Here’s Why Some San Francisco Nonprofits Give Foil and Pipes to Drug Users | KQED

“Maybe you yesterday said, ‘I’m going to start recovery,’ and you didn’t because addiction is strong, addiction is a disease, it takes a lot to get to a place where you’re ready to get on that recovery spectrum,” Fromer said. “But we want to make sure when you’re ready, you have what you need.”

She told KQED that Glide’s decision to offer foil and other supplies “is really about saving lives and preventing disease, but also creating opportunities for recovery.”

Dr. Amer Raheemullah, the director of the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Service at Stanford Hospital, said such harm-reduction strategies not only make drug users safer but also can urge them to turn to treatment options when made available at the same location as other recovery services.

“The idea is to reduce harm, but then also have this interaction with somebody who’s actively using to slowly nudge them toward treatment,” he told KQED. “That can be through counseling, like a skilled counseling interview that’s been shown to be effective, but it can also simply be by co-locating treatment in the same place that they’re getting these needles or these other harm reduction tools.”

One way to think about harm reduction, Raheemullah said, is to consider those struggling with addiction as having a neurological deficit.

Take someone with Parkinson’s disease, for example — “They might have an increased risk of falls. So, in order to reduce harm, we pad their house; we may make adjustments in their living situation, not to encourage falls, but to reduce the damage of falls if or when they occur. It’s the same with substance use,” he said.

Sharing and reusing needles can increase the risk of contracting HIV and Hepatitis C, which can lead to illness and, in some cases, death.

“The higher objective is to just reduce this harm that’s occurring, preserve life and not do too much damage for later down the line when people eventually accept treatment,” Raheemullah said.

There is also no proof that administering needles or other safe injection supplies increases the use of illegal drugs, he told KQED.

A randomized study of 600 people who injected cocaine, morphine and/or amphetamines found “no difference in the number of injections over time” for people supplied with sterile needles compared to those taught how to purchase them, according to the 2003 report out of the University of Alaska Anchorage.

The Center for Disease Control also said in a February 2024 report that 30 years of research has shown programs that provide access to sterile injection equipment “do not increase illegal drug use.”

Fromer said that Glide’s distribution of safer drug-use materials is one of the nonprofit’s many programs geared toward helping drug users — whether they have chosen recovery or not.