution of the crack pipes.
The rationale
Robert Lawlor, who served more than 20 years on the New Haven police force and now works for the New England High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area said that glass pipes, as they are heated to smoke crack cocaine, often split and rupture the lips of those imbibing the drugs, causing them to bleed.
People who share these pipes then are at risk of contracting a communicable disease, such as HIV or hepatitis C, and possibly dying as a result.
The glass pipes themselves, Lawlor noted, are not illegal. They’re commonly sold in New Haven, priced at less than $ 1, as a vase for a rose.
It’s only when a pipe is used to imbibe an illegal drug that they are considered drug paraphernalia, and thus illegal under state law, he said.
Officers will still be able to enforce drug laws in the state and arrest people for drug- related offenses, he noted.
“We’re not asking police officers not to do their job. I was a police officer for over 20 years, so I’ve arrested my share of people with a substance use disorder. If just arresting people was going to solve this issue, it would have been solved,” said Lawlor. “We need to come up with other ways and other initiatives to try to get this community the help they need to stay alive and get on to the road to recovery.”
He also noted that harm reduction kits, including the pipes, are also already regularly distributed in Connecticut, including in New Haven by the Yale syringe service program.
“These services are already out there. These kits are already being distributed. We’re just looking at another engagement point, where we recognize there’s a gap in services and another way to engage in this community,” said Lawlor.
Addiction science
Jeff Coots, director of the From Punishment to Public Health initiative at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said that addiction is a disease of the brain, although it has been traditionally discussed as a moral issue in the United States.
Coots said drugs create physiological changes in the brain and body, affecting how the body produces dopamine, a hormone that creates a sense of happiness.
The drug induces the brain to produce more dopamine; the brain, sensing an external supply of the hormone, slows or stops producing it by itself, creating the pull of a substance use disorder.
“If you are consistently adding a substance to your system that artificially elevates dopamine levels, your brain will send signals to the other parts of your body that would naturally produce dopamine, and so your body stops producing the dopamine naturally,” said Coots. “And that’s how you develop a dependence on the drug — you need that external stimulus to get the dopamine hits that you need, not just to be exceedingly happy, but just to have a baseline where you’re not depressed all the time.”
He praised the New Haven Police Department for recognizing scientific thinking and the public health perspective with the new policy, despite the difficulty of explaining the change in philosophy.
“It’s laudable, frankly — the willingness to stand up and say, ‘ we’ve looked at the science; we understand this problem better than we did 10 years ago, and this is our best shot at saving lives.”