LAFAYETTE – Jason Mount, Circuit Court judge from southern Indiana’s Scott County, sidled up to Tracy Brown as the Tippecanoe County commissioner was finding yet another diplomatic way to deal with variations on a question that has been weighing on him for more than half a year.
Where are you going to put that syringe exchange program the county signed off on all the way back in November?
Mount repeated a breathing exercise he’d shared Wednesday evening with those who’d come to Ivy Tech Community College’s auditorium to hear about where the county’s plans stood, along getting what amounted to the judge’s survivor’s tale, taken from the ravages of his sorely addicted county.
Mount had told the sparse crowd about how he had been against a needle exchange – “Make that a hard no,” he said – until he realized that there was a reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s top brass had swooped in from Atlanta to his county of 23,700 in 2015. Rampant opioid addiction brought shared needles, which brought an HIV outbreak, which brought an uneasy acceptance for a then-prosecutor who had to find meaning in a two-word mantra.
FROM MARCH: Can a needle exchange find a home in Lafayette?
FROM NOVEMBER: A needle exchange, but where?
INDIANA HEALTH COMMISSIONER:: Syringe exchanges not easy but save lives
Mount had everyone in Ivy Hall sit up straight, take a deep breath through their nose and then release it slowly through their mouths, reminding them that he was there to help Tippecanoe County not wind up in the health emergency – not to mention the Chamber of Commerce nightmare – Scott County had been through since spring 2015.