[varispeed]

That is helpful, but even with a clean needle they will administer something possibly contaminated anyway. Good program would also give out medical grade clean heroin like they do in Switzerland. Clean heroin is relatively safe contrary to popular opinion. This removes the dealers from that segment of the market or at least severely reduces the sales volume.

[howlgarnish]

Needle exchanges are more about preventing multiple people from using the same needle, which is an excellent way to transmit diseases like hepatitis, HIV, etc.

[varispeed]

Yes this is helpful in that way, but call me cynical - without removing the market from the hands of criminals, what it does is ensures that the consumer will be a paying client a little bit longer. But if a dealer messes up and mixes the Fentanyl unevenly, the clean needle won't help much.

[at_a_remove]

Dealers are typically not cutting their products with HIV or hepatitis virii.

[varispeed]

They cut drugs with various substances to increase volume and / or perceived strength, and that can cause health issues just as dangerous or even death by accidental overdose. In fact the number of overdose deaths have increased in Portugal since that policy has been implemented. Another flaw of this policy is that when users don't have to spend money on paraphernalia, they will have more money to spend on drugs. So I would say this is not about safety of the consumers, but to protect Portugal's healthcare system. It is easier and cheaper to deal with a dead overdosed consumer than a consumer who caught HIV.

[pessimizer]

> They cut drugs with various substances to increase volume and / or perceived strength, and that can cause health issues just as dangerous or even death by accidental overdose.

This is true, but you're saying something different than what you started off saying.

I agree with you that the government should be supplying heroin to addicts, and if you're decriminalizing drug usage, there's no reason that you shouldn't be doing this. A doctor having the ability to monitor addicts under their care would give us the means to keep them happy and productive, and to make sure they can get off the drug when they're willing to risk the effort.

[varispeed]

Many people who take drugs lead happy and productive life and use them as a tool and this approach doesn't seem to address why people reach for drugs in the first place. That's why I believe this policy is dishonest.

[rsynnott]

> That is helpful, but even with a clean needle they will administer something possibly contaminated anyway

In general, the main drug-related vector for disease is needle sharing. Most pathogens wouldn't survive long in the actual heroin, and it's not clear how they'd get there in the first place.

[varispeed]

This is true, but many contaminants can still cause serious diseases and uneven distribution of active substances may lead to accidental overdose. Also unknown composition of the "drug" can cause unexpected interactions with other drugs people may be taking at the same time. There also seems to be no proof that drop in prevalence of those diseases caused by needle sharing actually is caused by this program and not by cultural change and education that maybe changing the method of administering the drug is "healthier" (e.g. consumers started to prefer smoking over injecting).