Needling the Opposition

(Photo from ZeroHedge)

San Francisco needle exchange programs--both non-profit and government-sponsored--have been in existence for nearly 30 years. While probably preventing disease, the costs are significant: [bold added]

in 2018, the program distributed 5.8 million syringes and collected 3.8 million, an improved collection rate of about 65 percent. There was a significant uptick in dropoff of needles at kiosks which increased to 241,080 in 2018, a more than 300 percent increase from the 59,000 in 2017.

An unaccounted-for two million syringes with drug residue are an environmental disaster, whether they end up on the streets, on playground and parks, in landfill, or are swept into the Bay.

President Trump entered the fray by announcing that the EPA will cite San Francisco for violations because of needles flowing into the ocean. Predictably, San Francisco politicians and "experts" denounced the President by asserting that San Francisco sewers don't allow needles to get through.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city has a combined sewer system that “ensures that all debris that flow into storm drains are filtered out at the city’s wastewater treatment plants.” She called Trump’s remarks “ridiculous assertions.”

“No debris flow out into the bay or the ocean,” Breed said.

The whole premise behind the ban on plastic straws was that the straws end up in the Pacific Ocean, hurting ocean wildlife.

It's a very strange system that catches all the needles but not all the straws.

Update (9/21/2019) -- once again Willie Brown, tongue firmly in cheek, has the final word:

But, of course, Trump overplayed his hand by falsely claiming drug needles on San Francisco streets are washing into the ocean. Rather than having to deal with a national focus on the city’s homelessness failures, local officials got to turn the story around as just another Trump lie. And they were right, of course. The needles don’t wash into the ocean.

They end up on sidewalks and in parks.