#unequal access

The public-private (for profit) partnership that was supposed to bring it to the rest of Kentucky... hasn’t and may never do so. The whole thing is a giant mess bleeding money to tech companies and bankers.

“Lack of access to sterile syringes is paramount,” Stopka said. If people are injecting drugs in communities that don’t have reliable needle exchanges or pharmacies selling clean needles, they’ll likely be reusing and sharing syringes. The groundwork is then laid for an outbreak. At present, 15 states ― primarily in the south and western U.S. ― have bans in place against needle exchanges. “If it can happen in Massachusetts, which has all the support in the world and all the services in the world, it can happen anywhere,” Lethbridge said.

Stigma is relational: "a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity." It thrives, or dies, in the ways people treat one another. Which means we can kill stigma if we choose to. The stigma around addiction will die if we acknowledge the friends, neighbors and family members who struggle with this conditio. If we acknowledge our own secrets and our own struggles. If we ask drug users about their lives and hopes and hobbies. If we know about their addiction and love them (and we do already love so many of them) anyway. That is when discrimination ends, and healing begins.