WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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One year ago, the Lawrence County Commissioners voted to discontinue their needle exchange program. Lawrence County was the second Indiana county to discontinue needle exchanges, which service areas hit particularly hard by the ongoing opioid epidemic. Needle exchanges are typically non-governmental agencies that offer clean syringes to drug users, in an effort to reduce the transmission of diseases, like HIV and Hepatitis C.
In a statement that would garner national headlines, Lawrence County Commissioner Rodney Fish quoted the Old Testament in his decision to vote against continuing the county’s needle exchange program, on this week in 2017. That program was run by the Bloomington-based non-profit Indiana Recovery Alliance. Chris Abert is the founder and director of the IRA. He said the Alliance was offering needle exchange program to Lawrence County for free. Abert states that it will take a while for the IRA and the Indiana State Department of Health to analyze the effect of Lawrence county’s decision to close their needle exchange program.
In the meantime a Hepatitis A outbreak has taken hold in Lawrence County, and much of southern Indiana.
Abert said, regardless of the Lawrence county commissioners decision this week last year, he’s still hopeful that the Indiana Recovery Alliance will be invited to resume their needle exchange operations. Intravenous drug users in Lawrence county have had to commute to neighboring Monroe county for the past year to exchange syringes. Rodney Fish still serves as a Lawrence County Commissioner.
