My dad died in 2003, just before his 58th birthday. Since before I was born he had been an alcoholic and a heroin user. He died of liver cancer brought on by hepatitis C. He likely contracted that hepatitis from a shared needle.
I don’t know if there were needle exchange services where he was then. Probably not; it was the 1970s, when even having “drug paraphernalia” was criminalized in the United States. Criminalization did not stop people from using. Those who ran clean needle services were usually activists, risking imprisonment in their attempts to halt the spread of diseases.
Dad was a Navy veteran. He’d complained of abdominal pain and loss of appetite for years. By the time he was diagnosed by a Veterans Affairs doctor in 2002, his cancer was terminal. He said his earlier attempts to have his pain addressed were probably dismissed as “drug-seeking behavior.”
It can be uncomfortable to be around people who use street drugs. Just because someone uses does not mean that they deserve to catch a deadly illness. I don’t pretend to know why Dad started using. But I’m reasonably confident that people use drugs for reasons that are very real to them; they stop for their own reasons too.
Addiction is complicated. I know people who were given powerful pain medicines during hospitalization and quickly became addicted to them.
Helping people avoid reusing needles is good. One needle not getting shared can mean one person not getting hepatitis or HIV that day. That’s why it’s called “harm reduction.” That person might be someone’s dad, mom, brother, sister, daughter, spouse or friend. Everyone is someone’s something.
Siiri Cressey
Lewiston