Outside ‘boundaries of the law’: On video, Idaho Harm staff discuss drug-item giveaways
Employees of the Idaho Harm Reduction Project — whose offices were raided by law enforcement recently — admitted during a conference last September that they were distributing drug paraphernalia illegally, according to a video recording reviewed by the Idaho Statesman.
“It is illegal to distribute the supplies and stuff that we do, but it is part of the core of what harm reduction is: to meet the needs of people of what they tell us they’re in need of,” the organization’s program manager, MacKinzie Pierce, told participants during a September panel at the Intermountain West Harm Reduction Conference in Salt Lake City.
“Sometimes you just have to work a little bit outside of the boundaries of the law,” Pierce continued.
The video was linked on the conference’s website under the “Injection Alternative Program Implementation” panel.
These new details come to light weeks after the Boise Police Department executed search warrants on the organization’s Boise and Caldwell offices. Police said they seized electronic devices and “packaged” items as part of an investigation into the distribution of drug paraphernalia. The Caldwell Police Department and the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office assisted Boise officers.
Haley Williams, a police spokesperson, said the paraphernalia included items related to the use of methamphetamine, opioids and crack cocaine.
The Idaho Harm Reduction Project offered a variety of services, including a legal needle exchange program and medical services such as STI, HIV and Hepatitis C testing. It also provided Narcan (naloxone), a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses. A post on a fundraiser page for the organization said that it now “has closed and a valuable community resource is lost.”
In a 45-minute video recording of the Sept. 28 panel in Utah, which was about alternatives to using injections, several panelists — who introduced themselves as Idaho Harm Reduction Project staff members — acknowledged that they handed out things such as snorting kits, bubble pipes that are used for methamphetamine and heroin pipes, commonly referred to as hammers.
“It’s really word of mouth,” said Averie Moss, an assistant program manager for the group, when asked to explain how Idaho Harm raised awareness without getting into criminal trouble.
“When the injection alternatives popped off, because primarily in Idaho people use meth, so we have the bubble pipe and that’s really just like taking off — and everyone wants one.”
It’s unclear whether those devices were what police seized, because Williams declined to provide further information Thursday.
“We do not have anything new to share on the investigation as it remains ongoing and there have not been any charges or arrests,” Williams told the Statesman by email.
Sophie Hamel, a peer support specialist for the Idaho Harm organization, said during the panel that along with handing out supplies at their offices, the organization mailed “injection alternatives” throughout the state.
Pierce added that the organization was discreet when mailing packages, and people who requested materials didn’t have to provide their real names. Pierce didn’t respond to a request from the Statesman for comment.
The Idaho Harm Reduction Project’s website previously linked to a Google Form that allowed participants to place an online order, but it’s unknown exactly what supplies could be obtained because the form is no longer active.
“We are very, very careful for every order that we send out,” Pierce said at the conference, the video showed. “(The boxes are) as non-descript as possible. We let people know at the top of our order forms, online or in our office, that this is a very big risk for utilizing these services.”
Several of the organization’s social media posts, which the Statesman reviewed, appeared to also place the organization’s executive director, Marjorie Wilson, at the Utah conference. Wilson doesn’t appear in the video so it’s unknown whether she attended that particular panel.
Wilson had been serving as a substitute lawmaker for Rep. Sue Chew, D-Boise, since January while Chew battles pancreatic cancer, the Statesman previously reported. Chew previously endorsed Wilson to replace her in the Idaho Legislature for District 17, which encompasses Southwest Boise and part of the Bench.
Liam Brucker-Casey, a spokesperson for the Idaho Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told the Statesman in a phone interview that Wilson was no longer substituting for Chew. An out-of-office email that came to the Statesman from Wilson’s Harm Reduction account said she would be filling in through the end of the legislative session. It’s not known when that changed.
Wilson didn’t respond to a list of questions sent by the Statesman seeking comment. Rachael Bazzett, who also didn’t respond to the Statesman, filled in for Wilson as the organization’s interim director since the beginning of the year.
The Idaho Harm Reduction Project previously posted on social media and its website that the organization provided “evidence-based programming” in accordance with state law.
“We have done our public health work in the full light of day — with the full knowledge of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare — and look forward to this issue being resolved,” according to the post.
Idaho Harm used grants, fundraising to purchase items
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare — which partly funded the group — has been tapped by Gov. Brad Little to conduct an internal review of its contracts with the organization. As part of the investigation, Health and Welfare Interim Director Dean Cameron halted payments earlier this month to all five of the organizations that receive funding to provide needle exchange services throughout the state, the Statesman previously reported.
It doesn’t appear that Idaho Harm Reduction Project was using Health and Welfare funding to pay for any illegal drug paraphernalia. Pierce said during the panel in Utah that the health department was supportive when it came to the syringe program, but for the alternatives, the group used funding from grants and other donors.
Health and Welfare declined to comment. However, department spokesperson Greg Stahl said that answers to a list of questions sent by the Statesman would be addressed in Cameron’s report to the governor. He added that the report, which will be made public, should be finalized in early March.
“We are striving to be thorough and complete,” he said in an email.
The passage of Idaho’s Syringe and Needle Exchange Act in 2019 allowed people to obtain clean needles through the exchange program, but that law doesn’t apply to pipes — despite research that points toward smoking being a safer alternative. The law didn’t decriminalize needles as paraphernalia, which means people can still be charged with possession of drug paraphernalia if they are found with syringes.
In the letter to Little, Cameron said he’d “root out answers” posed by the governor and numerous lawmakers. Within a week of the raid, Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, introduced a bill to end the needle exchange program entirely. That bill passed the House’s Health and Welfare Committee on Thursday.
Vander Woude previously told the Statesman that he’s concerned the programs don’t reduce drug use and wondered whether the needle exchange service could be handled within behavioral health programs.
“I’m afraid sometimes it’s more enabling than it is trying to get people off (of drugs),” he said in an interview. “There’s got to be something better than this.”
Do drug crimes increase with needle exchange programs?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 30 years of evidence-based research has shown programs that provide clean syringes are “safe, effective and cost-saving” and do not increase illegal drug use.
In fact, since the passage of the Needle Exchange Act, drug crimes haven’t increased; instead, there has been a slight decline throughout the state, according to Idaho State Police data. In 2019, there were roughly 750 drug crimes reported for every 100,000 Idahoans, compared to 705 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2022.
This also applies to Idaho’s most populated counties. Canyon County veers closer to the overall state average, but Ada County is much lower, with 582 drug crimes reported for every 100,000 people in 2019, going down to 474 per 100,000 people in 2022.
Health and Welfare’s website also states that the exchange program effectively protects communities. In 2021, participating organizations safely collected nearly 700,000 used syringes, which protected people from possible injury, according to an IDHW annual report. Nearly 600,000 used syringes were collected in 2022, according to IDHW’s website.
Additionally, over 630,000 sterile syringes were provided to Idahoans in 2021, which protects against the spread of HIV and Hep C, the report said.
During Thursday’s committee hearing, Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, made a motion to send the bill to general orders to find a way to amend the Syringe and Needle Exchange Act, rather than repeal it. Committee vice-chair Rep. Marco Erickson, R-Idaho Falls, supported Rubel’s substitute motion.
Erickson, who has worked in the drug treatment field for 30 years, said the motion would allow exchange programs to continue while legislators worked to add oversight.
“I’ve seen them reduce infection rates, seen them reduce HIV, hepatitis,” Erickson said. “I’ve seen them help individuals. So I’ve been supportive of needle exchange programs.”
The motion failed in an 8-5 vote.
This story was originally published March 1, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
