San Francisco residents are complaining about a record number of used and discarded syringes littering the streets, as a growing heroin epidemic grips Northern California.
The city distributes nearly 5 million needles each year through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users who might otherwise share needles.
The city distributes an estimated 400,000 syringes each month through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users. About 246,000 syringes are discarded through the city's 13 syringe access and disposal sites. But thousands of the others end up on streets, in parks and other public areas... -AP
While syringes discarded in public areas have become a nationwide problem amid a growing opium crisis, the problem in population-dense San Francisco (about 50 square miles) is much more noticeable given the city's growing homeless population. Last year there were 9,500 requests by residents for needle pick-ups by the city. So far this year, there have been 3,700 requests.
Despite the needles strewn around the city, San Francisco officials have no plans to change their needle program.
“Research shows that reducing access to clean syringes increases disease and does not improve the problem of needle litter,” said Barbara Garcia, director of the Department of Public Health.
In response to the problem, Mayor Mark Farrell has hired 10 workers to go around the city picking up needles.
Meanwhile to the north, the coastal town of Eureka has been hit hard by the heroin epidemic which has spread throughout California's rural north.
While the state as a whole has one of the lowest overall opioid-related death rates in the country, a sharp rise in heroin use across the rural north in recent years has raised alarms. In Humboldt County, the opioid death rate is five times higher than the state average, rivaling the rates of states like Maine and Vermont that have received far more national attention. -NY Times
Eureka, with its sizeable homeless population, lack of affordable housing and a "changing, weakened economy that relies heavily on tourism" has been hit particularly hard.
Intravenous drug use has been a persistent menace across rural California for decades, but longtime drug users who once sought methamphetamine — which is also often injected — are increasingly looking to score heroin or opioid pills instead. An astonishingly high rate of opioid prescription in Humboldt County has bred addiction, officials said, and the craving is increasingly sated by a growing market for heroin. -NYT
“I’ve lost so many people to this,” said 46-year-old Stacy Cobine, a chronically homeless woman who has struggled with drug abuse.
While Meth is still the drug of choice in Humboldt, Chief Deputy Coroner at the County Sheriff's Department, Ernie Stewart, says he is certain that the county's heroin-related overdoses are "way underreported," and that...