The article, “The Cost of Safe Injection: Insights on Nonprescription Syringe Price Variability From Systematic Secret Shopping,” has been published in SAj.
In this commentary, the authors state that although the sale of nonprescription syringes in pharmacies is legal in most states, people who inject drugs (PWID) continue to face obstacles to syringe purchase like stigma, prohibitive costs, restrictive policies, and stocking issues. The authors examined the consistency of syringe pricing as another possible barrier.
In the AUTHORS’ OWN WORDS, they relate the importance of their work:
“Pharmacists are among the most accessible healthcare providers and therefore are uniquely positioned to provide harm-reduction services. Pharmacies can contribute to community infection prevention by stocking and dispensing medications for opioid use disorder and NPS, as well as providing universal, on-site, and portable syringe disposal services. Pharmacies can also act as critical sources of the opioid antagonist, naloxone, which is a medication proven to reduce opioid overdose mortality. At the same time, pharmacies can only provide effective harm-reduction services if syringes are consistently stocked and distributed at low- or no-cost. The purpose of this study is to examine the variability of syringe prices across 2 retail chain pharmacy businesses and 4 states—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Washington—and to explore the determinants of syringe prices.”
“Inconsistency in syringe price is yet another barrier to accessing sterile syringe equipment from community pharmacies. While professional education is needed to reduce stigma at pharmacy counter interactions, system-level changes are critically needed to improve transparency, streamline syringe purchases, eliminate the taxation of exempt syringes, and reduce the variation in syringe prices if equitable, consistent access to these essential public health tools is to be realized for consumers.”