#ncga: Brother, can you spare a needle?
There was quite a bit of hubbub about Gov. Pat McCrory signing a bill limiting police body cam footage from public access. This played right into the narrative being pushed by the drivebys in the wake of all of the recent gunplay in Minnesota, Louisiana and Dallas.
Yet, there was a pretty interesting segment of that legislation that, unfortunately, sailed through under the radar:
Advocates often decry the process known on Jones Street as “gut and amend,” where lawmakers strip the language out of a bill and use the shell of the legislation to drop in new statutory language. Then the bill goes straight to the floor of the House or Senate for an up or down vote.
Sometimes, health-care advocates use that technique to their advantage, and that happened this week with a measure to legalize syringe and needle exchange programs in North Carolina.[…]
We’re not talking sewing needles, ladies and gentlemen. Nor are we talking about those needles that come with the “pins” in your feet when they “fall asl
eep.” MORE:
[…] On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary I Committee approved adding the needle and syringe language to a bill about public access to police dashboard and body cameras.
The bill went from committee to the Senate floor where it passed unanimously on Wednesday. Then it went across the hall to the House where the legislature’s only physician, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-Greenville), introduced the bill.
“As far as its being an epidemiology and health prevention tool, it’s been shown in communities where needle exchange is done that the rate of HIV transmission and the rate of hepatitis C transmission … is cut,” Murphy said.[…]
Um, Okay. *If we’re following that logic, let’s do away with the drinking age. Kids are going to consume alcohol. Let them do it responsibly in public, with family and friends. Get them out of the shadows.There will be a lot less alcohol poisoning and drunk driving deaths.* MORE: 
[…] The reaction in the House wasn’t all positive. Rep. Larry Pittman got up to oppose the bill based on the addition of the needle exchange language.
“I can’t get past the notion that somebody may come in and get a clean needle and take it out, and it was clean, until they used it and then they shared it with somebody else,” he told the House.
Pittman said that he could not vote for the bill, even though he liked the language on police dashboard cameras. Nonetheless, the bill passed 89-19 and goes to Gov. Pat McCrory for his signature.[…]
Of course, our governor signed off on this:
[…] “It’s not the politically correct thing to do, at least on my side of the aisle, but it’s the right thing to do,” McCrory said.[…]
So, we’re going to just surrender? We’re going to enable a destructive activity that guarantees a life of dependence and non-productivity? These folks that shoot up with these needles tend to — more often than not — go out and commit crimes to collect more cash to buy their poison after their own cash dries up..
Plenty of people can go out for drinks and show up at work the next day and do a great job. There aren’t a lot of folks shooting up with god-knows-what who can do the same.
Are you kidding me? Any word on the details of this program? At what cost to taxpayers? I am astounded!
This public health issue stretches far beyond just the addicts. The more addicts that have HIV/AIDS the more exposure all of us have to the disease AND the more we, as a society, pay in health care costs. Being an addict does not have to be a death sentence for the addict OR those non-addicts around them.
The experience of Switzerland shows that this approach just does not work. They tried it in one of their big cities (Zurich, if memory serves) and the result was a spike in needle related infection, a spike in crime around the area where the needles were given away, and a spike in drug use. They abandoned this approach after several years of results that were negative rather than positive and a loud outcry from the public to stop it.
This needle exchange / giveaway program was proposed by some careerist bureaucrats at DHHS in the Jim Martin administration, and the higher level political appointees put a firm stop to the proposal. Unfortunately, we do not seem to have conservatives at those levels at DHHS in the McCrory administration.
The Switzerland scenario does not apply as it is outdated. Very recent examinations of needle programs here in the U.S. prove that they do reduce HIV/AIDS and other diseases and may actually lead to addicts getting off drugs.
With the Obama administration’s awful record on truthfullness and its history of saying anything to advance its agenda, who in their right mind is going to believe anything they put out? Maybe you should go pedal your Obama administration propaganda on a liberal site. Maybe you still believe that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and many of the other lies they have told and continue to tell.
I provide credible documentation from studies done even before President Obama took office and you provide nothing but old hearsay.
Well, no. What I have done is simply point out that your sources are the Gruberites of the Obama regime who will say anything to advance their political agenda. The minions of this lying Obama regime simply have no credibility. That is mostly what shows up in your links.
The studies that took place before President Obama’s two terms are consistent with the ones during his two terms as President.
Oh, yes, there were a couple of cites from the Clinton administration, too, which was not noted for its integrity, either. ”It depends on what ‘is’ is . . .”
Don’t overlook the Bush era.
Rep. Greg Murphy (RINO-Greeneville) introduced this bill with the Obama adminisitration’s needle giveaway program in the House. OK where have we heard of this dude before? Oh, it was when he was the chief backer of Michelle Obama’s ”food deserts” boondoggle. This short session is Murphy’s first stint in the legislature as he was recently appointed to fill a vacancy, but he already seems to be the energizer bunny of the liberal pro-Obama wing of the GOP in the House. That is somehow not surprising when Murphy told his district GOP executive committee that the main thing he wanted to do in Raleigh was pass the Obamacare Medicaid expansion (and Greg if you reply, please note we are talking about the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, not all of Obamacare, so please do not try to change the subject like you usually do).
The GOP Plan of Organization was blatantly broken in Murphy’s appointment, with the vocal support of Dallas Woodhouse. This is what we get as a result, a leftwing legislator who functions more as a Democrat.