nbcboston | "We started seeing it last year here
and there. But now, it's just raining needles everywhere we go," said
Morrison, a burly, tattooed construction worker whose Clean River
Project has six boats working parts of the 117-mile (188-kilometer)
river.
Among the oldest tracking
programs is in Santa Cruz, California, where the community group Take
Back Santa Cruz has reported finding more than 14,500 needles in the
county over the past 4 1/2 years. It says it has gotten reports of 12
people getting stuck, half of them children.
"It's
become pretty commonplace to find them. We call it a rite of passage
for a child to find their first needle," said Gabrielle Korte, a member
of the group's needle team. "It's very depressing. It's infuriating.
It's just gross."
Some experts say the problem will ease only when more users get treatment and more funding is directed to treatment programs.
Others
are counting on needle exchange programs, now present in more than 30
states, or the creation of safe spaces to shoot up — already introduced
in Canada and proposed by U.S. state and city officials from New York to
Seattle.
Studies have found that
needle exchange programs can reduce pollution, said Don Des Jarlais, a
researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital in
New York.
But Morrison and Korte complain poor
supervision at needle exchanges will simply put more syringes in the
hands of people who may not dispose of them properly.
After
complaints of discarded needles, Santa Cruz County took over its
exchange from a nonprofit in 2013 and implemented changes. It did away
with mobile exchanges and stopped allowing drug users to get needles
without turning in an equal number of used ones, said Jason Hoppin, a
spokesman for the Santa Cruz County.
