VT CARES Continues Needle Exchange Despite Opposition

By Euan Bear

      Vermont Cares Director Kendall Farrell, responding to the opposition of the St. Johnsbury Selectboard to its needle exchange program, said that the needle exchange program would continue until the Department of Health completes its review. Complicating that picture is a report in the Caledonian Record that the Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital Board of Trustees may consider evicting the program.
      The selectboard is requesting that the DOH rescind the organization’s permit to run its needle exchange program in St. Johnsbury, saying the group had violated the Department’s guideline requiring a showing of “cooperation” from the community in which an exchange program would be located.
      “There are a couple of issues that the selectboard has with the program,” said Farrell. “There’s a discrepancy about whether we contacted local goverment. But Vermont CARES has really put forth an effort to participate in a process with members of the community. We are and have been willing to meet with whoever we need to meet with, go where we need to go.”
      Farrell said the St. Johnsbury needle exchange program has been operating over a month. “A majority of the folks we’ve come into contact with – from the selectboard and at a forum in the community – have been in favor of the program,” Farrell said. “When only a handful of people show up at the widely publicized forum we held in the community, you have to assume that there’s some support. There are a few loud voices in opposition,” Farrell continued. “We didn’t expect to have consensus on a program as controversial as this.”
      One question the CARES director said needed to be answered was whether a vote by any local selectboard could supercede the law allowing establishment of the needle exchange programs under the auspices of the Department of Health. “Nowhere in the guidelines does it say the programs have to have a yay vote from the select board of the community,” Farrell pointed out.
      “Right now, we’re focusing our energies on continuing the programming and serving folks who need our help,” Farell concluded. “Our mission is to stop the spread of HIV, and because it involves sex and drugs, it’s controversial. We’re an easy target, something tangible they can latch onto. Our job is not to weigh the moral implications. we’re not here to judge people’s behaviors, but to give people the tools to stop the spread of the virus.”
      Vermont CARES will continue to work with the DOH, looking to them for guidance on how to proceed. Farrell noted that needle exchange programs have been going on in Burlington and Brattleboro for over a year, without official objections or appeals to the Department of Health. The lack of prior appeals means the procedure is untested and could, potentially, end up in court.