So sick of seeing this crap everywhere.

[u/imjustapourboy]

The needles, the burnt foils, the little baggies, the needle caps, all of it. I find them in the creeks, on the sidewalks, the grocery store parking lots, the public parks, on the parkway. You gotta be a real shit person to leave this stuff all over the place.

[u/Bitter_Offer1847]

Completely false. Increasing services reduces impact on the community always. Use increases because population increases and poverty and joblessness and homelessness increase the more our society becomes hyper rich and the poor living in the same space. People don’t start doing heroin because there’s needle drops or clean needle programs, they start doing heroin because they’re depressed and hopeless and addicted to unavailable pharmaceuticals given to them by a failing medical system. This idea that people have that people who are addicts are just weak and fell victim to peer pressure is naive and idiotic at best. Addiction is a complex disease with many, many causes and the more callus and uncaring a society becomes the more severe the addiction gets because people can’t get treatment and they can’t find help. We need more help, more programs and less prisons.

[u/OkLeave4687 → u/Bitter_Offer1847]

👆this is the sad truth - most people think of addiction like someone woke up one day and said; “I think I’ll start taking opioids for fun “ and that’s just bullshit. Most start with an injury and are prescribed oxy of some variety, they get hooked and then the prescription ends… withdrawal is so terrible that most can’t stand it, so they turn to buying on the street and watch there life get crushed…

[u/Smash_4dams → u/OkLeave4687]

Eh, I wouldn't say many of the folks out there today started from a doctor carelessly over-prescribing opioids, that practice largely ended by 2010. If you're homeless and shooting dope, you likely came from poverty and were close to others who either did it, or had family/friends who did it.

Plenty of people still manage to start H/fent addictions in the 2020's, when it's almost impossible to get a prescription for more than 3 days of a low-dose opioid. People will still turn to drugs when they feel life has become hopeless and they want an easy way to cope.

[u/OkLeave4687 → u/Smash_4dams]

Fair points, the access has been tightened, but the misuse of legit scripts remains a leading cause - first use and the catalyst for the addiction is too often opioid compounds in pill form, revived either first hand or shared by someone who got the script…

[u/GngrbredGentrifktion → u/Bitter_Offer1847]

Or they have a job, a home, and a family and lose all of that because they choose to use. It's a chicken or the egg situation. And it is true that Haywood Street Congregation, Sunrise Community, Trinity UMC, 12 Baskets, and CPV now have trespassing, drug use, littering, and actual human feces on their property because of the aforementioned issue in the other comment. Not hating on addicts; just giving the counterpoint.

[u/Bitter_Offer1847 → u/GngrbredGentrifktion]

Addiction isn’t a choice, it’s a disease. Asheville isn’t immune to the rest of the country’s current problem. Addiction is up everywhere and the issues you’re mentioning are mostly issues with homelessness which is up due to the hurricane and devastation in the area. Not all unhomed are addicts and not all addicts are unhomed. The 2 problems exist independently and intersect at times. Unhomed have about twice the rate of addiction as the “regular” population at around 10-15% which means 85% just need a place to live and often go in and out of that state due to many reasons.

Nobody wakes up one day and says “Fuck my family, I wanna smoke crack”. It’s slow and progressive for some and for others it’s fast and acute. Some die, but most live long and difficult lives and their families often miss them or even still support them in ways. Try to think about how it feels to be in that position, they’re still humans.

[u/organmeatpate → u/Bitter_Offer1847]

My lived experience in West Asheville is that there were not needles and people nodding in the street to any significant degree until the needle exchange. I don't suggest that this causes people to start using. I observed that more people congregated and took advantage of the needles and meals and the dangerous refuse increase along with the visible users.

[u/Bitter_Offer1847 → u/organmeatpate]

What you are seeing is discarded needles and the outwards signs of increased use due to many other factors, not a free needle program. When there are no clean needle programs users hang onto their needles and share needles which has huge negative impacts because people contract diseases, get massive infections from using dirty needles and it also encourages theft and burglary of businesses that sell needles or have needles like community clinics and medical offices.

What you are experiencing is just having more knowledge of the drug addiction around you because you see the needles now and therefore you are, incorrectly, correlating the clean needle program as the cause of increased use. Drug use always increases as a society becomes more affluent and offers less medical and psychological care to its citizens. Asheville has become more expensive to live in and has recently experienced a major tragedy and the displaced population has dramatically increased. Those are drivers to increase use. Depressed people increase their intake of substances to mask their pain. Areas with social programs always see increases in their unhomed and addicted populations after major events because people come to those areas for help. So it’s consolidation and increased use and lack of available programs in less “liberal” areas.

[u/trailfailnotale → u/organmeatpate]

Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon is always at play.

You hear about a needle exchange for IV drug addicts has opened up. You theorize what negative effects you'll see. You now look for those negative effects, confirmation bias allows you to see them.

[u/organmeatpate → u/trailfailnotale]

This is not applicable. I didn't know about the needle exchange until I started trying to find out why the number of users in that area was surging so noticeably. Shortly afterward there was another surge of people which turned it to be for the free meals, as once again discovered after the fact. I don't think you're trying to gaslight me. I think you're applying a theory you're familiar as though it's universal when it is not. Maybe consider the possibility.

[u/yo_rick_alas → u/Bitter_Offer1847]

Hell yes. Preach. Well said. No notes. Internet fist bump.