Harm Reduction Detroit

Just horrible.

Trump administration sends letter wiping out addiction, mental health grants The Trump administration sent hundreds of letters Tuesday terminating federal grants supporting mental health and drug addiction services. The cuts could total as much as $2 billion.

On occasion someone will tell me I’m enabling drug use because I give people clean syringes. It’s a pretty rare thing for me to meet someone who doesn’t already have a syringe though. A few months ago I started asking our participants what’s the worst syringe they ever had to use and I was met with quote after quote about picking syringes up off the ground, out of dumpsters, and building whole syringes out of pieces of broken ones. To prevent people from using syringes you would have to completely stop the production of syringes all together and that’s obviously never going to happen. I’ve also lost countless participants to sepsis which started as an infection caused by lack of sterile equipment. So if you think it’s actually better for the welfare of a patient to use syringes covered in pathogens maybe you’re looking at the issue through the filter of your own politics and misguided religious morality. More bacteria is never the answer. Meeting people where they are in a non judgmental way opens doors to better things.

This time of year it’s easy to mistake symptoms like fever, body aches, and shortness of breath for seasonal illness. Sepsis is still a thing though so if you’re someone who’s dealing with chronic wounds and infections it’s best to be cautious. Contact your doctor, harm reduction team, or take yourself to ER. Sepsis is a medical emergency so trust your gut and seek care!

I see up close every day how public health approaches save lives. The war on “narcoterrorism” is just another version of the post 9/11 war on terror. This is not about overdose deaths, it’s about Trump drinking Maduro’s milkshake.

In one year, Trump pivots fentanyl response from public health to drug war Experts say Biden's focus on addiction health care saved tens of thousands of lives and slowed fentanyl smuggling. Trump scrapped Biden's approach in favor of military strikes.