There are many ways to manage drug litter.

It is dangerous and unsightly, it raises fear in communities and can devalue land or indeed an entire community. It flags danger, and raised crime level, violence and theft. So, what can be done?

Thus far, of the very many different approaches none have proved effective in the long term, though some are puffed up to imply success after just a few days of effort and no follow-up. Managed using a combination approach of different and complimentary strategies might be more useful though these are rarely sustained into the long term. We still don’t know what if the best combination of strategies to adopt and indeed there is probably no single preferred approach since it must be tailored to individual circumstances.

Whatever other approaches are used, the placement of secure sharps bins in likely areas is generally seen as helpful. Too often however, communities demanding a solution have been up in arms over placement of those sharps bins since they mark the community as troubled by drug abuse.

Somehow or other, cost is usually the major determining factor. Passive-type safety engineered sharps that retract automatically after use would greatly lessen the safety impact of discarded drug litter. But these carry a premium price to supply and need input in training of some users. And then, back come the moral majority, complaining about the taxpayers money spent on supplies for IV drug users and even worse training them to ‘inject their filthy drugs’! We just can’t win.

We have raised these issues many times previously on the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum. Indeed, looking back through the archive files it seems that we were actually the first to raise these issues, though regrettably we have no winning solution to the problems.

But now, as it to echo the points we had raised, a news report from Potrero, California, highlights exactly these issues. Plagued with discarded needles left by IV drug users, a sharps bin was not used – a vein full of Class A drug doesn’t exactly focus the mind on safe sharps disposal – and amid concerns and complaints regarding the cost of safety sharps, the situation continues.

Never easy, often controversial, and always costly. Whatever is the solution to managing discarded drug litter, the solution(s) are far from obvious. But remember, you heard of these problems here first.