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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
[OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept.
    #28390910 - 07/09/23 10:42 PM (10 months, 4 days ago)

Multnomah County Will Distribute Tin Foil and Straws to Fentanyl Smokers
July 7, 2023 - Willamette Week

The Multnomah County Health Department will begin distributing tin foil and straws this month to fentanyl smokers at sites across Portland, WW has learned.

The “smoking supplies,” which also include glass pipes for smoking meth and crack as well as “snorting kits,” are part of a national effort to minimize the health consequences of drug use. Smoking is considered by many health experts a safer way of consuming hard drugs than injection, and government officials are now seeking to encourage users who haven’t already switched to do so—and to make it safer for those who already have.

The Oregon Legislature just passed a bill decriminalizing the distribution of “drug paraphernalia” for harm reduction purposes, although it awaits Gov. Tina Kotek’s signature. There are similar programs in other states, including Washington and California. New York City recently installed a vending machine with smoking kits, including bubble pipes.

Yet the decision to distribute smoking supplies arrives as many officials and Portland residents are exhausted by open drug use on city streets. Fentanyl, which is most commonly smoked, is now the drug of choice, and it’s difficult to walk downtown without passing someone in a stoop with a torch and a piece of tinfoil.

The policy is brand new. Multnomah County confirmed it Thursday afternoon after WW inquired. Spokeswoman Sarah Dean noted that the rise of fentanyl, which is commonly smoked and not injected, has decreased demand for the county’s “harm reduction” services. Visits to clinics have dropped by more than 60% since 2019.

Heroin, the opioid of choice on Portland’s streets only a few years ago, is typically injected. For years, harm reduction advocates focused on creating syringe exchange programs to minimize the health consequences. But now, with the rise of fentanyl, those programs aren’t as popular. “It’s difficult to engage folks who don’t come in,” Dean says.

So the county is offering what drug users want: tin foil, which, thanks to the explosion in fentanyl use, already dots downtown Portland’s streets.

The smoking supplies serve two purposes, Dean says. They encourage people to stop injecting, a vector for disease. And they encourage people who are already smoking to come into clinics, where the county can offer fentanyl test strips, Narcan, a fast-acting overdose reversal drug, and other services. “Several decades of research have also shown that providing supplies for safer drug use does not increase illegal drug use,” she adds.

Officials announced they were distributing smoking supplies in a PowerPoint presentation at a briefing of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners last week. The health department confirmed to WW yesterday what those supplies entailed and that they would be distributed “beginning in July 2023.”

“Multnomah County has been an innovator and a leader in harm reduction practices for many years, which I’m very proud of,” county public health director Jessica Guernsey said at the meeting last week. “Harm reduction is often a topic that is sensationalized or misrepresented in public and media discourse. But make no mistake, the work is not only lifesaving, but also a critical way to form trusting, safe relationships with community members who have been otherwise marginalized.”

Guernsey says the county’s harm reduction efforts decrease emergency room visits and help connect people to treatment services.

Despite the county’s efforts, however, overdose deaths have continued to climb. They’ve doubled in Multnomah County between 2018 and 2021, thanks to the rise of fentanyl. (Data for 2022 is still trickling in.)

Mayor Ted Wheeler, meanwhile, has taken a different tack. He recently announced, but later withdrew, a proposal to ban the smoking of fentanyl in Portland’s public spaces.

After initially declining to comment, the mayor’s office releasing a scathing statement.

“I adamantly oppose distributing paraphernalia to encourage using a drug that is the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 and responsible for 190 fatal overdoses a day in the U.S.,” Wheeler said. “This misguided approach also results in greater risk to public safety for those who simply want to enjoy our city without walking through a cloud of toxic smoke.” (County health officials say that fentanyl smoke puts passersby “at very low risk of health effects.”)

“Our community would benefit more from the county using its funding to urgently increase treatment and sobering facilities rather than actively enabling this deadly epidemic,” he added.

