"Community-based programs generally are more effective in helping change lives for the better, especially for addicts, and cost less than imprisonment... But the biggest payoff is in lives redeemed and a healthier society." 👏🙌✊

The difficult discussions over needle exchange programs are happening across the Ohio Valley. Public health officials, increasingly alarmed by disease outbreaks and the unrelenting toll of overdoses, promote needle exchange programs as a way to reduce harm, encourage addiction treatment, and offer disease testing services.

“There’s a role for police,” Fournier Alsaada said. “There are laws that have to be in place. We get that. But black people are policed in a different way. Black people are policed most in this city, and we have no way to weigh in on how they come into our neighborhoods.”