Kate Favata spoke about her personal experience with syringe services at the Pennsylvania Capitol on June 7, 2022.

As a teenage heroin user in Philadelphia, Kate Favata learned of a place that gave clean needles and syringes to people who inject drugs.

Getting what she needed to use drugs was the only appeal.

Now in recovery from drug addiction, she believes it saved her life.

“Nobody said to me we’re putting our seal of approval on your drug use. They pretty much said to me if you’re gonna use drugs, do it the right way,” she says.

That meant not sharing needles, properly disposing of used needles and being conscious of the disease threat she might pose to a medical responder.

Favata, who comes from a small town and who already had hepatitis C, said all the heroin users she previously knew had the disease, which affects the liver.

But that wasn’t true of the people who obtained syringes and disposed of them through the Philadelphia site, known as a syringe service program.

The program also provided testing and prevention information for various diseases, and offered information about drug addiction recovery.

Favata eventually went into recovery and got treatment for hepatitis.

“I just wish the people that passed away would have had the opportunity to utilize those kinds of services,” says Favata, who now works for Clean Slate Recovery Centers.

She spoke Tuesday at an event at the state Capitol to push for passage of proposed bills that would legalize syringe services throughout Pennsylvania.

They are presently legal in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which were allowed to legalize them because of their status as major cities. Some smaller Pennsylvania municipalities also have the sites, but do so illegally, according to speakers at the event. They are unable to receive federal funds toward the programs.

Pennsylvania is one of only ten states that doesn’t allow widespread access to syringe services, said Dr. Wendy Braund, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of health preparedness and community protection.

She said about 400 programs in 40 states have a track record of using the programs to spread information about how to prevent hepatitis and HIV, and connect people to hepatitis vaccines and treatment. They are proven to reduce the transmission of hepatitis, speakers said. Moreover, people who use syringe services are five times more likely to enter addiction treatment, according to Braund, who said the figure comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Speakers further stressed that an estimated 40% of Pennsylvanians with hepatitis C don’t know they have the disease, adding to the risk of spread.

Bills to legalize syringe services have been introduced in Pennsylvania’s House and Senate, and speakers said there’s an urgent need to pass them.

While the number is unofficial, Pennsylvania is expected to register about 5,500 fatal overdoses in 2021. That would put Pennsylvania above its level of 2017, the peak of the overdose crisis that prompted a state emergency declaration and widespread efforts that had cut significantly into the annual toll. Disruptions in treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic is among the factors blamed for the resurgence.

Pennsylvania now has the nation’s third-highest rate of overdose deaths, and the ninth-highest rate of new HIV infections, Braund said on Tuesday.

Favata and others argued syringe service programs are an important and necessary step toward preventing disease and saving lives and are badly needed in Pennsylvania’s small towns and rural communities.

“By legalizing these, you’re not saying you approve of drugs. You’re just saying you love people and you’re not going to judge them based on the decisions they make,” she said.

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