1. Today is a "day of action" for folks in the harm-reduction world. (That is, people who believe that dealing with drugs as a public-health issue rather than a criminal issue is good for everyone: users and their communities, taxpayers, the criminal-justice system, the health-care system, Latin American countries whose civil society has been hijacked by profiteers who are making loads of cash off of drug prohibition, etc.)

Three months ago, Congress reinstated a ban on public-health funding for needle exchanges and the harm-reduction world has asked for our advocacy.

Drug prohibition is expensive, counter-productive, and brutal, an entirely avoidable domestic and international catastrophe. Putting on the pressure to fund U.S. needle-exchange programs might seem like a small thing in terms of the drug war as a whole, even though those programs save lives and families and untold amounts of public funding down the line when users who haven't contracted hepatitis or HIV aren't a burden on the public health-care system. But it's also an important counter-punch to the idea that voters prefer to think of drug use in terms of received prejudices and ignorant finger-wagging rather than facts.

2. There are alternatives to government-funded public-health programs, such as the People's Harm Reduction Alliance (popularly known as the U District needle exchange). Consider giving to them. Besides doing great street outreach, they provide services that public health is sometimes afraid (or reluctant) to touch, including levamisole test kits, hepatitis test kits, mobile deliveries, and Naloxone, a drug that helps stop overdoses while they're in progress. According to Shilo Murphy of PHRA, the nonprofit gave out hundreds of naloxone kits in Jan of 2011 and had 351 "confirmed saves." In Jan of 2012, they had 87 "confirmed saves."

Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, a research scientist at the UW's Alcohol and Drug-Abuse Institute, estimates that a visit to the emergency room for an overdose can cost taxpayers roughly $3,000 a pop. (And for users and people who know them: Even if you don't have any Naloxone on hand, remember that Washington's "Good Samaritan law" protects people who call 911 to stop an overdose from prosecution for drug possession.)

Drug prohibition has been a massive, deadly failure. Cuts to public-health services for drug users mean more deaths, more community disruption, and more burden on taxpayers. Consider today an excellent day to nudge against a century-old national fallacy by asking legislators to lift the ban on needle-exchange funding, donating to PHRA, or both.