It was just Monday that we noted that Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right: “Nice guy” policies have led to disaster in Philly. And on the same day, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to a homosexual and HIV activist who uses “they/them” pronouns to decry one of Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ policies:

Mayor Cherelle Parker is losing progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS

If the mayor and the Kensington Caucus make it harder or impossible for people in Kensington to access clean syringes, they will have thousands of new HIV infections on their consciences.

by Jose DeMarco | Monday, March 25, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

Jose DeMarco, photo via Philadelphia Gay News.

In 1991, ACT UP Philadelphia, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, started the first syringe exchange program in Philadelphia, which became Prevention Point Philadelphia. Research by George Washington University has demonstrated that Prevention Point’s syringe exchange program has prevented tens of thousands of cases of HIV over its 30-year history. Collectively, this has saved taxpayers over $182 million a year, or $1.8 billion over the lifetimes of those who avoided contracting HIV.Syringe exchange reduces the spread of HIV by removing barriers to accessing prevention tools. Just like providing free access to condoms reduces the spread of HIV/AIDS without encouraging more sexual behavior (just safer sex), syringe exchange makes drug users less likely to contract and spread HIV without increasing drug use (and in many cases, being part of decreasing drug use).

In Philadelphia, we have started to see a slight increase in HIV rates in the last several years, especially among people who inject drugs. This can be attributed to the spread of fentanyl in the illegal drug supply, which breaks down faster in the body, requiring more injections to avoid dangerous withdrawal symptoms. With limits placed on the number of syringes Prevention Point can exchange, but demand creeping up, more Philadelphians are returning to sharing or reusing syringes, a practice that had dropped dramatically when Prevention Point opened.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and the Kensington Caucus’ push to move Prevention Point from Kensington and end city funding for syringe exchange will create more barriers to accessing clean syringes, but it will not create any new barriers to accessing injectable drugs in Kensington. The impact on quality of life for neighbors will be minimal. People in active addiction need opioids and want clean syringes; if the drugs stay and the clean syringes leave, they will reuse syringes.

They will reuse syringes, huh? Wouldn’t that mean there’d be fewer used needles littering the city? And wouldn’t that be a good thing?

So, who is Jose DeMarco? From the Philadelphia Gay News:

When Philadelphia received federal funding to end the HIV epidemic, Jose Demarco and his friend, Michael Hinson — both prominent HIV/AIDS activists — worried the money would not materialize in a way that would benefit Black and Brown people.

“He and I immediately thought, ‘Oh, no, this money will never get to our communities. It will only go to the large organizations,’” said Demarco, who is HIV-positive. “So I pulled together a symposium of people of color — trans, lesbian, queer — and we had this meeting about the money and just about queer life in general and about HIV.”

“That’s when we decided that this is a really good thing — that we should be organizing queers of color,” he said. “So Michael and I put our heads together and came up with this group,” Black and Latinx Community Control — a committee of LGBTQ+ people of color working to end HIV and regain control of healthcare in their communities.

Am I the only one who sees Mr DeMarco’s efforts as based upon his own racism and, if it’s actually a word, heterophobia? Well, regardless of his motivations, noble or perhaps less so, what he wishes to do is enable continued drug abuse. I have put it very bluntly: “I’m enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to ask: why do we want to keep junkies alive?”

That was written over three years ago, noting at the time that a federal appeals court had rejected plans for a supervised injection site in Philly, something which the City Council also rejected in every council district except one, because, in the end, most people realize that making drug use safer only enables and encourages it.

And drug use is what turned Kensington from a decent working-class area into a disaster area so bad that the Mexican government uses it as an example to its own people of why they should not use drugs.

Mr DeMarco wants a nice, kind, and sympathetic government, but decades of nice, kind, and sympathetic government has turned Kensington into what it is today, and what even the Democratic voters of the City of Brotherly Love have rejected. They’ve seen too much of what the city has become.

I get it: Mr DeMarco has HIV himself, and doesn’t want to see others contract it. But, as he admitted in his Inquirer OpEd piece, HIV rates are already increasing among the junkies, even with the clean syringe giveaway program. If he really wants to see that reversed, he needs to get on board with the harsh measures it will take to reduce the number of addicts, not make life easier for junkies.