Needles To Say, This Was A Bad Idea

7/31/07 – I grew up in San Francisco and spent a lot of time hanging out in Golden Gate Park . This is the City’s little sister to New York ’s Central Park . I used to feed squirrels there as a kid and have found memories of my mother taking me out there several times a week during the summers.

It has always been to me a place of paddleboats and serenity, of dream-like walks and blooming flowers. It is where I rode my bike when my training wheels first came off.

Now you can add the syringes of drug addicts as part of the landscape.

Thanks once more to the foolish policies of City Hall, Golden Gate Park has become a dumping ground for junkies.

San Francisco , like many “progressive” cities, supports needle exchanges for drug addicts. The theory is that to slow the spread of AIDS and other diseases, junkies should be encouraged to use clean needles instead of swapping them back and forth with each other.

I won’t even argue my points AGAINST needle exchange programs today. Let’s focus instead on the City not having the foresight to realize that these bums in the park would be littering needles the way they would litter their lunch…wherever they felt like it.

Now there are syringes all over this beautiful park. As if parents didn’t have enough to worry about with predators and street crime, now they can add accidental needle pricking to the list. Just another element that makes San Francisco even more unfriendly to families.

Last year, San Francisco spent $800,000 handing out 2 million needles. Now needles are being pulled out of the park by the HUNDREDS on any given day!

The same Board of Supervisors passed a city ordinance that allows anyone over 18 to buy up to 10 needles at a time at a local pharmacy—no questions asked. Meanwhile I have to sit there and fill out a form, show a driver’s license, and waste time just to get some cold medicine.

Isn’t it lovely how the progressive mind works sometimes?