A City Council committee wants to rewrite a bill that regulates the sale of drug paraphernalia and makes allowances for a needle exchange program.
The Ordinance and Rules Committee decided Wednesday the proposed ordinance, which takes much of its language from state code, focused too much on paraphernalia and not enough on the potential needle exchange program at the heart of its drafting.
Current city code outlaws the sale of hypodermic needles unless they come from a medical professional or institution. It also makes it illegal to possess a hypodermic needle, problematic if the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department is to implement its needle exchange program.
The proposed ordinance outlined what is considered drug paraphernalia, how to identify it and required shopkeepers that sell such items to keep detailed records. Those records must include the full name and address of the person who purchases the item, what was bought, at what quantity, and on what day and at what time.
Council members want the bill to be simplified. They want the city's law against possessing a needle to be eliminated; the police chief to make rules related to any needle exchange operated within Charleston; and for the distribution of needles to be allowed. The Kanawha-Charleston Health Department plans to administer the exchange.
"I'm thinking it's a very simple bill, maybe one or two pages at the most, and we're not regurgitating all this other stuff," said Councilman Jack Harrison.
Local criminal defense attorney Greg Campbell told the committee the language of the proposed law is similar to that of one that was ruled unconstitutional in 1980 by U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver for its language defining drug paraphernalia.
"It's not the same, but it's dangerously close to being the same," Campbell said.
He suggested simply removing needles from the law all together if the city wants to make it legal to possess them.
"I think I told [Councilman] Tom [Lane], make it like a cucumber or a blade of grass or a poppy," Campbell said. "None of those are in the West Virginia code. None of them are illegal to have. You don't need a code provision saying that they're not illegal."
Campbell went on to say the proposed law is problematic in that it leaves it up to police officers to decide what is drug paraphernalia and what isn't.
"As Judge Copenhaver said, a pipe is a pipe is a pipe. The problem that I see with the all inclusive statute that we've got here is who gets to pick what's designed or marketed for use with controlled substances," Campbell said.
Councilman Mike Clowser suggested the city didn't need to outline such regulations if they are already in state law.
"If it's the state code already, why do we need it in the city ordinance," Clowser asked.
Municipal Judge Anne Charnock told the committee that removing the possession portion of city code would make it more difficult to use those convictions as a drug deterrent. She argued that such "wake-up calls" eliminate the need for a needle exchange program.
"They're not pros at this. They're not living on the street," Charnock said of the defendants she sees in municipal court. "It's a stupid young person that got caught with a needle. And that is a wake up call and maybe the behavior will stop then and we don't have to worry about an exchange, because they're not addicts.
"Now you're expecting them to be addicts so they can go get the exchange, and we're not able to stop the behavior."
Dr. Michael Brumage, executive director and chief health officer at Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, questioned Charnock's assertion that people coming through municipal court are first time offenders "that we are able to save."
"And I don't have any idea. I am just the municipal judge of Charleston, West Virginia," Charnock said.
Brumage spoke about the need and effectiveness of needle exchange programs, which are "only one aspect of a broader program of harm reduction," he said. Exchange programs offer other services alongside the needle trade, Brumage said.
"We are on the verge of being another Scott County, Indiana, where we have an HIV outbreak," Brumage said. "We're not there yet, but we're very close."
Charleston police Lt. A.C. Napier spoke before the committee and emphasized the larger public health problems created by dirty needles existing in the community at large.
"We lead the nation in drug overdose rates," Napier said, citing more statistics about West Virginia's high Hepatitis B and C rates, which rival or surpass national averages.
"By them not having clean needles is not going to keep them from doing the nasty drug of heroin. But by having clean needles, they're not going to share, I don't think, as much. They will come in and turn them in once they see we're not dealing with them as law enforcement," Napier said. "And I believe we'll start to digress the epidemic we're in the middle of."
The Ordinance and Rules Committee will meet at 6:15 p.m. Monday to discuss its committee substitute prior to that evening's City Council meeting.
Reach Rachel Molenda at rachel.molenda@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5102 or follow @rachelmolenda on Twitter.