Guest Commentary: Canceling Yakima needle exchange would be a risky step backward

Contrary to some beliefs, SSPs are not a “bleeding heart liberals” solution.

For example, the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank focused on market-based solutions to public policy problems, vocally supports SSPs.

Their support is based on a simple statistical fact: SSPs save lives, save money, and encourage recovery.

Participants are four to five times more likely to enter treatment and three times more likely to quit drugs entirely. Every dollar spent on SSPs saves between six and seven dollars in subsequent infectious disease treatment expenses.

Those figures speak loudly to genuine conservatives.

R Street Institute recognizes another benefit of SSPs. They reduce the number of dirty and dangerous syringes littering city streets. R Street experts support expanded cleanup efforts and adding more sharps-disposal bins.

That, in short, is why Idaho’s sanitation workers lobbied for making SSPs legal in their highly conservative state in 2019.

But, alas, the Idaho story doesn’t end there. Regressive Idaho state lawmakers recently managed to repeal Idaho’s SSP law, effectively doing what our City Council member proposes: ending support for needle exchange programs.

The conservative R Street Institute issued a warning to Idaho legislators: “By deciding to repeal the state’s authorization of SSPs, Idaho lawmakers are taking a massive step backward in their fight against fentanyl and the overdose crisis.”

The Institute continued, “Cutting people’s access to sterile equipment will not stop people in withdrawals from injecting addictive drugs. They will instead reuse needles and share with others, which will likely lead to an increase in HIV and hepatitis C cases.”