About three months ago the City of Richmond began a new program, offering harm reduction and personal hygiene products for free at vending machines across the city.
It got off to a bit of a rocky start, but as I pull up to the massive blue, black and lime green vending machine across from Richmond city Richmond City opioid outreach worker Jason Alley is restocking it.
“Little small first aid kits, toothbrush and toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, wipes, and then tons of Naloxone and fentanyl test strips,” Alley says of the available products.
The machines are called harm reduction boxes. They allow individuals to get the listed products for free in the hopes that it can stave off an overdose.
“A lot of it is about trauma, generational trauma, poverty, these things," notes Alley, a former restaurant manager. He was head of Pasture and Comfort for those who remember.
Over eight years sober, Alley says he's much happier helping those in need get help: "It’s heavy work but I’m honored to be able to do it.”
The machines cost about $16,000 each; they and the materials they’re stocked with are paid for via the city’s opioid abatement program. After successful lawsuits against drug manufacturers and the like, localities got funds— tightly regulated by law— that can be used in the hopes of stopping overdoses.
Alley said there are three machines up and running now, the one in city hall, one in Southside Plaza, and one in the city’s east end. But the idea started about 4 years ago with Ziko Singleton and Colin King. Already working for the area free-clinic Health Brigade, the pair borrowed the idea from other cities and began working to get them up and running.
“We don’t lead with recovery, we don’t lead with abstinence-based recovery, but we do believe every time someone accesses our services that is a form of recovery. You’re lessening a riskier behavior,” says Singleton, herself in recovery and formerly incarcerated.
Singleton admits the project initially attracted some criticism from those who felt it supported drug use and those who wondered why treatments like naloxone would be free, but diabetic insulin was not.
But King pushed back on that theory: “Doesn’t everybody deserve the opportunity to live another day? Whether that’s the decision to use again or to recover.”
Anyone can use the machines, all you need is to plug in a zip code.
The harm reduction boxes come as Virginia begins to make real dents in its opioid overdose numbers. The commonwealth hit a peak in 2021 with about 2,000 deaths that year.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
