This past Wednesday, August 19, Boston City Council held a hearing calling for an ordinance that would force pharmacies and other retailers of “sharps”—or disposable needles—to also provide safe and free waste sites for buyers. If the ordinance is passed, retailers would effectively take on a burden that has almost solely been held by public…
Harm Reduction Exists for Heroin Addicts
According to Mike Stobbe of the Boston Globe, there is a safe place where heroin addicts can go to shoot up, and it’s been operating underground in the United States for the past three years. The underground safe place opened in 2014 somewhere in New York. The location has not been revealed because it’s not…
To thine own self be true: Slaine talks big pharma, music and recovery
Slaine Carroll beat addiction and is now making a name for himself in the Boston music scene. Courtesy photo Slaine Carroll is as embedded in hip-hop as hip-hop is embedded in him. Writing his first rhyme at the age of nine after hearing the Beastie Boys’ “License To Ill,” the Boston native knew he wanted…
DRAGON SLAYERS: Massachusetts communities fight heroin and opioid addiction
Travis “The Featherhawk” Snyder was chasing the dragon, a euphemism for heroin and opioid addiction, until he had enough. It was three days before Christmas in 2011 and he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Detoxing in a jail cell in Pennsylvania, Snyder hit rock bottom. He then did the unthinkable. Snyder…
DRUG WARS: Heroin and opioid addiction is on the rise
Tom Reily stands before Governor Charlie Baker, Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito and a crowd of hundreds and announces that he is two-and-half-years sober. The crowd responds with a fierce applause and in return Reily smiles. “I was a heroin addict,” Reily, a Boston College graduate, says during the final public hearing of Governor Baker’s opioid…