The article in the Feb. 27 Peninsula Daily News, “Official Highlights Needle Exchange, Testing,” said that 400 people in Clallam County are using the needle exchange program, and they received 234,270 needles last year.
This is about 585 needles per person per year.
Because of administrative changes, these numbers are down from previous years, according to the article.
The underlying heroin problem is not improving.
The costs to the county, state and federal government are still going up, including health care, police and justice system costs, food vouchers, social work and myriad administrative overhead costs.
The primary goal of state agencies is not to solve or eliminate problems but to manage them, to create and sustain a bureaucracy that will grow, employ people and last forever.
If the problem is eliminated, this justification is lost.
The costs to families and victims of addicts is somehow lost in the analysis of these problems.
Parents who love their sons and daughters have been ruined trying to help people who don’t care about anything but themselves, their habit and maybe other people with their habit, people who at worst commit terrible crimes against the rest of us and at best fail to reach whatever potential they may have had.
What a terrible perpetual tragedy.
Ron Grotjan,
Sequim