March 21, is the National Day of Action for Syringe Exchange. Since the Reagan administration, Congress has expressly prohibited any federal funds from going to syringe exchange programs. This ban on federal funding is an outgrowth of the ineffectual War on Drugs, the theory being that preventing injection drug users from accessing clean syringes will cause them to stop using drugs. (A more nefarious justification: they’ll just use dirty needles, contract Hepatitis C or HIV, and die. Except they don’t just die and they cannot be denied treatment because they’re horrible drug users.)
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