Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO – Providing drug users with syringes and pipes for public health purposes keeps addicts "in a state of bondage," a dealer-turned-activist told Fox News. The city has established more than 20 harm reduction centers... "They should restart rethinking their policies here because this harm reduction site, it just doesn't work," Ricci Wynne, a drug abstinence advocate and former drug dealer, told Fox News. The homeless in San Francisco "don't need more syringes, they don't need crack pipes, they don't need tinfoil."....

New York City health officials have announced a plan to install 10 “public health vending machines” that would dispense sterile syringes, an anti-overdose medication and other “harm reduction” supplies to help neighborhoods that have been hit hard by drug overdoses.

On October 27, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced a sweeping federal plan to address and reduce the devastating toll of overdoses in America with the release of the HHS Overdose Prevention Strategy. In the agency’s press release, Secretary Becerra noted that with the new strategy, HHS will be “breaking new ground to address the full range of drug use and addiction.” Specifically, Becerra commented that the “new strategy focuses on people – putting the very individuals who have struggled with addiction in positions of power.” The HHS strategy will focus on four areas including “primary prevention,...

A plague has beset the Seattle area – an increase in heroin overdose deaths in recent years that has reached “crisis levels,” according to a report by a task force convened by the mayors of Seattle and neighboring cities in King County, Washington state. The best way to address the plague, task force members agreed, is to establish so-called “Community Health Engagement Locations” where “supervised consumption occurs for adults with substance abuse disorders…” Of course, what the task force really is recommending are legalized shooting galleries; supposed “safe” sites where junkies are given clean needles with which they are free...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com HHS-sponsored forum touts 'harm reduction'By Cheryl WetzsteinTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished August 16, 2005 The Department of Health and Human Services is one of the "primary sponsors" for an upcoming Salt Lake City conference on methamphetamines whose organizers back the "harm reduction" approach to drug policy, which Republicans see as form of legalization.     Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican, said in an angry letter sent Friday to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael O. Leavitt that the conference's approach to end the nation's "war on drugs" in favor of programs that try to limit drugs' harmful effects undercuts...

COMMENTARY For decades, public health advocates have championed harm reduction for people who cannot stop taking health risks — or do not want to. Needle exchange is a classic example. Intravenous drug users get clean needles because, the reasoning goes, contracting and spreading AIDS is worse than making heroin use a little easier. But harm reduction for hard-core smokers is another matter. At issue is a form of smokeless tobacco, a popular Swedish product called snus (rhymes with loose) that satisfies smokers' nicotine addiction with negligible health risks of its own. But to many foes of smoking, it is not...