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Offlineviraldrome
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Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: veggie] * 2
    #28390929 - 07/09/23 11:23 PM (10 months, 4 days ago)

Giving an addict straws on foil does not make consumption "safer". Its like giving an alcoholic a clean glass. These agencies have a huge budget for HR, people are not injecting so they need to justify the budget/their existence so they make up stuff like safe straws and foil, like its a real thing.

Millions of OD's have involved smoking, its hardly "safer". And if you used volumetric dosing injecting is safer, by far. I have yet to hear any of the HR social workers ever use that term, i wouldnt even know it myself if not for bluelight.


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Lysergamides I have tried so far: 1P-LSD, 1cP-LSD, ALD-52, AL-LAD, LSZ, ETH-LAD, MIPLA, EIPLA, 1cP-AL-LAD

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Registered: 01/06/19
Posts: 1,576
Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: viraldrome]
    #28391091 - 07/10/23 06:52 AM (10 months, 4 days ago)

Unless the alcoholic were injecting his vodka for lack of a clean glass...

You don't OD from one hit, like you do with IV. You can't use volumetric dosing on street drugs as you don't know the potency in the first place. You don't get potentially deadly infections from smoking. You don't transmit AIDS and hepatitis from smoking.

If you can't see the numerous ways IV use is more dangerous than smoking then you either have no imagination or no education.

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Offlineviraldrome
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Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: Holybullshit]
    #28391185 - 07/10/23 09:26 AM (10 months, 4 days ago)

Quote:

Holybullshit said:
You can't use volumetric dosing on street drugs as you don't know the potency in the first place. You don't get potentially deadly infections from smoking. You don't transmit AIDS and hepatitis from smoking.

.




You dont' have to know the potency, thats the point. You put it in solution and titrate up after sampling at 1 ml. You can google the numbers, probably. No hotspots, which always happens with smoking, or snorting or swallowing. That's not safer and its ignorant to say so. 

The only other feasible way to eliminate hotspots is a nasal spray which works by same principal


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Lysergamides I have tried so far: 1P-LSD, 1cP-LSD, ALD-52, AL-LAD, LSZ, ETH-LAD, MIPLA, EIPLA, 1cP-AL-LAD

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InvisibleHolybullshit
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Registered: 01/06/19
Posts: 1,576
Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: viraldrome] * 1
    #28391203 - 07/10/23 09:48 AM (10 months, 4 days ago)

If you don't know the potency before dilution then you don't know the potency after... Do you really think junkies are going to bother with that s***? You think they even have the math skills? Even if they stopped to test a small amount that's not going to stop them from turning around and injecting 10 times more. You are starting to sound kind of ridiculous.

And carrying their dose around dissolved in tap water is a great way to invite infection as I doubt they have bacteriostatic solution on hand and even if they did probably wouldn't bother using it.

Hot spots would be a problem no matter what dosing method you use... But I think you are greatly overestimating their prevalence. You are more likely to run into a batch that is uniformly overdosed rather than die from a hotspot.

And you can smoke pure fentanyl and not OD I have done it. You aren't even necessarily nodding after one hit, let alone in od territory or when smoking meth or crack that happens to have some in it. And not all meth or crack does.

This isn't even really up for debate there is plenty of empirical evidence, it's not like policy makers are pursuing this on a whim, LOL.

I imagine you are struggling more with the idea that the government is actually doing some good, rather than wholeheartedly believing that IV drug use is safer than smoking. Everything you say just sounds like a bad faith argument made in order to attack programs like this.

Edited by Holybullshit (07/10/23 10:04 AM)

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OfflineArctic_Fox
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Registered: 03/13/23
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Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: veggie] * 1
    #28391375 - 07/10/23 01:59 PM (10 months, 3 days ago)

So, how many people have been helped to overcome a drug addiction as a result of these "harm reduction" policies? A death avoided is not the same as a life saved.


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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: Arctic_Fox]
    #28391584 - 07/10/23 06:03 PM (10 months, 3 days ago)

Update ...

