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Comment by xienze | Hacker News Reader

> What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes.

Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed...

> And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash

The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground. As is typical, the intentions are noble, but what ends up happening is people who can't even be bothered to not shoot up their gutter heroin in public are given society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.

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I looked into this a while back (~6 years ago) and it basically broke down like this: diabetics outnumber injectable drug users two to one but not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home. Drug users, however, have less compunction about sticking themselves in a public space, particular the homeless. Best guess based on these numbers is that it's a 50-50 split between these populations as to who's using public sharps containers.

> society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.

This argument could be made about providing drugs themselves but fails under the faintest scrutiny for sharps containers because said containers have wide uses beyond shooting up heroin.

Homeless heroin addicts who inject themselves in public are not uniformly distributed. Thus while in some places you would expect some such injectable drug use in a public toilet (though I doubt most would bother to go find a toilet for that anyway), that is unlikely for the majority of toilets in a country that contain syringe disposers. On the other hand, one would expect that diabetics who inject insulin would be closer to be uniformly distributed (conditional to the population distribution).

If one could find syringe disposers only in areas where public heroin use commonly takes place that would be believable, but it is not the case.

In contrast, there are actual, real programs and places in many countries to manage issues arising with syringe use, trying to reduce syringe sharing to reduce blood-transmissible diseases etc.

> not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home.

I'd love to hear the citation for this one, as people using injectable insulin generally need to do in conjunction with eating, and I can't think of where you'd get the idea that T1 diabetics who use injectable insulin avoid eating outside the home as a general rule.

Granted, nowadays plenty of people are using insulin pumps which decimates disposable syringe use, but I'm really puzzled where you picked up that in-home/away-from-home impression from.

I think they're referring to type 2 diabetics who might just be on a long lasting insulin and not need to inject at every meal?

Novopens have existed for a long, long time (40 years). Syringe disposal units are not for the diabetics and they never were. Where I live, they are commonly found in public toilets with awful yellowish lights that make it really difficult to see blood vessels.

Sure they were! They're key safety infrastructure in response to a universal problem to keep needles out of the trash. People being harmed by needle stick injuries don't care if the needles are being improperly disposed of due to illegal drug use, or legal injections.

Where I live, needle disposal boxes are available in almost all institutional restrooms. I'm not sure why you think the yellow light is relevant.

Here's a history of the problem in San Francisco. My memories of the issue in Washington/Oregon around the same time are similar:

https://www.japha.org/article/S1086-5802(15)30128-5/abstract

Another article, again highlighting that the focus on needle disposal is keeping all needles out of the trash, as a broader occupational safety issue:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014572179402000...

Anyone with type 1 diabetes is injecting while outside the home. Usually it's a long acting baseline insulin that you can inject at home and then a faster acting one that you inject before eating or drinking anything that's not water.

> Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed...

What motivates this infrastructure is the danger to workers if syringes are just thrown into the trash.

My dad had type one diabetes with a type A personality, and was very particular about making sure that syringes were disposed of properly. Not everyone is this careful, and they put others at risk.

Nobody's choosing to use heroin because it's slightly easier to not litter needles. The tiny harm reduction measure is good.

> The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground

But it's better if at least some of them are in the trash and not scattered around, isn't it? I may be wrong but it seems to me that public opinion doesn't matter to these people anyway, so there's no point in getting rid of such garbage bins

> The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground.

Yeah, well, that's your culture and a direct end result of how people are treated and made to feel part of or outside of it.

In Australia there are diabetics and drug addicts as much as anywhere, but rarely problems with sharps on the ground or littering in general- go figure <shrug>.

Drug use: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-15/australian-drug-use-w...

  Australians have consumed 22.2 tonnes of methylamphetamine (meth), cocaine, heroin and MDMA in a year, according to the latest wastewater survey.

That's about a gram each over the year, or rather many people don't use, a few use a lot.

Diabetics, sharp disposal: https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/resources/safe-sharps/

Drug users, sharps: https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/U_Z/Where-to-find-n...

At the suburban council level: https://cosp.t1cloud.com/apps/KnowledgeBase/mySouthPerth/art...

oook, so if according to your message, the disposals are mostly used by diabetics, then again, what's wrong with them?

They weren't saying there is anything wrong with the syringe disposal per se, but instead that it's indicative of the people who use those facilities and the priorities of the authorities that manage them.

It is observed that you have junkies shooting up in bathrooms, evidenced by needles strewn on the ground. So the solution from the authorities is to install syringe disposal containers.

> So the solution from the authorities is to install syringe disposal containers.

Given the cost vs the benefits, why not? A box mounted to a wall is a pittance.

Feel free to elaborate your plan for the junkies that would be cost effective, practical and ethical.

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