Dubious Intentions
And Lying to the Police
By Daniel Muniz

Legions of poverty warriors and do-gooders are often frustrated by local statutes and court rulings whenever they embark on controversial ventures. Nobody questions the easy stuff like handing out sandwiches to the homeless because that doesn’t involve any kind of moral hot potato.

However, it is the dubious and suspicious activities that raise eyebrows.

One such example is passing out clean syringes to drug users in exchange for their dirty needles. Some programs also pass out metal caps so that addicts can “cook” their drugs on something clean.

The intent is to provide a public health benefit in which a user will have access to sterile paraphernalia that allows him or her to abuse drugs and ruin their lives in a safer manner.

Although such initiatives are already commonplace in many municipalities throughout the country, they typically face fierce opposition from the local community. It is often because ensuring that unemployed drug addicts are safely destroying their lives doesn’t seem to do anything to diminish the scourge of drug abuse. In fact, public funding simply allows the government to become an enabler of drug abuse instead of providing health and mental services. As a result, the public tends to see such programs as prolonging the problem instead of finding a solution.

However, many “good Samaritans” insist that they are actually addressing a far different crisis such as stemming the transmission of deadly diseases like hepatitis and HIV. Although this action may have a positive effect on drug users, much of the public still doesn’t buy it because there is an impression that needle exchange programs only removes just one obstacle that an abuser is facing in their daily lives.

In the state of Texas where I live in, officially sanctioned initiatives have not taken root although there are Texan cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston that permissively allow non-profit organizations to exchange needles with no repercussions.

But as of now, no such “legal” programs exist although one particular effort is currently being reviewed by the Attorney General’s office as well as by county District Attorney’s offices.

However in my hometown of San Antonio, 39 year old Melissa Lujan, 67 year old Mary Casey, and 73 year old Bill Day decided that they couldn’t wait any longer for the courts to deem that needle exchange programs are lawful.

So this triad of do-gooders from the Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition set up shop inside a minivan in a seedy part of the city and began handing out clean syringes and metal caps.

Naturally, they were immediately observed by local law enforcement especially since they were operating in a high crime area filled with drug addicts, thugs, and prostitutes. It didn’t take long for the police to approach them to ask what they were doing. Bill Day explained that he was a county employee and that his non-profit group had authorization to exchange clean syringes for dirty needles. And to beef up his claim, he produced the business cards of a couple of police officials who were high up in the law enforcement food chain.

Of course this was all bogus.

This do-gooder lied to the cops about who he really was, he lied about the so-called authorization that his organization had, and he lied about law enforcement officials sanctioning this effort. The police saw right through his ruse and slapped the trio of good Samaritans with a relatively mild Class C misdemeanor. And when prosecutors got a hold of this, they upgraded the charge to a very stiff Class A misdemeanor.

Local poverty warriors were up in arms.

Legal or not, many social activists tend to believe that the end justifies the means so they felt that what this triad was doing was not morally or legally wrong. Of course they cited the public health issue as the end justifying the means.

Nevertheless, living in a civilized society requires that all of us respect and adhere to our legal system and the authority that enforces them even if we may feel that they are unfair. And if people don’t like our laws, then change them. We have the ability to address the grievances that we have with our government. But if change doesn’t happen, then welcome to democracy.

There are a lot of laws that I personally don’t like such as paying taxes but I still pay them anyways. However, I support and vote for people who share my beliefs in reducing the tax burden. However, the politicians that I support often fail in their quest but I accept the outcome as part of living in a democracy.

The bottom line is that the road to hell (or to a jail cell) is paved with good intentions. I have zero sympathy for this triad of do-gooders and it is not because I think that their effort is a farce (I do believe it counter-productive and a waste of time) but that we have laws that must be respected. If people don’t want to operate within this framework of society, then they are going to pay the consequences.

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