PHILADELPHIA (TNS) — Advocates from across Pennsylvania were set to rally in Harrisburg in support of legalizing syringe service programs.
Syringe service programs operate in more than 40 states, including Pennsylvania, though it is one of just a few whose laws explicitly prohibit the distribution of syringes. Amid the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, Philadelphia activists defied the law and opened the needle exchange program that became Prevention Point, which has operated with the permission of the city government ever since.
Pittsburgh’s needle exchange, also called Prevention Point, operates under similar leeway from its local government.
Several other needle exchanges operate with varying degrees of visibility throughout the state. But in many places, the state ban keeps outreach workers in constant fear of arrest.
”[In the rural areas], they’re smaller nonprofits, jumping in cars with syringes, fentanyl testing strips, and naloxone. They’re in the woods, in hiking boots, up the mountains, doing really targeted and focused outreach on individuals who have basically isolated themselves,” said Carla Sofronski, the cofounder of the Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Alliance, one of the rally’s organizers. “They’re doing amazing harm reduction work to keep people alive and safe. But they’re doing it in fear that any time they could be put in jail.”
In Philadelphia’s collar counties, people can travel to the city for clean syringes, but statewide legalization would eliminate that barrier, advocates say.
Susan Ousterman, of Bucks County, said her son Tyler Cordeiro contracted endocarditis last year — a life-threatening inflammation of the lining of the heart — because he could not get clean syringes. “He contracted it in May [2020], and he was in the hospital for three months,” she said. “It was bad. His kidneys were failing, and he almost died.”
In August 2020, she said, her son was jailed for a probation violation in Bucks County after he was caught carrying a syringe. His medical benefits were suspended during his time in jail, and afterward, Cordeiro and his family struggled to find treatment — a task made more difficult by the fact that he had a medical marijuana card. (At the time, a Spotlight PA investigation found, confusion over federal regulations meant that some county drug and alcohol offices in Pennsylvania weren’t using federal funds to pay for addiction treatment for medical marijuana cardholders.)
Cordeiro died of an overdose in October 2020.
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”He lost his medical coverage, he couldn’t get funding to get into treatment — you can’t pinpoint one thing that was a failure. But definitely, access to clean syringes could have improved his outcome,” Ousterman said.
Four Pennsylvania lawmakers, including Philadelphia state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, have said they plan to introduce legislation legalizing syringe access programs, and Gov. Tom Wolf has signaled support for syringe exchanges. Advocates hope to speed up the push for legalization at Wednesday’s rally in Harrisburg, where Ousterman was planning to speak. She’s bringing a copy of her son’s medical bill from his hospitalization with endocarditis, totaling $750,000. She also hopes to meet with Bucks County lawmakers to talk about local syringe access.
