During a Tuesday meeting of the Portland City Council’s Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee, City Councilor Kate Sykes, former co-chair of the Maine Democratic Socialists of America, claimed that used hypodermic needles littering the city are “not a public health risk.”

Skyes’ comments came after a presentation from Portland’s Interim Public Health Director, Bridget Rauscher, on the city’s Syringe Services Program (SSP) and concerns from residents regarding syringe litter throughout the city.

Portland’s SSP, commonly referred to as “The Exchange,” is part of a statewide “harm reduction” program overseen by the Maine CDC that distributes hypodermic needles to people who inject drugs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Maine suspended rules requiring needle exchange clinics to take used needles out of circulation before providing new clean needles to drug users. Current Maine CDC guidelines allow for the syringe exchanges to distribute up to 100 needles for every one needle that they collect, meaning the needle “exchanges” function more like taxpayer-funded needle distribution centers.

Data presented to the committee earlier this year by the city staff showed that from January to May 2024, Portland’s SSP had distributed nearly 260,000 sterile syringes — about 75,000 more than they collected.

In 2023, the exchange gave out more than 800,000 syringes total, while collecting about 575,000.

According to the Maine Department of Health and Human Service’s 2023 annual SSP report, syringe exchanges statewide distributed a total of 3,676,315 needles in 2023 — roughly 500,000 more needles than they collected.

Rauscher outlined several strategies that the city’s Public Health Department has taken to address the issue of improperly discarded used needles.

One of the proposed measures under consideration by the city is to allocate settlement funds from a nationwide lawsuit against opioid manufacturers toward a syringe “buyback” program, effectively paying drug users cash at the SSP to incentivize them to turn in their used syringes.

Another strategy that Rauscher said the city has recently begun working on is a “Harm Reduction Ambassadors” program, through which the city pays active drug users who are clients at the syringe exchange to conduct outreach and education “in their community.”

Weighing in on the issue after Rauscher’s presentation, Portland Mayor Mark Dion informed the City Council members that he plans to introduce a resolution to implement a 1:1 transaction ratio at the syringe exchange. Such an order would return the city’s needle exchange clinic to its mode of operation prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Mills Administration’s suspension of the exchange rules.

“When I go across the streets and speak to business owners and residents, they see this as a pretty significant issue,” Mayor Dion said regarding the issue of used needles littering the city.

Dion said that the Portland residents he speaks to are “in awe” of the number of syringe’s that the exchange distributes.

“To me the simple harm reduction is each injection, that’s a life and death event, and the fact that we can provide them ample opportunities to succeed in an unfortunate demise troubles me tremendously,” Dion said

The Portland mayor also expressed skepticism towards the Public Health Department’s “Harm Reduction Ambassadors” program.

“I do raise an eyebrow at the possibility that somebody who’s completely captured by their addiction can function as ambassadors, but my skepticism is always open to hard data,” he said.

City Councilor Anna Trevorrow, on the other hand, claimed that the city’s SSP “has been exceptionally successful,” and praised the city for doubling down on “progressive tactics” rather than blaming the exchange program for the problem of discarded needles.

“I am encouraged that when we see an increase in needles left on the ground, we kind of double down our efforts to invest in these progressive tactics to deal with it, as opposed to a more regressive model, where we would say the program’s not working, that we’re actually causing the problem — because I don’t think that’s what happening,” Trevorrow said.

Trevorrow then cautioned her fellow committee members that concerns from constituents regarding discarded needles littering the city may be rooted in “stigma” or “fear.”

Councilor Kate Sykes, a self-described socialist, also pushed back on Dion’s criticism of the syringe exchange program, saying that she is also “in awe of the number of needles that we distribute, but in a good way.”

Sykes argued that having the syringe exchange was far cheaper than having an outbreak of a communicable disease.

“There really is not a public health risk to the fact that there is a needle on the ground,” Sykes said. “It’s not trading one public health emergency for another public health emergency.”

“There just is no risk really for this,” she said.

Sykes also said that the city should encourage Portland residents to pick up the discarded hypodermic needles themselves, adding “they’re not gonna jump up and bite ya.”

Sykes claims run directly counter to the health advice provided by the Maine CDC.

According to the Maine CDC, improperly discarded syringes pose a “serious public health risk” due to needle stick injuries that can potentially transmit blood-borne diseases such as Hepatitis B and HIV/AIDS.

While the U.S. CDC claims that SSPs reduce the transmission of blood-borne diseases such as HIV, diagnoses of HIV have been steadily increasing in Maine since the COVID-19 pandemic, per CDC data compiled by Emory University’s AIDSVu project.

In other words, at the same time Maine has relaxed the rules around needle collection and drastically increased needle distribution — all on the premise that doing so would reduce the transmission of blood-borne illnesses — the number of HIV diagnoses have actually increased.

In 2022, Maine reported 41 new diagnosed cases of HIV, up from 31 cases in 2021, and 15 in 2020.

During the same period, according to Maine DHHS, syringe exchange programs across the state experienced a marked increase in the number of enrollees receiving sterile syringes.

In 2021, SSPs in Maine had a total of 5,403 enrollees, which increased to 6,718 in 2022 and over 8,300 in 2023.