At their meeting next Tuesday, the Sanford City Council will consider adopting a resolution seeking to reform the city’s state-licensed syringe distribution program.
For more than a year, city officials and residents have said that the taxpayer-funded needle distribution program—which is supposed to promote public health—is, in fact, causing a public health crisis due to contaminated needles littering public areas.
[RELATED: Sanford Officials: Maine CDC No Help in Dirty Needle Crackdown…]
The Maine CDC authorizes Syringe Service Programs (SSPs) as a “harm reduction” initiative aimed at reducing the spread of blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis by providing active drug users with sterile syringes.
The program, which is similar to programs run in several other U.S. jurisdictions, began as a “needle exchange” program with a 1:1 ration, meaning drug users were required to turn in one used needle for every clean needle they received.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Mills Administration issued an executive order in March 2020 suspending the one-to-one exchange requirement. That order transformed the needle exchange programs into needle distribution programs, and the original exchange ratio has never been restored.
Under current Maine CDC rules, the needle programs may provide a person with up to 100 syringes without that person turning in a single used syringe.
The syringe program in Sanford, run by the nonprofit organization Maine Access Points (MAP), is one of 13 such sites across the state currently licensed by the Maine CDC to distribute sterile hypodermic needles to drug users.
At a meeting of the Sanford City Council last month, City Manger Steven Buck said that the Maine CDC has not been cooperating with the city in their efforts to curb the public health crisis caused by improperly discarded used syringes.
“We have a public health hazard with these scattered needles in our state, in our community, for which I cannot get recognition at the state level — especially from the CDC,” City Manager Buck said.
In 2023, MAP distributed roughly 460,000 syringes to their SSP clients in Sanford — about 20,000 more than they collected, per a memo from the City Manager.
Buck said the syringe exchange operated remotely out of a vehicle near Heritage Crossing, the site of a large abandoned mill complex, and handed out needles in boxes of 100 to program enrollees multiple times per week.
About 15,000 of those syringes were collected during the city’s cleanup of the Heritage Crossing homeless encampment in June.
[RELATED: Sanford To Close Homeless Encampment Due to Excrement Polluting Mousam River…]
At their meeting last month, there was broad agreement among the City Councilors regarding the need for the syringe program to revert back to a 1:1 exchange ratio.
“I find it hard to believe that this program is actually helping people,” said Sanford Mayor Becky Brink at last month’s meeting.
“We have to weigh both ends of this,” Brink said. “We have to protect the people who are on drugs, but we can’t let it interfere with the 23,000 other people that are in our community, we have to find a balance.”
[RELATED: Mills Admin Proceeds with $15,000 Study into ‘Safe Consumption Sites’…]
The resolution slated to be considered by the City Council at their Tuesday, Oct. 15 meeting states that the city “has been unable to obtain recognition by the Maine CDC” to address the public health crisis caused by the “vast number of inappropriately discarded contaminated hypodermic syringes stemming from the Syringe Services Programs.”
The resolution would act as a petition by the city to the Maine CDC to reexamine the SSP rulemaking when it comes to the 1:100 needle exchange ratio.
“[T]he Sanford City Council hereby declares that the Maine CDC needs to amend the Syringe Services Program 10-144 Code of Maine Rules Chapter 252 to discontinue the 1:1 Plus or 1:100 syringe distribution program allowance and return to a strict 1:1 exchange program to facilitate the complete collection of syringes and prevent discarded needle exposures to the Public,” the resolution states.
The resolution also directs the City Council to seek support in the State Legislature to amend the state law regarding Hypodermic Apparatus Exchange Programs, in order to restore a “strict 1:1” exchange ratio.
The full resolution can be read below:
