Just a quick disclaimer. I do not take ANY illegal drugs, and don't know anyone who does either. I drink a couple of cocktails once a week, because I am a grown adult, and that drug at least is perfectly legal. Anyway, that having been said, I have a question. Whatever happened to the "reach for bleach" campaign? A little background. About 30 years ago or so, AIDS and HIV were ravaging the IV drug user sect. Yes, if they didn't use the illegal drugs, they'd have nothing to worry about. No one is disputing that. But some are addicted. And some have no choice or control. So some guy had this wonderful idea, about 30 years ago now, as I said. Reach for bleach. Flush your dirty hypodermic needle first with bleach, then with water. I know where I live, Michigan, they even had public service announcements about it on TV and radio. Then Democratic Governor Jim Blanchard was voted out of office, and I never heard of it again. Again, no one is saying people should do drugs. And if you are, get help. But as my mother often told me (for unrelated matters), if you are going to do it anyway, consider the advice. Reach for bleach. It just might save your life.
A little before my time but it does not sound like good PR to me. In the War on Drugs there is no sympathy and no suggestions on how to do drugs. Telling people how to do that safely is not good for a politician.
Looks like in the late 1990's there were a few studies that discredited the utility of bleach, discussed in the intro of this paper here: http://journals.lww.com/jaids/Abstract/2001/12150/Can_HIV_1_Contaminated_Syringes_Be_Disinfected__.13.aspx (Should be free to view for everyone) The problem seems to be that most of those studies used far more blood than what the average IV drug user actually pulls into the syringe, thus putting more HIV into the syringe. Then there also seems to be some issues with the actual IV drug users the researchers looked at - most of them ended up becoming lazy and not rinsing their syringes enough or for a long enough duration per rinse. With more strict rules about how to wash syringes, compliance went down. So it might be hard to educate people on how to properly clean syringes when they end up cutting corners and thinking they are safe. In that regard it makes sense that the government would prioritize clean syringes which are sure to be safe and sterile. However, the paper linked above does their own study and shows that rinsing 2x with (bleach + bleach) or (bleach + water) is a pretty effective means to clean your syringe. So it seems like a case of some shifty science being combined with non-compliant drug users that drove this campaign underground.
