SAN DIEGO — North County civic leaders spoke out Monday against what they say only perpetuates drug addiction problems.
County Supervisor Jim Desmond and officials from five cities – Escondido, Oceanside, San Marcos, Vista, and Carlsbad – gathered in front of Vista City Hall to voice their opposition to the county’s pursuit of a harm reduction program, including syringe services and safer smoking supplies, through the California Department of Public Health.
“This misguided harm reduction program merely enables drug use,” said Supervisor Desmond at the podium surrounded by North County leaders.
“It is handing out syringes, clean needles, and then smoke and pipe paraphernalia so people can take meth and smoke crack. This is craziness; we need to get people the help and get them off this drug abuse and addiction cycle.”
Mayor John Franklin for the City of Vista agrees this approach will worsen the problem.
“If we adopt the policies of San Francisco and implement them here in San Diego County, then we should expect the same results,” said Mayor Franklin. “That’s why we’ve stood up to say no to hypodermic needle giveaways, to crack pipe giveaways, and those kinds of things here in San Diego.”
The County Board of Supervisors, which overturned a 23-year-old ban on needle exchange programs in 2021, is now applying for $50,000 in state funding to help launch a harm reduction program at five proposed locations in San Diego, Chula Vista, Escondido, and Oceanside.
“We who are doing this type of work, we don’t want to perpetuate more drug use, the whole point is to get people off of the drugs, but if you just kind of have an abstinence-only approach, it just does not work,” said Dr. Christian Ramers, Chief of Population Health for Family Health Centers of San Diego, which has its needle exchange program operating three days a week, servicing an average of 100 clients per session.
“If someone is not ready to stop using drugs at that very moment, you should still try to help them and keep them alive and reduce the harm they can do to themselves,” said Dr. Ramers. “That encompasses reducing the risk of infectious diseases like HIV, Hepatitis B, and C, and then skin infections, and also trying to reduce the risk of them dying of an overdose, so that involves giving out NARCAN.”
According to the Medical Examiner’s Office, the county has rapidly increased fentanyl deaths from 33 in 2016 to 807 in 2021.
“Opioid use, fentanyl overdose death is a county-wide problem, and so we need to sort of expand those services to try to keep people alive so that they can get into the care they need and hopefully get off of the drugs that could potentially kill them,” said Dr. Ramers.
Ryan Keim, Deputy Mayor of Oceanside and a former police officer, said we must find more effective solutions.
“We need to help people break that cycle of addiction; sometimes you need to push someone into it,” said Deputy Mayor Keim. “I think giving needles and paraphernalia is the absolute wrong method of doing that.”
The county’s application for state funding is still in process, and no timeline has been given yet for implementing a harm reduction program.
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