Multnomah County Reverses Plans to Distribute Tin Foil to Fentanyl Smokers
July 10, 2023 - Willamette Week

Three days after WW reported that the Multnomah County Health Department planned to begin distributing “smoking supples,” including tin foil and straws, to fentanyl smokers in Portland, the county is suspending the program.

“Our health department went forward with this proposal without proper implementation protocols,” says County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson. “And in that light, I am suspending the program pending further analysis.”

Multnomah County health officials have been telegraphing the plan, which is similar to other harm reduction efforts across the country, in briefings to the county board as early as May. But after WW reported the details of the new initiative, which included plans to distribute tin foil, straws and pipes at county clinics, two county commissioners told WW it should be delayed.

“As it relates to distributing foil and straw to enable fentanyl use, there is no compelling evidence that it is comparable to safe needle exchanges or that the county currently has capacity to connect individuals to treatment who want it,” Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards told WW this morning.

The county gave two rationales for the new program. First, the smoking supplies encourage people to stop injecting, a vector for disease, health department spokeswoman Sarah Dean says. And they encourage people who are already smoking to come into clinics, where the county can offer fentanyl test strips, Narcan, a fast-acting overdose reversal drug, and other services. Visits to the county’s harm reduction clinics have dropped substantially in recent years as fentanyl, which unlike heroin is more commonly smoked than injected, gains popularity on the street.

Prior to the county chair’s statement, Dean told WW that the county would pay $82,835 for the smoking supplies “using cost savings from underspent syringe budget.” The county plans to spend a total of $3 million over the next fiscal year on harm reduction supplies.

“The county has considered this for several years, but in reviewing results of our 2022 harm reduction client survey it became increasingly clear that this was a needed change in our area,” Dean says. “The proposed change was reviewed and supported by a number of public health experts within clinical and administrative health department leadership before being presented to the board.”

Even as she hit the pause button on the program, Vega Pederson defended the county’s efforts to address rising overdoses on Portland’s streets.

“My focus has been on saving lives,” she said in a statement. “We’ve seen overdose deaths from fentanyl increase eightfold since 2019, from 26 deaths to 209 deaths in 2022. I’m interested in connecting people with lifesaving materials like naloxone because we’ve seen a significant decrease in the number of people utilizing our harm reduction resources as fentanyl use became more prevalent. We must connect people to services and continue communicating to those struggling with addiction that your life is worth saving.”

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OfflineArctic_Fox
Mr. Furious
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Registered: 03/13/23
Posts: 257
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Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: veggie] * 1
    #28391588 - 07/10/23 06:10 PM (10 months, 3 days ago)

Quote:


Even as she hit the pause button on the program, Vega Pederson defended the county’s efforts to address rising overdoses on Portland’s streets.

“My focus has been on saving lives,” she said in a statement. “We’ve seen overdose deaths from fentanyl increase eightfold since 2019, from 26 deaths to 209 deaths in 2022. I’m interested in connecting people with lifesaving materials like naloxone because we’ve seen a significant decrease in the number of people utilizing our harm reduction resources as fentanyl use became more prevalent. We must connect people to services and continue communicating to those struggling with addiction that your life is worth saving."




ngmi :shake:

I'm glad someone's talking about connecting people with real treatment though. That actually can help people.


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Edited by Arctic_Fox (07/10/23 06:14 PM)

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Offlineviraldrome
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Re: [OR] "Smoking supplies" and "snorting kits" to be distributed to Portland drug users by Health Dept. [Re: Holybullshit]
    #28392077 - 07/11/23 04:50 AM (10 months, 3 days ago)

Quote:

Holybullshit said:
If you don't know the potency before dilution then you don't know the potency after..




Yes you do you sample it at 1 ml and titrate up, if you are too stupid to understand this i canoot explain it more


--------------------
Lysergamides I have tried so far: 1P-LSD, 1cP-LSD, ALD-52, AL-LAD, LSZ, ETH-LAD, MIPLA, EIPLA, 1cP-AL-LAD

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