Free Government Crack Pipes: What's True, What's Not, And How This Whole Kerfuffle Started

ACROSS AMERICA — Let’s talk about what you may be hearing about crack pipes, the government and a giveaway. There’s a good chance you heard is wrong.

What’s true: Recently announced Department of Health and Human Services grants fund local programs based in the reality that infections spread among drug addicts when they share needles and pipes, and “harm reduction tools” protect them and the public from pathogens such as HIV, the hepatitis B and C viruses, and others.

What’s not true: The government doesn’t plan to spend $30 million on crack cocaine pipes. They “were never a part of the kit,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday.

“We felt it was important to put out a public statement from the federal government to make that clear because we saw the spreading of misinformation and the fact that it was having an impact on a range of communities,” Psaki said.

In a joint statement Wednesday, the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and Office of Drug Control Policy said the two agencies are “focused on using our resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives” and that “accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”

People who work in addiction prevention told The Washington Post that providing easily washed glass pipes would be cost-prohibitive — and that’s even if evidence showed their use effectively reduced the spread of infectious diseases, which it hasn’t.

What’s true that you may not have heard: Grants under the first-of-its-kind Harm Reduction Program may be used for any of a variety of public health purposes:

• Test kits for infectious diseases easily spread through shared drug paraphernalia.
• Medication lock boxes.
• FDA-approved drug overdose reversal medications, such as naloxone, an opiate overdose-reversal drug widely carried by first responders.
• Safe sex kits, including condoms and information on how to get pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine taken to prevent getting HIV.
• Safe smoking kits.
• Screening for HIV, viral hepatitis and other sexually transmitted infectious diseases.
• Substance test kits, including test strips for fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
• Sharps and medication disposal kits.
• Syringes to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
• Vaccination services for hepatitis A and B.
• Wound care management supplies.

Why you may have bought it: Conservative lawmakers lit up Twitter after Wednesday’s announcement of the grant program, to be administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental health Services Administration, a division of the Health and Human Services department.

“Biden crime policy: Crack pipes for all,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted. “What could go wrong?”

Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan chimed in, lobbing a double whammy at the Biden administration: “Will you have to show your vaccine passport to get your crack pipe?”

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted the notion of the government sending crack pipes to drug addicts is “one of the grossest & most despicable ideas of late.”

Rubio doubled down after the White House said the whole thing was nonsense, pledging to introduce legislation “narrowly focused on crack pipes” that would prohibit the government from using federal funds for drug paraphernalia.

How this kerfuffle erupted in the first place: The right-leaning Washington Free Beacon published a report, based on an anonymous source, that led with “The Biden administration is set to fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its plan to advance ‘racial equity.’ ”

Fox News also joined in. "The Biden administration is promoting drug addiction. They've been caught doing it and now they're denying it," Tucker Carlson said.

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NEXT Distro Executive Director Jamie Farvo told The Washington Post the nonprofit she leads applied for a grant to distribute the overdose-reversing kits and clean syringes in Georgia, Louisiana and Georgia.

“It’s really disappointing that Republicans are trying to win political points by putting lives at risk and creating misinformation about harm reduction,” she told the newspaper.

Why it matters: Drug overdoses are at record rates. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 100,306 people died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, a 28.5 percent increase over the same period a year prior. The CDC cited a spike in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine but also cocaine and prescription opiates.

“Obviously, we would like everybody who is addicted to never use drugs again," Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Keith Humphreys told The Post, "but if we can’t have that, we should be grateful to at least reduce use or reduce the damage of use to that person or to the people around them.”