A look into the debate behind syringe service programs in West Virginia
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WBOY) — During this year's State Legislative Session, syringe service programs were under fire as legislators debated whether or not they should be banned. And while advocates say that these programs save lives, others say they do more harm than good. 12 News spoke with voices on both sides to hear what they had to say.
Milan Puskar Health Right's LIGHT program in Morgantown is one of the leading syringe service programs in the state. LIGHT follows a philosophy of harm reduction—which means it believes that part of a public health response to a drug crisis should be to lessen the negative health effects of people who are addicted.
In the case of the syringe service program, LIGHT argues that users are going to use opioids regardless of whether they have clean syringes, and that by providing clean syringes, LIGHT decreases the spread of communicable diseases, like hepatitis and HIV.
"We're not giving people drugs. We're not encouraging people to do drugs. We're accepting the fact that this is our reality right now in West Virginia," Milan Puskar Health Right Executive Director Laura Jones said.
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During the 2024 State Legislative Session, Monongalia County Delegate Geno Chiarelli (R) was the lead sponsor of House Bill 4866 , which proposed banning syringe service programs. Chiarelli said that his position is partially based on an experience he had while going undercover and using LIGHT's services.
"There was no coordination of any kind, there was no treatment planning, there was no specialist referrals," Del. Chiarelli said. "I was in there for about 15 minutes and I walked out of there with a plastic bag full of paraphernalia."
LIGHT has said that it has since fixed the errors that Chiarelli exposed. It also points to the CDC, which says that syringe service programs are proven to save lives and reduce the impact of drug use in the community.
A major area of contention in the syringe service debate is whether the programs produce syringe litter that could pose a public health threat in their own right. LIGHT and the National Institutes of Health contend that syringe service programs do not increase litter , but Chiarelli argues that what the research says is not borne out by his experience living in Morgantown, nor what his constituents say.
"To be frank with you, I don't really care what the CDC says about these kinds of statistics because I have two eyeballs, and I live in this community. I have ears, and I hear what the other people are saying—the people that are living it and experiencing it every single day. People refuse to go downtown anymore. They refuse to go to the library. People don't want to participate in whatever they have downtown because of what's happening there, and the things they are being exposed to," Del. Chiarelli said.
LIGHT's efforts appear to be paying off though, as unlike many other West Virginia cities, Morgantown has not had a needle-borne HIV case in the past nine years.
When asked about the human toll that banning syringe service programs might cause, Chiarelli said that between the litter he sees and the ease with which people can access needles, he thinks programs like LIGHT do more harm than good.
Ultimately, House Bill 4866 was not passed, and LIGHT's syringe service program is still in operation, but with the issue being so contentious, syringe service programs are likely to be back on the agenda during the next legislative session.
