To Hell with Memes

A meme I saw this morning, “Having "safe heroin injection sites" makes about as much sense as having "a drunk driving lane" on the highway.”

Here is the problem with memes, while they are fun, and while they give us a reason to pump our fists in the air and say “F*ckin’ A man,” they don’t deal very well with the nuances of reality.

Government statistics showed that about a million people in the United States used heroin last year.  That 1 in 325 Americans using heroin and a higher proportion of the population in total are using syringes illicitly; there are other illicit drugs by administered by injection.

About 10% of the new HIV diagnoses in the last year studied came from IV drug use, i.e., these came from people who were using needles previously contaminated by an HIV positive person.  Additionally, various strains of Hepatitis and other blood born disorders are transmitted this way. Violence against IV users injecting in seedy environments is significant.

HIV, Hepatitis and trauma from violence amongst the uninsured carry direct economic costs.  ER expenses, if you have been following the news carry a direct and highly expensive cost to the public health system. Almost all of these folks are uninsured. As a result the hospital gets stuck with the bill. The cost ends up getting shared with all of us through higher insurance premiums.

My guess is that having safe injection sites reduces these medical costs by a phenomenal factor.  The monthly rent for an empty store front and the cost of 10,000 clean syringes probably will cost the American health system a whole lot less than one ER visit by a HIV positive junkie who has had the holy crap beat out of ‘em at a shooting gallery (or whatever the term used is today).

Clearly there are negative costs from safe injection sites.  Junkies are unreliable and they often steal to support their habits.  An increase in property based crimes near the clinic is possible if not probable. Additionally, the real estate value of adjourning properties drops. I am sure there are twenty more other issues that could be bantered about.

But there is a real social issue that has to be hashed out when you contemplate safe injection sites. It needs careful and considered thought. The problem with memes is they divert us from significant conversations about real issues.  How real? I usually deal with a couple of heroin addicts in the course of a two to three day span, I would venture of the people I see trying to get their licenses back after drunk driving offenses the number categorized as opioid dependent is about 15%.

I am not trying to bust my friend’s balls.  I hope he knows that.  Facebook based on our short attention spans and its immediacy just cries out for memes.  I usually laugh at the ones my conservative friends post because while they are completely opposite of my political beliefs they can be funny. But this one, well it kind of hit a nerve with me.

Memes are easy to post.  Honest political discourse these days is virtually impossible.

Again, let me emphasize this is not a tack on my friend or his values. This is a challenge to the way we use Facebook. Maybe it would be better said that it is a challenge to what Facebook is doing to us.