Utah County has the need, and support from community organizations, to open three needle exchanges tomorrow, according to Mindy Vincent, executive director of the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition.
But that hasn’t happened yet, she said, partly due to efforts to build partnerships with local government and law enforcement.
“We don’t ever want to just go trampling into town, [saying] ‘This is the law, we can do it,'” Vincent said. “We want to collaborate with people, and we want to work with the counties. That takes a lot of time.”
Vincent’s organization and others like it may need to move forward on their own.