‘We’re Finding Needles in Places That We Shouldn’t’.
Although the number of opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts decreased by 4 percent in 2018 in comparison to 2017, substance misuse remains a critical public health issue both in Boston and throughout the Commonwealth. The epidemic has led to a growing number of improperly discarded needles in the city’s parks, restrooms, and other public spaces.
On April 25, the Activist Lab will partner with City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Services, the Boston Public Health Commission, and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers to hold the inaugural Needle Take-Back Day, during which neighborhood health centers throughout the city will temporarily serve as collection sites for free and safe needle disposal from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Needle Take-Back Day is a way to promote safe needle disposal and expand access to safe collection sites for our residents,” says Essaibi George, whose office initiated the citywide event. “When it comes to needle collection, we need to make it much easier, and much more available.”
Ahead of the day, Essaibi George spoke about the public health concerns of improperly discarded needles as well as the broader challenges of tackling the opioid epidemic in Boston.
Can you explain more about the purpose and goal of this daylong initiative?
We want to create greater awareness across the City of Boston about proper disposal of needles. A lot of residents are improperly disposing their needles in household trash, on our streets, and in our neighborhoods and playgrounds, so we need to do better to inform individuals that that is not proper disposal. We’re finding needles in places that we shouldn’t, and it has led to incidents where kids have been stabbed.
Our teachers, librarians, public works employees, parks employees, and first responders are all working on this issue daily. But the reality is we need more help. We need to make sure our school environments are safe for our children to succeed. Needle exposure is a major public safety threat.
It is important to note that this issue is not just about those who are dealing with a substance use disorder. Many residents are dealing with other chronic illnesses or situations, such as diabetes or infertility treatments—they’ll often put the needles in a coffee can and then into household trash, and that’s not proper disposal. In the course of my work as chair on the Committee of Homelessness, Mental Health, and Recovery, one of the top concerns from residents is about the insufficient amount of safe drop-off sites for needles and sharps.
Hopefully, this event will continue to grow and become an annual event or take place multiple times each year. One of the other efforts I’ve been working on as a councilor is to have pharmacies across the city take back needles as well. Most pharmacies do drug take-backs and have take-back kiosks for drugs, but I’d like them to add needle kiosks. If pharmacies do this, it would create about 100 more locations throughout the city where people could properly dispose of their needles. As I continue my work to implement the Sharps Ordinance, Needle Take-Back Day is a step in the right direction that will both raise awareness and improve access to free and safe disposal of sharps for everyone in the city.
Opponents of needle disposal and exchange sites believe that these programs encourage, rather than dissuade, harmful drug use. What is your response to this argument?
It is really important for people to have clean needles. And we want people to have access to clean needles, regardless of whether they’re using them due to substance disorders or chronic illnesses. Needle exchange programs are an opportunity for residents to connect with someone—if they are motivated on that day to enter a recovery program, they can get those resources directly. People need to be able to access and use clean needles. There is a direct correlation between access to clean needles and lowering rates of HIV and other infections that are contracted through intravenous drug use.
We’ve seen a very dramatic decrease in HIV and AIDS as well as hepatitis—but in some pockets of the city, we are seeing a slight increase in HIV. That is certainly worrying, because we don’t want to see a return to any prevalence of HIV, in our city or anywhere. This slight increase in HIV and AIDS is because drug use habits have changed. With heroin, people use it once or twice per day. Fentanyl produces a stronger but shorter high, so people use it more times each day. So there is an increase in the frequency of needle use, and that’s why we are seeing more needles on the street. And if you don’t have access to enough needles, there is a tendency to reuse a used needle. So we need to make sure there is a greater awareness about access to clean needles and greater access to education and resources.
Does Boston face unique challenges in mitigating substance misuse?
One of the unique challenges in Boston is that we’re also at the center of a lot of the services that are provided to help those who are dealing with substance use disorder. Because we have a lot of services, we attract a lot of individuals who are looking for care, and so there is a higher concentration of people who are dealing with addiction in our city. And sometimes that relates to co-occurring issues. We support a lot of individuals who are dealing homelessness. We are seeing an increase in that population, as well as the population of people who require mental health services. Even though these things aren’t always related, they are often interconnected, and that puts a lot of pressure on our city’s resources.
But we have to be able to support efforts that focus on our city’s most vulnerable communities. I was a former high school teacher in Boston, so family homelessness is an issue that I’ve been focused on and aware of since I was teaching, and now as a councilor, a great deal of my work revolves around that issue. But it also includes these issues around addiction, substance use disorder, mental health concerns, housing costs, and the economic impact of these challenges and how they affect our children and our families all throughout the city. So it is a necessary focus.