In
Saturday's Late Edition of the New York Times, there is a story about the State Department's presence in Vienna during the U.N. Drug Policy Summit. The story talks about the State Department being at odds with President Obama's recent announcement that he would be working on lifting the ban on funding to organizations that participate in syringe-exchange programs.
So what does the State Department in Vienna have to say about it?
"State Department officials said that they were resisting the harm-reduction language because it could also be interpreted as endorsing legalized drugs or providing addicts with a place to inject drugs."
The New York Times does correctly point out - "But the Vienna plan does not require any country to adopt policies it finds inappropriate."
Regardless of the information provided by the Times, the State Department is just plain wrong. It's a tired old argument - that by providing harm reduction, somehow the activity itself is being endorsed. Using this absurd logic, seatbelts and helmets encourage motor vehicle collisions, hand sanitizer encourages touching contaminated surfaces, and fire extinguishers encourage arson.
I mean, really, can we all just grow up a little bit? People using needles to inject drugs don't need encouragement to do what they're already doing - the state condoning or rejecting a certain activity clearly hasn't had any impact in their life. But time and time again, access to clean needles has shown to make a significant impact on reducing HIV transmission rates, and that's not just harm reduction for the needle user, but for everyone.
Posted by Malakkar Vohryzek