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The Orange County Needle Exchange program that takes place in front of Santa Ana City Hall every Saturday from 1 PM - 3 PM is causing major harm to the people of Orange County!
Needles are everywhere. They're in the Santa Ana Riverbed, they're turning up in the library, and they're all over the parking lots and streets of Orange County.
This is a war on normal people! Why are the hardworking tax payers being ignored?! This is flat out wrong!
This program is not even an exchange. The drug users aren't turning in their old and used needles, they just show up every Saturday and get needles no matter what.
They get up to 20 at at time! Unfortunately the good people of Orange County don't have a say in this program, but there are two people you can email and ask them to please stop this madness:
1. Dr. Eric Handler - Orange County Public Health Officer Email: ehandler@ochca.com
2. David Valentin - Santa Ana Police Chief Email: DValentin@santa-ana.org
If you live in Orange County you need to let your voice be heard! Here's an example letter you can send:
Dear _____________:
For more than a year our community has been deeply impacted by the abuse and misuse of the Needle Exchange Program operating a under license from the California Department of Public Health by UCI medical students. This is a failed experiment that MUST stop immediately.
Hundreds of thousands of hypodermic syringes have been distributed at no cost every Saturday in front of Santa Ana City Hall so that people, many homeless, can inject heroin and other illegal drugs and then often carelessly leave these used syringes lying around in our parks, libraries, near schools, in our neighborhoods, shopping centers, and along the river trail.
The OC Needle Exchange Program (1) fails to understand that the population that they are serving are not only substance addicts, but a great majority of them have serious mental problems (2) fails to demonstrate that their program have decreased in HIV and Hepatitis in the county and (3) make no effort to follow up on referrals to drug rehab programs. To add insult to injury, proponents of the program do not live in Santa Ana and 95% of the letters of support for the program were sent by non-residents with no ties to Santa Ana or concern about the program's impact in our community.
This license is set to expire on February 11, 2018 and there has been no community outreach with regards to impacts to the community or the City's attempts to shut this program down. It is time that this program re-think their methodology and face the fact that we have a different type of population who may need a different approach to avoid re-using and disposing of syringes.
I am hopeful that you will support us is stating your opposition to this unwanted program that has caused so much harm to this community. We look forward to your response and support to eliminate the OCNEP from Santa Ana.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME