Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
This last week we saw the heaviest rains of the year. With those, loose debris from San Bernardino to Newport Beach is washed out from inland to the ocean. We always have some surprises during this time of various nature and from various sources.
If you listen to the narrative in the OC Register and the Daily Pilot, you would think that thousands of used heroin needles are washing ashore in Dog Beach– but none of that is true. These syringes most often don’t have needles in them– making them syringes, not needles. They are found all the way down to 40th street with a several-mile washup. According to lifeguards, MOST of these needles are in their packaging and already past their expiration date, meaning that this isn’t some junkie heroin epidemic (although we are experiencing a massive surge in heroin use, in large part due to the policies enacted by the election of Team Nanny Newport, which overturned existing policies in place since 1997 and put our children in danger)
So ask yourself what you think is the most reasonable conclusion when seeing expired needles still in their packaging:
1) That heroin users had their stash of thousands of needles washed away by rain.
2) That someone was paid to dispose of medical waste but instead, they illegally dumped it.
News reports also ran wild with reports that police had found “75” or “hundreds” of needles, but the police themselves say they were only able to find five of them.
I am not sure what is causing such wildly inaccurate reporting which is attempting to lay the blame on Dog Beach. The news is reporting this as though– aside from the needles– that debris after a rainfall has only happened this year. As all of us know who have helped maintain the beaches for years, most of the cleanup comes from volunteers, and debris after a rainfall is neither new nor rare.
I am not sure who is guiding these news reports, but they are all critically flawed from all angles of coverage.
1) The litter is mostly syringes, not hypodermic needles (there is no needle in a syringe).
2) Dog Beach isn’t the only place where syringes are washing up.
3) The police didn’t find “75” or “hundreds” of these, they found five.
4) They aren’t junkie needles, this is un-used, pre-packaged (but expired) medical waste that was improperly disposed of.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” – Mark Twain
